LINGUISTIC CLEANSING:

The Sad Fate of Punjabi in Pakistan

By Abbas Zaidi

Punjabi is the mother tongue of well over 120 million people. It is the language of two groups: the Sikhs of East Punjab in India (who use Sanskritised script), and the Punjabis of West Punjab in Pakistan (who use Persianised script). The two groups cannot read or write each other's writing, but their oral communicability is one hundred percent.

Before the partition of India in 1947 these two peoples used to live side by side. Some of the richest poetical traditions--the Sufi and romantic--of the Indian-Pakistani subcontinent are to be found in Punjabi. The immortal Punjabi love epic Hir-Ranjha is the acme of what Matthew Arnold called "high seriousness". And yet, Punjabi is also the most jokes-inclusive language of the Subcontinent. Even the non-native speakers of Punjabi accept that it is an exceptionally rich language: just one expression couched in the right tonal emphasis or written from the right perspective is worth scores of locutions, and the same expression can convey a variety of meaning in the same and different contexts if given the right twist. It is a language of nuances and double entendres. Sometimes the two meanings are contradictory (e.g., "X is a healthy man" or "X's figure is athletic" can mean just the opposite.). Sometimes one meaning is wit-packed and the second is serious (e.g., "The mullahs efficiently carry out their sacred duties in the mosque" can also mean they do wicked sexual things there). Most of the time one meaning is an ordinary, intended statement, while the other is playfully sexual (e.g., "Shall I pour [milk/water]?" secondarily refers to penetration, and more). If someone wants to experience synaesthesia, let him learn Punjabi.

Recently I met a Sikh in Brunei. He was in his mid-20s, born in Malaysia, and had never been to the place of his origin, i.e., the Indian Punjab. But he could speak perfect Punjabi. He said to me, "If a Sikh cannot speak Punjabi, he is a fake Sikh."

And yet, Pakistani Punjabis must be the only linguistic group in the world that has a dismissive--even derogatory--attitude towards their own language. I have lived in or visited a number of countries. I have talked to countless Punjabis both in Pakistan and outside. Most of them, Pakistani Punjabis wherever they may actually reside, are willingly, even proudly, dumping their own language in favor of Urdu.

The most aggressive anti-Punjabi-ists come from the educated and semi-educated classes. As soon as they acquire the most minimal academic advancement, the first thing they do is jettison their natural language. I have never seen or heard of an educated, or even semi-educated, Punjabi parent who is willing to communicate with his or her own child in their native tongue. Rather, they strongly discourage and often rebuke their children if they even suspect that they might be talking to other children in Punjabi, because speaking Punjabi is considered a mark of crudeness and bad manners.

A young child speaking Punjabi is at best an amusing curiosity for adult Punjabis. In a posh social or academic gathering anyone speaking that language is either trying to be funny or himself soon becomes the butt of jokes. A poet who writes in Punjabi finds an audience predisposed only to ribald entertainment.

Pakistani Punjabis' negative attitude towards their language can be demonstrated by the fact that there is not a single newspaper or magazine published in Punjabi for the 60 million-plus Punjabi speakers. Historically, every Punjabi journalistic venture has died soon after its launching. The latest venture was a daily newspaper, Sajjan ("Friend"), edited and published by Hussain Naqi, an Urdu-speaking Indian emigrant. It only lasted a few months. Yet, all the regional and provincial languages like Sindhi and Pushto have a proud history of publication. Sindhi, a minor language compared with Punjabi, can boast scores of daily newspapers and periodicals. Yet, while Pakistani Punjabis can certainly speak their language, they can neither read nor write it. I estimate that not more than two percent of Punjabis can read or write Punjabi. Add to this the fact that, after Urdu speakers, Punjabis on average are the most literate group in Pakistan and you see what irony there is.

Consider the following breakdown of the speakers of the various Pakistani languages:

Punjabi 48.2 %
Pushto 13.1 %
Sindhi 11.8 %
Seraiki 9.8 %
Urdu 7.6 %
Other 9.5 %

What can one make of this situation? Is it not a linguistic schizophrenia on the part of Punjabis? Urdu is regarded as the "correct language", the language of taste and class, by the Punjabis themselves. Quite apart from what others think, it is they, the Punjabis, who think that Punjabi is an "indecent" or "vulgar" language. Some of them say this is because of the Punjabi accent, the rude way individual words and expressions are uttered, or because Punjabi is the language of the illiterate and the uncouth; or because there are countless swear words and double entendres in Punjabi; or because Punjabi is just plain déclassé. Hence, Punjabi has multiple semiotic indictments against it even before it is expressed.

And yet, a language's capacity for double entendre is actually at the heart of its expressiveness and power, making these objections to Punjabi as ridiculous as General Franco's charge that Basque was a "language of dogs".

The only places in Pakistan where Punjabi is uninhibitedly spoken are the so-called backward rural areas or city slums. These misfortunate people look up to prosperous educated Punjabis--the landed aristocrats, industrialists, the yuppies and the bourgeoisie--as role models. As they become educated they discard their mother tongue along with their uncouth dress and manners. Hence the formula seems simple enough: the more educated a Punjabi is, the more anti-Punjabi and Punjabi-less he or she becomes. Ironically, the illiterate Punjabis are the most genuine Punjabis.

The responsibility for such a state of affairs lies with the Punjabis themselves, especially the "Wake Up Punjabi" slogan-mongers. Is it not significant that in Pakistan's history no Punjabi leader of stature has addressed a mass rally in Punjabi? Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's current and twice-elected prime minister, is a Punjabi. It was he who some time back raised the "Wake Up Punjabi" slogan while challenging then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's supremacy. Yet his track record on Punjabi is as bad as any other Punjabi leader's. Bhutto, who was also twice elected prime minister, is a Sindhi. She always talks to the Sindhis in Sindhi. Similarly, Urdu-, Pushto-, Seraiki-, and Baluchi-speaking leaders and intellectuals always use their own languages when talking to their people either in private or in public.

Sindhi, Pushto and Urdu are compulsory languages for Sindhi, Pathan and Mohajir students, and the Baluchis are working hard to evolve a script for their own language. A number of official activities are transacted in these languages. The Punjabis are the largest linguistic group in Pakistan. They are also the most powerful political and economic group. Pakistan is an agrarian society, and the Punjab feeds the whole of Pakistan ("Punjab" means "the land of five rivers"). But there is not a single school where Punjabi is taught. Nor has Punjabi ever been part of the school syllabi. Pre-university as well as college courses in the Punjab are taught in Urdu. In a majority of cases, the characters, their names, and the situations projected in narratives, poems and social descriptions are based on the culture of Urdu speakers and have nothing to do with the Punjab. There are a number of universities in the Punjab, but it is only in the University of Lahore that a small MA Punjabi department exists, and even then the students admitted are more interested in finding a cheap residence in Lahore than in studying Punjabi.

The books published in Punjabi in any given year can be counted on one hand. Compared with scores of Urdu, Sindhi, Pushto, and other minority languages (e.g., Seraiki and Kashmiri), there is not a single full-fledged Punjabi research institution in Pakistan except for a misshapen Punjabi Adabi Board which is notable principally for its inactivity. The few research works in Punjabi owe their existence to individual efforts. One may argue that this state of affairs can be explained by economics, but why does economics affect only Punjabi in this way?

The average Pakistani Punjabi would answer my questions thusly: (i) The reason the Sikhs have never discarded their language is that their holy book, the Garanth, is in Punjabi; (ii) we must use Urdu because it is our national language.

To which I reply: (i) The Koran is in Arabic, but its readers have not dumped their own native languages simply because of that fact. Moreover, the Punjabis, along with other Pakistanis, never learn Arabic; they read the Koran without understanding a word of Arabic. And: (ii) All the different ethnic groups in Pakistan know Urdu, but they have not jettisoned their own languages for the sake of a national language whose native speakers make up less than eight percent of the general population.

Language has played a very significant role in Pakistan's history, a fact which makes the Punjabi question all the more ironic and tragic. When Pakistan was created in 1947 as East and West Pakistan, it was claimed by its then rulers--who were Urdu speaking emigrants from India--that Pakistan would last till the Day of Judgement with Allah's blessing: two (East and West) wings, one religion, one nation, one country, and one national language-Urdu.

But the blessing was not realized, and before it could celebrate its first anniversary the whole of East Pakistan was rocked to its foundations with bloody "language riots". The Bengalis refused to accept Urdu because it was an imposed, not their own, language. They said they would lose their identity without their mother tongue. In turn, they were dubbed "anti-Pakistan" for their opposition to Urdu.

The pro-Urdu lobby in West Pakistan then played the Islamic card: Urdu amounted to Islamic identity. Anti-Urdu was anti- Islamic. Calling the Bengalis anti-Islam, the religious scholars of West Pakistan argued that Islamic identity should transcend Bengali identity if the Bengalis were to consider themselves true Muslims.

But the language of theology could not overcome the theology of language, and in 1971, before Pakistan could celebrate its silver jubilee, East Pakistan had become Bangladesh, "Land of the Bengali-speaking People". And as the Bengalis were about to start preparations to celebrate their first independence anniversary, the province of Sindh became a scene of language riots between the speakers of Sindhi and Urdu, shaking the very foundations of the newly-elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the most popular and powerful leader (he was both the country's president and chief martial law administrator) in Pakistan's history. Bhutto appeared on TV and spoke in English, Sindhi and Urdu. He joined his hands together and, pointing them towards the people said, "For God's sake, let it (i.e., language rioting) go!"

Again the religious scholars played the Islamic card. One of them said, "The end of Urdu will mean the end of Pakistan and Islam."

The province of Sindh has continued to be a hotbed of ethnic violence between Sindhi and Urdu speakers. Sindhi nationalists want a separate homeland, Sindhudesh, exclusively for speakers of Sindhi, while Urdu speakers threaten that any "conspiracy" against "Pakistan and Urdu" would meet with an "iron fist". They themselves had planned to establish "Jinnahpur", an Urdu-speaking province within Sindh itself. Their scheme was thwarted by an army action against the Mohajirs in 1992.

Since Pakistan's creation, the Pathans have been lobbying for Pakhtoonistan, the "Land of the Pushto speakers". Nowadays they talk about separating from Pakistan itself and forming a greater Pakhtoonistan with Afghanistan, a majority Pathan country, even though severe differences exist between medieval religious obscurantist Talibaans and so-called liberals. The nationalist movement in the South of the Punjab is based upon the Seraiki language. Other examples can be multiplied. Yet, no similar debate exists amongst the Punjabis about Punjabi. They are secure in the belief that their language is merely a source of embarrassment rather than of a proud common identity.

Amrita Pretam, a Punjabi poet and fiction writer, once invoked the soul of Waris Shah (the Hir-Ranjha poet) when hundreds of thousands of Punjabi women had been raped by their own countrymen during India's partition. One is tempted to again invoke the name of this great Punjabi bard whose language is being consigned to an historical black hole by the Pakistani Punjabis themselves. What are the inheritors of the language of Waris Shah and numerous other Punjabi literary titans, both inside and outside Pakistan, doing about this shameful neglect of the Punjabi language? Will Punjabi ultimately become like Latin, a dead language with no one left who can actually speak it?

We find throughout history that dictators who want to terminate a target group are assiduous in their attempt to first efface the language of that group. Pakistani Punjabis are their own dictators. If they continue to treat their language the way they are doing at present, in future there will be a strange, baffling mass of "ethnic" Punjabis who will not know their own language. Or, if somehow miraculously Punjabi isn't lost in Pakistan, it will become at best a pidgin.

Love for one's native tongue is a universal phenomenon. At minimum, a language is a mark of personal as well as national identity. It's a glue that holds its speakers together as a people. This is why language has been so pivotal in the history of nations, a stronger bond than religion, land and even race. At present, written and spoken Punjabi is heavily punctuated with Urdu words and phrases which are foreign both semantically and phonetically. Mohajir (i.e., the Urdu-speaking people) and Punjabi temperaments are poles apart in terms of cultural values and attitudes. Many would argue that Islam is the common bond among all Pakistani people, which in the course of time will transcend all the differences. I am not sure this is true, but what, however sadly, I am sure of is that at the rate things are going, Punjabi will have disappeared before the end of the next century.

(Abbas Zaidi <manoo@brunet.bn> was editor of The Ravi (1985), Pakistan's premier and oldest academic magazine published by Government College, Lahore. He also edited Interface (1990-91) for the Program in Literary Linguistics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Zaidi has taught English Literature in Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, and worked as assistant editor for The Nation, Lahore.)

Speaking Punjabi is rude!
Well I only speak Punjabi, I can speak some Urdu......

aaahan
sure...i am punjabi. everyone in my house knows how to speak punjabi...and abt half of us dont know urdu...i am ashamed i dont know how to write in urdu..and sometimes i have trouble in reading urdu....u want to know my opion? for pakistanis i dont think punjabi is that important...urdu is more imporatant for all pakistanis...punjabi is 4 sikhs.... i come from a rural area... everyone speaks punjabi dere...and kids are still taught punjabi dere b4 anything else.but if a person doesnt know puNjabi dere is nothing wrong it.
and no punjabi wont die out like latin


and oh yaaa im not ashamed of punajbi...perhapss i have even taught my teachers how to speak punjabi

ahh its hard to read that long long article but for me as being a Punjabi person speaking Punjabi isn't a big deal...unlike bunch of other wana bees I feel proud that I can speak Punjabi and I know many girls and boys around who think Punjabi is an extraordinarily friendly language *btw thats my own wording * but I remember in Pakistan many girls in my school had this pride of not understanding Punjabi and why is that the fake standards they and their families had set

Repost

i think knowning more languages is a skill...and i am not at all ashamed of what i know...
punjabi/urdu.

i think ppl who can't speak it make fun of it cus they are jealous
punjabi is funnier. can make more jokes and fun to speak

I DO AGREE WITH THIS POST I MEAN KIDS AINT TAUGHT PUNJABI IN PAK THESE DAYS ATLEAST WHERE I LIVE.
At home we always talked in punjabi though and there is nothing to be ashamed about i'm a proud punjabi and all punjabis shud be.

MinD shortening this prolex .

My Question is why do punjabi shouts when they speak their lingo

Allah blessed us with powerful lungs and undying courage.....Thats why.....

hmmm i dont agree with this article to the fullest, as I really do not know of many people (punjabi) who are ashamed to speak punjabi either in Pakistan or abroad, personally speaking I have hard time speaking punjabi, but i m never asamed of speaking in Punjabi (my bad punjabi is embarasing but that is a differnt thing)

^^knock knock...somebody has got a problem with Punjabis

punjabi is cool it really is

The post is so Long. I didn't read. Well, I don't know how to speak punjabi or understand it. I like punjabi songs but I don't know the meaning. I have lived in karachi for 5 yrs and my family is in karachi. My fiancee lives in Lahore and he knows punjabi. But he is not a Punjabi.

Punjabi is an extraordinary language. So is Urdu. But Urdu is not the native tongue of Pakistan. It comes from the Lucknow Area in North India and was brought over by the Mohajirs and Jinnah. I don't understand the self-hate among the Punjabis who prefer Urdu. It is like a Spaniard not studying Spanish literature at all but studying Swedish. I can't believe Punjabi is not even taught at school. Thank god there are people trying to keep the language alive. What is wrong with learning Punjabi and Urdu just like a Sindhi learns both. Just because some Sikhs or Hindus speak Punjabi doesn't mean a muslim shouldn't. The Persians didn't give up their language when the Arabs came nor did the Turks.

Punjabi is a very strong language and one of the scholars who is doing research on the languages (I dont remember his name) said.. in next hundered years, Punjabi language has the brightest future in south asia.

i think punjabi is a fine lanuage. i know punjabi and urdu and english but its true that not many ppl use punjabi unless they are shouting or something....

Urdu is far more organized and rich in contrast to punjabi.
It's a ''formal'' language.
(there is not doubt in that).

That's why us karachi ppl speak urdu and not punjabi.
we're just more formal.

^how is it formal?

^^and how come this a good thing????I always have examined that Punjabis are more outspoken and evident in the representation of their emotions while others are not that open.
waisey rading your definition of formal.....I guess none of those great poets like Baba Bulley Shah and others used one unorganized and unpreviliged and deprived lingo to spread their message...huh

^ Maybe you shud touch the urdu poems of Allam Iqbal
Mir Taqi Meer ?
hmmm Momin Khan Momin ?
Faiz Ahmed Faiz ??

The origin of punjabi is from Sikhs.
The origin of Urdu comes from Arabic and Persian languages and it was the prized language of Mughals.


Now you understand why urdu is preferred over punjabi ??

Sikhism started 500 years ago

Punjabi was around long before that

^ that still doesnt change the fact why urdu is preffered over punjabi.

Isn't Urdu just a *******-child language of Hindi? You can add a couple of Persian words here there, but it doesn't change the fact that two people who are speaking Urdu and Hindi together would be able to communicate with each other with no problems.

MJ2k4 Oh really, thats why 48% speak punjabi

- Punjabi 48%
- Sindhi - 12%
- Siraiki - 10%
- Pashtu - 8%
- Urdu - 8%
- Balochi - 3%
- Hindko - 2%
- Brahui - 1%

*Window*:
Can you read hindi too ?
People who just know urdu well, cant read hindi. Same goes for people who know hindi.
Urdu's letters and alot of words are driven from Arabic.
Hindi doesnt share the arabic words that are present in urdu.
*cough* There is a Huge Difference here.


PakistaniMunda:
I was talking about the preference of Allama Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah over this language.
They chose this language as they probably never wanted to associate anything with sikhsm.
It's well known that Sikh's scriptures like Adi Grant Sahib, and the rest, were written in punjabi.


So which language would you choose ?
One that was spoken by muslim rulers of india (Mughals), driven from the language of Quran, and understood by everyone in India, a modern language which is well structured ; urdu
OR
a language that is widely associated with sikhs, and spoken by tribes of certain regions; punjabi


lol, u guys are getting so mad over this, that it's actually funny.

MJ i dont think it really matters how the language originated. i mean if u use that logic then arabic was spoken by pagans in arabia before islam came so does that accociates arabic to paganism? yes urdu is very similar to hindi except that its written in a diff script. so doesnt that accociates urdu to hinduism cuz hindus speak hindi?
punjabi is formal in its own way. urdu is formal in its own way
Tell me how in the world does urdu being similar to arabic makes it "holy" cuz u imply that arabic is the lang of the quran.
n also the reason ppl in karachi speak urdu is cuz most of them are dehli walay or lucknow kay type loog.

now where did i say urdu is a holy language ?
Yes, i did say that it comes from the same language as the one in quran.
But that means that urdu is drived from arabic.. right ?? ..duhh..
urdu cannot be really associated with hindi alone, cuz it also comes from arabic-persian as well.
so no point in trying this.

Another reason why urdu was selected the national language was cuz the only people who were educated enough to rule the country were the urdu speakers.

^yes almond. When Mughals entered India, they spoke farsi.
But by the end of their times, they were speaking urdu.

yeah it was Bahadur Shah Zafar who did poetry in Urdu....I know until Aurangzeb and Shahzada Sleem Farasi was common

I got the amount of population speaking punjabi, urdu from a website. I don't make stuff up. If u look at the original post it has it there aswell

Punjabi 48.2 %
Pushto 13.1 %
Sindhi 11.8 %
Seraiki 9.8 %
Urdu 7.6 %
Other 9.5 %

Learning urdu in school does not mean that you use it in everyday life. I know most people here who came from PAK. They learnt urdu all their life in PAK school and they speak punjabi most of the time

ok i never read the whole artilce ok

but gotta say speaking punjabi is not feel ashmed
1)person who cant speak very good will feel ashmed
2)punjabi is not rude

its the way one speaks ok

Urdu gramatically is not derived from either the Semitic Arabic language or Iranian Persian. Yes it does have words from these languages(more so from Persian) but structurally it is identical to Hindi. Hindi-Urdu as spoken by the masses of North India and Pakistan used to be called Hindustani. Just because one is written in the Perso-Arabic script and the other in the Devangagari script does not make them totally different languages. Both languages are Sanskritic languages gramatically. English has a lot of Latin derived words from the romance languages yet it does not change the fact that gramatically it is a Germanic language. Serbian and Croatian are the same languages but are only called different because one is written in the Roman alphabet and the other in the Cyrillic alphabet. Urdu as a a native tongue was only spoken originally by the natives of Delhi and Lucknow. It was brought to Pakistan by the Mohajirs from India. The true native languages of Pakistan are Punjabi, Sindhi etc. Punjabi is not the Sikhs language either. It predates them. It is spoken by Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus in the Punjab.

Here is a description of Hindi-Urdu.

What then defines a language? What makes a language unique? Its writing system? Its vocabulary? Or its grammatical structure? We should not make the mistake of confusing a language with its writing system. Often, unrelated languages share a common writing system, while any language can be transcribed into a new writing system without affecting its basic sounds and structure. Indeed most of the world's languages borrowed their writing systems from somebody else. For example, English, French, and Spanish borrowed their writing systems from Latin. The Latin alphabet was in turn derived from the Greek alphabet. Japanese adopted the Chinese word-characters. Both Indonesian and Turkish switched from the Arabic to the Roman writing system early in the Twentieth Century without being otherwise changed significantly. English can be written in Morse Code, Braille, binary computer code, or even in the Hindi writing system and it still remains English.

Vocabulary is likewise not characteristic of a language. Words are readily borrowed between languages like dry leaves blown about in the wind. No language can claim a pure, fixed and unchanging vocabulary. Indeed, it is often impossible to express oneself in English without using words borrowed from French, Latin, or even Hindi.

Thus it is only grammatical structure that can be said to characterize a language. No matter which writing system is used, no matter which vocabulary words are used, a language's grammar will follow regular and characteristic rules. These rules, which govern verb conjugation, noun declension, plural formation, syntax, etc., are largely consistent within a language but differ between languages. Thus a comparative study of these rules allows us to distinguish one language from another.

Therefore Hindi and Urdu, which share a common, identical grammatical structure, must be considered a single language: Hindi-Urdu.

How did Hindi-Urdu develop, and why does it have two names? Let's look at the linguistic condition of India about one thousand years ago. The Indo-Aryan language family, brought to South Asia by the Aryans in prehistoric times, had become firmly established in a belt running from the Persian Caucasus in the West to the Bay of Bengal in the East. The descendent languages of Sanskrit, including several dialects of early Hindi, Medieval Panjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali, as well as their cousin tongue Persian were emerging in their respective regions. The Indian languages had adopted the ancient Sanskrit writing system, Devanagari, in various forms, while Persian had borrowed the Arabic writing system from its neighbors to the West. Hindi, in various dialects including Khariboli, Braj Bhasha and Awadhi, was spoken throughout North Central India.

Then, about seven centuries ago, the dialects of Hindi spoken in the region of Delhi began to undergo a linguistic change. In the villages, these dialects continued to be spoken much as they had been for centuries. But around Delhi and other urban areas, under the influence of the Persian-speaking Sultans and their military administration, a new dialect began to emerge which would be called Urdu. While Urdu retained the fundamental grammar and basic vocabulary of its Hindi parent dialects, it adopted the Persian writing system, "Nastaliq" and many additional Persian vocabulary words. Indeed, the great poet Amir Khusro (1253-1325) contributed to the early development of Urdu by writing poems with alternating lines of Persian and Hindi dialect written in Persian script.

What began humbly as a hodge-podge language spoken by the Indian recruits in the camps of the Sultan's army, by the Eighteenth Century had developed into a sophisticated, poetic language.

It is important to note that over the centuries, Urdu continued to develop side by side with the original Hindi dialects, and many poets have written comfortably in both. Thus the distinction between Hindi and Urdu was chiefly a question of style. A poet could draw upon Urdu's lexical richness to create an aura of elegant sophistication, or could use the simple rustic vocabulary of dialect Hindi to evoke the folk life of the village. Somewhere in the middle lay the day to day language spoken by the great majority of people. This day to day language was often referred to by the all-encompassing term "Hindustani."

Because day to day Hindustani was essentially a widespread Indian lingua franca not associated with any particular region or class, it was chosen as the basis for modern Hindi, the national language of India. Modern Hindi is essentially Hindustani with a lexicon of Sanskrit-derived vocabulary in preference to the Persian borrowings of literary Urdu. Likewise, Hindustani in its Urdu form was adopted by Pakistan as a national language because Urdu is not tied to any of the regions comprising modern Pakistan. Thus a language which is really nobody's mother tongue is today the second most spoken language in the world, understood throughout most of the populous Indian subcontinent and in many unexpected corners of the globe.

MJ the origion of Punjabi is not from Sikhs
Their original language is gurmukhi

oh really i didnt know that
well even then punjabi was there even before the sikh religion rite?

^Absolutely. There are plenty of Muslim and Hindu authors of Punjabi literature such as Bulleh Shah, Baba Farid, Shiv Kumar Batalvi, etc.

i seriously dun knoe y punjabi iz considered as a paindoo language....its not dat bad...i mostly say a few words in punjabi on dis forum as well...its in my blood...

jad asi ithay hegay aa tusi kio rikar karday aa
sikh are here to save punjabi, ur prayer is accepted lol
punjabi songs rules
when ever gora hear dhol they start dancing too
they say are u punjabi

JADO JAWANI WALA JOR SE VEY JALMA
WANJLI WARGA BOL SE VEY JALMA

the thing i dont get is why does it matters if Sikhs speak that language ? i mean do we sin by speaking punjabi?

VSGuy you are right about the existence of Punjabi before Sikhs but Metalhead is right about Gurmukhi being a script. From a logical point of view why would Guru Nanak use a totally different language to spread his message to a vast majority in that area? Gurmukhi also happens to be an ancient script.

Punjabi is written in Gurmukhi, Shah-mukhi (Perso-Arabic), Hindi and Urdu scripts.