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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Western Panjabi

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submitted verification final decision
This proposal has been approved.
The Board of Trustees and language committee have deemed that there is sufficient grounds and community to create the new language project.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:
Proposal summary
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Arguments in favour

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  • Reasons for a Western Panjabi Wikipedia:

1. On the Pakistan side of the Punjab, people cannot read Gurumukhi script

2. A converter would be very hard to create

3. Some different words are used in the Pakistan side, so a different Wikipedia would be ideal.

4. There are many users so this should be a very useful Wikipedia.

Arguments against

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As stated by the Trustees in Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Cyrillic_Polish, the language policy allows for only one Wikipedia for a language. Bogorm 10:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually a different language...
To split the Punjabi language into Eastern and Western would serve to break cross-border cultural ties.
Historically, while both scripts have been used (and many individuals maintain fluency in both scripts), the language has undoubtedly always been one. The only difficulties having been posed are Persianization from the West and Sanskritization from the East. Scholars from both nations agree that both these influences have corrupted what they perceive fundamentally as culturally and historically one language.
Well, two examples 1) Farsi and Tajik 2) Hindi and Urdu are separate Wikipedias.. The same reason. --92.9.53.245 19:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If Panjabi were to be treated as a single language, then Western Panjabi would be the standard as it has over twice as many speakers as the Eastern variant. Western Panjabi also has more speakers than Urdu, but, for whatever political reasons, it is not an official language of Pakistan. The Western variety is written in the widely used Arabic script rather than an isolated Sikh script among a dozen different scripts used in India.Bcharles 07:40, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other discussion

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A converter would be very hard to create: very hard or impossible? --::Slomox:: >< 14:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Short vowels are not written in Shahmukhi, so Shahmukhi->Gurmukhi conversion is impossible. Note also that there are different ISO codes for Punjabi as spoken in India and Pakistan. -- Prince Kassad 20:28, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ISO doesn't tell us much. Their distinctions are not reliable enough. Okay, Shahmukhi->Gurmukhi is impossible. But what about the other way round? That would at least satisfy Shahmukhi readers. It would only pose a problem for Shahmukhi contributors. How much familiarness with the respective writing systems is there? Are they completely foreign respectively? Perhaps it is possible to mutually converse the scripts if the Shahmukhi contributors accomodate to make a distinction between short and long vowels? Perhaps the answer is just No, perhaps their is no way ever to converse the script, I don't know. If so, sorry for me asking dumb questions. But we should make sure, that there is no way to work together in one project. Cause setting up a separate Shahmukhi project means doubling the work needed to provide information to the Punjabi people. --::Slomox:: >< 00:50, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So if Shahmukhi readers can't contribute to the current Punjabi project, doesn't that mean this project is necessary?
Not necessarily. Depends on the answers to the other questions I asked. --::Slomox:: >< 21:13, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Does the punjabi wikipedia allow editors to write in Shahmukhi?Qrc2006 18:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It *does*, but seeing as the entire interface and the vast majority of policy and help pages is in Gurmukhi it's not exactly easy. -- Prince Kassad 04:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Slomox, the ISO 639-3 is the standard that these things are measured against. Consequently your reply is not helpful as it does not solve the issue one way or another. GerardM 07:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ISO 639 is a standard for assigning codes to languages/language variants which can be used in data processing. It does not tell us much about the status or uniqueness of the language/language variant and it is not suitable to do any measurements. And actually my reply was not intended to solve any issue. --::Slomox:: >< 15:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What makes you say this. What do you base this on ? GerardM 18:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, read the Wikipedia articles and the documentation on iso.org. The purpose of the codes is to represent languages in terminology, lexicography, library classification, linguistics, computational systems etc. In library classification or in tagging webpages it makes perfectly sense to be able to differentiate between Shahmukhi Punjabi and Gurmukhi Punjabi. But that doesn't necessarily mean, that there couldn't be a single encyclopedia. ISO codes are very binary. Unique code or no unique code, there is no possibility to express the myriads of nuances between uniqueness and ununiqueness. The ISO codes are designed as a auxiliary device to ease handling languages. But they are not designed to regulate the handling of languages. --::Slomox:: >< 20:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please remember that Wikipedia IS a website and consequently it is best to comply with the standards that are or will be used to mark content as being in the language it is in. GerardM 10:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
... It's a question of causality. Okay, let's suppose there is a website provider. The website provider wants to provide his website in several languages. ISO codes will be useful for him. But ISO is not saying "Okay, here is a list of language codes, from which you can choose the languages you want to translate your website in". It's more like "Choose whatever languages you want to, we provide a list of codes to make the subset of languages chosen by you known to applications processing your website". Complying to the standard will make it easier on the technical side. But complying to the reality should be more important. Designing projects analogous to the ISO codes is like buying a bucket with ten liters of yellow paint and then deciding what kind of house you can build so the paint will suffice.
First you have to design the house. Then you can decide on the color.
Two different codes for the two scripts would be no problem. You can easily make available the script-converted Shahmukhi version of Punjabi Wikipedia under one code and the Gurmukhi version under the other code.
That's what I wanted to say. First decide whether or not it is feasible to keep both scripts under one roof. Whether there are two different codes or only one code doesn't tell us much about that. First you have to look for the proper scope of the project. Looking for the proper code is the second step after you have decided about the scope of the project. --::Slomox:: >< 12:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We do not consider codes for the different scripts, we consider codes for languages. When Western Panjabi is indeed the language we are talking about, it will be Western Panjabi that will be recognised. However when you want to convert from one script to another, it has to be round trip. So far I have not come across situations where this was possible with the Arabic script or scripts based on the Arabic script.
As to ISO, they provide a list of recognised languages. They also allow you to comment on what is in this list. When appropriate information is provided, this list will be expanded. GerardM 22:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Prince Kassad, you are welcome to create an interface for Punjabi in the Shahmukhi script on Betawiki. A problem is that the two scripts are not in the same direction.. This is something that can be resolved when a page is identified for its language / script. GerardM 07:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Should we change the project name to Western Punjabi?
What I am looking for first is the knowledge that it is indeed the Western Panjabi language. If it is, then yes, it makes sense to change the name and ask for a project with the pnb ISO-639 code. GerardM 07:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Eastern Punjabi is spoken as a first language primarily in the state of Punjab (India) by 27 million people . Western Punjabi (also known as Lahnda) is spoken by 60 million people in the Punjab province of Punjab in Pakistan. Western Punjabi has no official status in Pakistan. Punjabi speakers in Pakistan tend to use Urdu and English in government, media, and education, as well as in most writing. [1],
Indo-Aryan language of the Punjab in India and Pakistan. Punjabi has about 26 million speakers in India and more than 60 million in Pakistan—nearly half the population of the latter—but linguists have sometimes considered the dialects of southwestern, western, and northern Punjab province in Pakistan a different language. [2]
More linguists contend that the language is one. [3] While I cannot necessarily cite it, my experiences in both Punjabs tell me that the language is not at all different, except for the Persianization and Sanskritization I mention above, both of which have minimal impact on what is seen as standard literary Punjabi.
There was an article made about the language on Wikipedia.. [4]
  • I've noticed this new Wikipedia request and wanted to put in my two cent's worth. True; colloquial Punjabi is one language, but higher/technical vocabulary is unavoidable in an encyclopedia, and this is where Pakistani and Indian Punjabi are NOT mutually intelligible. Persianization and Sanskritization are simply unavoidable; the current Punjabi Wikipedia itself uses numerous recent Sanskrit borrowings (influenced by borrowings in Hindi) that do not exist at all in Pakistani Punjabi, which would in turn have an Perso-Arabic borrowing incomprehensible to Indian Punjabis. Statements such as "Persianization and Sanskritization are minimal in standard literary Punjabi" are inaccurate in modern times, especially for academic and scientific literature, in which uncommon Persian/Sanskrit words are essential and have NO native synomyms. It certainly is a great disservice to the 60+ million Pakistani Punjabis to be denied a Wikipedia in their native language with vocabulary they can understand, in a script they can read. And a script converter is impossible either way. From Shahm. to Gurm., short vowels would not go through, and there is really no way to distinguish retroflex n/dental n/tippi/bindi using Shamukhi. From Gurmukhi to Shahmukhi, Persian and Arabic-specific letters, necessary in Shahmukhi, would not be made, such as j/z, ph/f, kh/x, and the homophone Shahmukhi letters swaad/sin/se, te/toe, zaal/ze/zwaad/zoe, which are sassa, tatta, zazza in Gurmukhi.

e.g.: انت anat/anhat/ant in Shahmukhi could possibly represent ਅਨਤ, ਅਣਤ, or ਅੰਤ in Gurmukhi, plus different sequences w/differnt short vowels.

ਜਾ ja/za in Gurmukhi could possibly represent جا ,زا ,ضا ,ژا ,ظا ,ذا in Shahmukhi (due to dialectal/sociolectal differences, z (used in the numerous Perso-Arabic loans in common Punjabi) is usually j in colloquial Eastern Punjabi)

So pretty much, the two Punjabi's deserve separate Wikipedias as script and vocabulary make the two varieties completely impossible to be reconciled. Surely they are the same language when speaking at the market just as are Hindi/Urdu, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Farsi/Dari/Tajik etc, but they are completely separate languages when it comes to an encyclopedic and academic writing. Basawala 00:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Basawala ji, Well there are some problems but they are not as difficult as they might seem. As you said انت anat/anhat/ant in Shahmukhi could possibly represent ਅਨਤ, ਅਣਤ, or ਅੰਤ in Gurmukhi but in Gurmukhi ਅੰਤ is the only meaningful entity. So i was thinking maybe we can do something by which we can connect both the Punjabis together. Moreover there is currently only one active editor on Shahmukhi Wikipedia. Getting one wiki will give a sense of United Punjab to Punjabis. This way we can somewhat recover from the loss of Partition. There are a few softwares till date to convert the both softwares. A software can be created with help from both the communities. --Satdeep Gill (talk) 03:17, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Localisation update

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Currently 100% of the most used MediaWiki messages have now been localised. --Jose77 20:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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