Outlining Saraiki Phonetics:A Comparative Study of Saraiki and English Sound System Saraiki, a language widely used in South Punjab, some parts of Sindh, Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtoon Khwa in Pakistan, is gaining critical attention because of the ethno-linguistic politics in contemporary Pakistan which is culturally and linguistically diverse. Saraiki is believed to have six varieties. English, on the other hand, is considered to be the lingua franca of the world with many varieties. In the present study, focusing the Multani variety of Saraiki and the Standard British English, we endeavor to give a comparison of the phonetics of the two languages in terms of difference in their number of phonemes, places of articulation, and manner of articulation. In order to provide an account of Saraiki consonants, monophthongs and diphthongs, Saraiki syllables/words used as examples are transcribed and their meanings are provided in English. Diagrams, where necessary, are made to show the difference of place and manner of articulation of consonants of both the languages. Saraiki consonant clusters, Saraiki syllable structure, and stress patterns have also been discussed. The study is an attempt to further the research about the Saraiki phonetics. The study also illustrates that most of earlier researches about this widely used language in Pakistan were not carried out by the native speakers of Saraiki and therefore many gaps and problems have been found in them by the researchers of this article. Keywords: Phonetics, Saraiki, English, Sound System, Stress, Syllable, Clusters . This section is mainly devoted to Siraiki language supposing that the language in its comparison i.e. English has been widely researched and a large bulk of scholarly work is available on it. Hence, it requires no introductory writing here. Saraiki1 is spoken in the central areas of Pakistan. The population census in 1981 treated Saraiki as a distinct language. According to that census, it is the language spoken by about 9.83 % of the total population of Pakistan (Rahman, 1996, p. 1). But, Wagha (1990, p. 2) opines that due to some political, economic and social factors this figure is underestimated. According to Paul (2009) the total number of people who speak Saraiki in Pakistan is 13,843,106 and in India 20,000. Haq (1967, p. 108) claims that the area in which Saraiki is spoken is 48093 sq miles. On either side of the river Indus is located the Saraiki speaking area, in central Pakistan. Haq (1985, p. 17) considers it the first language (mother tongue) of the people of central parts of Pakistan whereas the second language of almost all the rest of Pakistanis. He asserts that no other Pakistani language is spoken as second language as 1 The word is spelt differently (e.g. as Siraiki, Seraiki and Saraiki, etc) by different scholars and organizations. In the present study, we have spelt it as Saraiki adopting it from the Department of Saraiki, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan, as given on bzu.edu.pk/departmentindex.php?id=33 frequently as Saraiki is. Rasoolpuri (1976, p. 18) reinforces it by asserting that Saraiki is the only Pakistani language which is comprehended and spoken in all the provinces of Pakistan.Shackle (1976) classifies Saraiki into the following six varieties: (1) Central variety ,Saraiki (2) Southern variety ,Saraiki (3) Sindhi variety ,Saraiki (4) Northern variety Saraiki (5) Jhangi Saraiki (6) Shahpuri Saraiki These varieties are also divided on the basis of the regions they belong to like Multani, Riasti (Bahawalpuri), Dera Wali, Jhangi, Shah puri ,Saraiki etc. However, all these varieties were given a collective and agreed upon name i.e. Saraiki – a name previously given to this language only in Sindh – in 1962 in a meeting held under the banner of Bazm-e-Saqafat (Cultural Society), Multan (Khan, 1995, p. 105). There is a controversy regarding the history of Saraiki. Mughal (2007) has, however, proved that this language is the oldest of almost all the languages of the Sub-continent including Sanskrit, Hindi, Sindhi, Punjabi and Urdu. Kalanchvi has also declared it to be the oldest of all the languages of Indus Valley (1987, p. 9).Saraiki has attracted the attention of many indigenous and foreign researchers including orientalists like George Grierson, E. O. Brian, Christopher Shackle, Trump, Wilson and Jukes. Kalanchvi (2008) has given a detailed review of their ideas. But almost all the linguistic voyage in Saraiki remained concerned with the historical debate of the language with some occasional comments on its sounds and grammatical patterns. To our knowledge,no in-depth study is available on the phonetic and phonological patterns of Saraiki. The concern of the present paper is, hence, to define the sound system, syllable structure, and stress patterns of Saraiki focusing the first of the above given varieties i.e. Central Variety. This variety is spoken in the northern parts of D.G. Khan and Bahawalpur, and also in the districts of Multan and Muzaffargarh. Due to the historical significance of the district of Multan, this variety is sometimes known as Multani. Rasoolpuri (1980, p. 86) calls this variety the “pure” form of Saraiki.English, on the other hand is considered as the lingua franca of the world today (see Mauranen & Ranta, 2009; Dewey, 2007; Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2006; Jenkins, 2000 & 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004, etc for detail). Apart from having two canonical varieties i.e. British and American, it is now having as many varieties as many peoples. Hence there are many Englishes in the world today. Our focus, however, will be the phonetics of British English. As the focus of the present study is the comparison of Saraiki and English phonetics,the components and attributes of the written part of these languages will not be discussed here. “Spoken language consists of successions of sounds emitted by the organs of speech,together with certain ‘attributes’ (Jones, 1979, p. 1). Every speech-sound belongs to one or other of the two main classes known as Vowels and Consonants” (Jones, 1979, p. 23). It was discovered, however, that there are different sounds which are neither vowels nor consonants and, thus, may be termed as “semi-vowels and laterals /w, r, l, j/ which are in a sense intermediate between vowels and stops” (Haggard, 1969, p. 144). The so-far discovered sounds of Saraiki are given below, followed by their tabular description as well as that of English, and their comparative analysis. Consonants Peter Roach gives a very comprehensive definition of various types of consonants as follows: There are many types of consonant, but what all have in common is that they obstruct the flow of air through the vocal tract. Some do this a lot, some not very much: those which make the maximum obstruction (i.e. plosives, which form a complete stoppage of the airstream) are the most consonantal. Nasal consonants result in complete stoppage of the oral cavity but are less obstructive than plosives since air is allowed to escape through the nose. Fricatives make a considerable obstruction to the flow of air, but not a total closure. Laterals obstruct the flow of air only in the centre of the mouth, not at the sides, so obstruction is slight. Other sounds classed as approximants make so little obstruction to the flow of air that they could almost be thought to be vowels if they were in a different context (e.g. English w or r). (Roach, 2009) ________________________________________ Muhammad Safeer Awan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of English, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan [email protected] Abdul Baseer, M.Phil., Ph.D. Candidate Lecturer in English Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan abdulbasseer@yahoo Muhammad Sheeraz, M.Phil., Ph.D. Candidate Department of English, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan [email protected]
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 12:36:36 +0000
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