PHONEMIC COMPARISON OF MAJHI AND SHAHPURI-DIALECTS OF PUNJABI

Abstract

Punjabi belongs to the Indo Aryan family of languages, andis spoken in various nations in the world, especially Pakistan and its province Punjab as well as in Indian Punjab. Punjabi manifests itself by its various dialects on the basis of diversified geographical areas. Shahpuri is one of the dialects of Punjabi. As Punjabi is the 10^th most widely spoken language in the world, its importance cannot be denied   (Ghai & Singh, 2013). The majority of the people living in the most populous province of Pakistan use Punjabi in their daily life. It is among the 22 languages which have official status in India. Unfortunately, the phonology of Punjabi and its dialects has not been explored as much as those of some other languages and their dialects. This research paper is an attempt to explore the differences between Standard Punjabi and Shahpuri in the domain of their phonology by using the framework of the Levenshtein algorithm. These differences and similarities are described with the help of this procedure, which  contains all the consonants sounds. The data is collected by purposive sampling from the speakers of both linguistic systems. The present research article shows that there is almost 80% similarity between the standard Punjabi and Shahpuri. This research article provides a foundation for the research in the phonology of both the dialects of Punjabi.