Cultural Diversity - The Civil Service

Land Registry Cultural DiversityPunjabiPunjabi is spoken in the historic state of the Punjab which was split between India andPakistan after partition. There are some 60 million speakers in Pakistan and 15 millionin India. As a result of its geographic position, there are a number of influences on thespoken language, the eastern parts of the province favouring a Hindi influence, with agrowing Urdu influence the further west one moves. The written language can useeither a Perso-Arabic script or a Sanskrit-influenced Gurmukhi script, the latter beingthe more commonly used amongst Punjabi speakers in Britain.Punjabi has traditionally been identified with the Sikh religion. There are, however,many Muslims and Hindus who also speak Punjabi.Although it can be useful to split UK subcontinentals into five language speaking groups,the situation is not as simple as this might imply. Most people have an understanding ofmore than one language and consequently the process of cross-fertilisation between thelanguages is particularly rich. There are many unofficial borrowings form one language toanother, of words and even of scripts. A person who can speak Urdu but who is unableto write it, for example, will very often simply write his message using the Hindi script!The influence of local dialect can complicate matters further; there are, for example, anumber of different dialects of Gujarati and it can be difficult when translating tochoose the most appropriate language for UK Gujarati speakers. The dialect spokenin the Sylhet region of Bangladesh is so distinct that there is a movement to regard itas a separate language, though as yet it has no written script. In Pakistan the Lahndadialect of Punjabi is in a similar situation.The impressive degree of multilingualism amongst these communities is a little moreunderstandable, once it is realised that all five languages are from the same linguisticfamily – the Indic languages, which are a branch of the Indo-European group fromwhich most European languages are derived. Consequently, many common or similarwords occur in all five languages.While many words have a root common to each language, many of them are alsostrikingly similar to English or European words. Also, not surprisingly, a growing numberof English words have become part of the language used by Indic communities inBritain. Words relating to aspects of British life and culture, for which the terms whichexist in the language do not quite capture the context – “bus”, “nurse”, “fax” forexample – are common coinage amongst the Indic language speakers in this country.Finally, there are words of Indic origin which were assimilated into the Englishlanguage long before the arrival of the first immigrants to the UK from thesubcontinent – words such as catamaran, bazaar, caravan, khaki, cot, loot, thug,dungaree, pundit, juggernaut. The process of cross-fertilisation between languages isa long-standing and ongoing one, one that enriches cultures and contributes to thechanging nature of language itself.33