Developing Mapsofworld and Personal Surprises
A few years back, we started working on a project titled “Tongues of the World,” this project was envisaged to cover languages spoken in different parts of the world and how they are contracting or spreading world over. There are many languages which are dying and there are a few which are reaching out to more and more people. There are people who feel that it is not articulate enough to speak in their mother tongue/ language and then there are individuals who draw immense pride from their linguistic identity. As it is said, it takes all sorts to make a world, so be it.
While being part of the team, I was extremely motivated to know and understand more about how languages breathe and how they die. In particular, I was surprised when I read about Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi. It was very painful to know how India and Pakistan have worked hard to partition languages long after the lands were burned and ripped apart.
The core behind “Tongues of the World” was a series of infographics and to do that we needed loads of content from multiple sources. A few weeks into the project and we were confident that we were ready to start work. For Hindi and Punjabi, I was to be the second reviewer. When I read what was written for Hindi and Punjabi, I was aghast. I had spoken these languages forever and this was not my take at all. I never saw these two languages like this. Punjabi’s intro line was a big surprise – First Language of Pakistan! I knew that more Pakistanis speak Punjabi than they speak any other language as their first language. However, a fact in words, dancing in front of you, is a chip of a different block. I am sure this infographic would be an eye-opener for many of us, specially those who are not linguaphiles – Punjabi – An Infographic.
Surprises didn’t end with Punjabi. They rather accentuated with Hindi. I was not at all convinced that Hindi should be seen as a main language and Urdu, Hindustani and Hindi-Urdu as forms of it. My team convinced me that I had a very strong bias because of the environment I was brought up in and I should seek to detach myself from a review in the interest of the project. I respected them and we appointed another person as a second reviewer in my place. So the final infographic that came for Delhi was a complete surprise for me. There were messages, which I wouldn’t have approved of and there were a few suggestions, which I had made, too. I remained uncomfortable with the whole thing for weeks. Finally, I decided to “detach” myself and work on it. I went back to the sources and tried to see it independent of my upbringing, I was more convinced about our team’s stand. Check it out, you would be surprised, too: Hindi – An Infographic.
For the whole series, check in here – Tongues of the world.
Such projects do have their bunch of surprises given the platform of research that underpins them. However, I am sure the reference within the Infographic is to modern Gurmukhi in contrast to its earlier extant forms where 35 akhar, not 41 are often alluded to. Also, beyond 3 symbols, the 4 conjunct forms too, are noticed, involving consonants haha, vava, rara and one-half-form of yaya (though the currency of yaya and vava conjuncts is way too scarce in modern usage).
Further, it seems arcane to pontificate that Shahmukhi is the official script for Punjabi language today when linguistic boundaries are so fiercely defended by nations and scholars alike basis penetrating research. There couldn’t be anything official about it as Gurmukhi script couches the language of Punjab while Shahmukhi does so for the medium in West Pakistan and cognate regions. Actually, the written forms of the two scripts are so distinct as to render them mutually incomprehensible to a speaker of Punjabi!