Ranjeet Online Typing

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There are 154 popular or principal languages in the world. Among these languages, Mandarin (Chines) comes first which is being spoken by 628 million speakers. Next to it comes English with 345 million speakers, while Russian possesses third position in the world which is being spoken by as many as 220 million speakers. Then follow Spanish, Hindi, German, Arabic, Portuguese and Bengali. Both in India and Pakistan, Punjabi language has 52 million speakers. Among the world languages, Punjabi possesses 16 (sixteenth) position. Among Indian languages, Punjabi comes next only to Hindi, Bengali and Urdu. Other 1languages like Telgu, Tamil, Marathi etc., are spoken by fewer people than Punjabi. Punjabi is a very old language and required its present form about 800 years ago when Baba Farid wrote much literature in this language. There is also freshness in Guru Nanak's Bani in Punjabi written more than 500 years ago. So far the best script for Punjabi is Gurmukhi in which all the sounds of Punjabi can be adequately expressed. Script is like skin which is organically connected with body i.e. the language. Though the Muslim writers of Punjabi have been using Arabic script, its inadequacy for writing and reading Punjabi is obvious. Pakistani Punjabis should discard the fear that by adopting Punjabi script, they would become Sikhs. By adopting Latin script, none of us turned into a Roman. In the light of this thinking, no body should have any fear or misunderstanding to learn any language. We, in India learn English language and study literature in English, and while doing so, we cannot become European. Similarly, by learning Urdu, one cannot become Muslim and by learning Punjabi, one cannot become Sikh. Today is an era of internationalism and languages are not tied to religions. While learning Indian languages, teaching of English should on no account be allowed to suffer. English is now an international language and also the language of the educated in India. Through English, we keep in touch with the world though, particularly in science and literature and this window should not be closed.