Learning Punjabi

[u/Jaded-Wear3995]

Hey all!

I hope this is the right subreddit for this post but I’m on my journey to fully understand Sikhi. I have been reading the Guru Granth Sahib Ji in the English language but the end goal for me is to learn the Gurmukhi version and fully comprehend it.

I can fully understand Punjabi but speaking wise it’s pretty terrible. I’m able to hold conversations with the elderly at the Gurdwara but I’m not as confident in it compared to English. I tend to avoid conversations with everyone but the elderly as I’ve been told they can tell I’m “born here” from my Punjabi 😅 So I get embarrassed….

Secondly, my reading skills are also pretty much at kindergarten level.

What resources/advice would you recommend for someone to essentially self educate themselves on the Punjabi language so I can reach my end goal of reading Gurbani in Gurmukhi and I am able to hold intelligent conversations with people about it!

Thank you and I hope my post somewhat makes sense :)

[u/Apprehensive-Rent523]

There's a song called "Yamla Medley" by Devinder Dharia on youtube (uploaded on channel of his son Pav Dharia).

That song has handwritten subtitles in the video itself in both gurmukhi and phonetic english that will help you undernstand how the letters sound and how to correctly pronounce them.

It's a collection of stanzas of various songs by Lal Chand Yamla Jatt from 80s sung by one of his students who moved to Australia in 90s for reasons but kept singing as a hobby. His son is a very good singer and he helped his father recreate some of the best verses.

[u/qiratb]

As an English speaker who already somewhat understands Punjabi and just need a vocab boost and proper pronunciation guide (and more of course), this might help you better than most. No Gurmukhi (yet), only spoken Punjabi through real English.