Grammer / Vyakarn If Final Unkars And Siharis Are Silent

[Ishna]

If the siharis and unkars at the end of Gurbani words are so important to the meaning, yet are not pronounced, how does the listener have any chance of understanding it properly? And why not just write the words without the Siharis and unkars then?

 

[Gyani Jarnail Singh]

Ishna Ji..those are GRAMMAR MARKERS...to indicate Proper Noun, Singular etc..
Similarly it may be asked.."since the full stop is silent and not pronounced..can we stop putting full stops , commas, semi colons and also stop using Capitals to indicate Proper Nouns in English. At the time Gurbani was written the only Grammar marker was a dandee and double dandee...and Gurmukhi doesnt have CAPITALS..and on top of this Gurbani is written in Compact Poetry format in which many (words) have to be INVISIBLE but never the less UNDERSTOOD despite being invisible !!

There was one guy..a pseudo professor form Kerala a Prof Moorthy who managed to somehow convince the DGMC to give him a multi million rupee Grant to translate the SGGS into South Indian languages. He began his "project" by getting a copy of the SGGS..and PHYSICALLY CUTTING OUT ALL those Siharees and aunkarrs which he labelled as SUPERFLOUS !!! His argument was the same _ these are NOT PRONOUNCED..so serve no purpose and cant be translated.He would have done a huge amount of Damage had some eagle eyed sikh not come across him cutting the sggs pages..and the resulting hue and cry forced the DGMC to kick this Prof out.

In the Days of the TELEGRAM...the Grammar markers in English which are SILENT...and therefpre not pronounced..BUT ESSENTIAL....were written in as WORDS. Example of a telegram...." I am not coming tomorrow STOP I will arrive on Wednesday STOP Dont worry STOP I will manage to reach on time STOP Please tell daddy not to worry too STOP The WORD STOP is inserted for the FULL STOP DOT ( . )

Hope this clarifies...

 

[Ishna]

Thanks Gyani ji for all that extra information.

Part of my confusion is due to inexperience with other languages. It's difficult for me to understand how a word can change meaning without the change in meaning being pronounced, for example a singular word changing to plural, or vice/versa. I have to pay such close attention to the written Gurmukhi to be able to understand, if I was to hear it without seeing those markers I'm not sure I'd understand.

 

[Gyani Jarnail Singh]

Ishan Ji,
In Punjabi these biharees can also change the gender of a word...mostly akanna at the end signifies male - Jhota male buffalo..Jhoti Female Buffalow burrah -old man burrhi old woman chirrah male bird chirrhi female bird kukkrree hen kutee bi.tch ghoree mare hathnee female elephant etc.

Also words have male and female - chah is female so its chah peetee..and milk is male..so dhudh peeta..lassi peetee dahin khatdha roti (female) khadhee paratha (male) khadha..pannee peeta!! Pani PITA..FATHER..see WATER is MALE..while chah lassi etc are females..Juice is male oil is Male..apple khadha male kela khadha banana male..etc etc.

 

[Tejwant Singh]

The verb conjugations including genders, the Adjective genders in Gurmukhi/Sanskrit are very similar to the ones in Latin/ Portuguese/Spanish/Italian and French unlike in English where we have no idea where to put the but.