Punjab is a region straddling the border between India and Pakistan.

The people of the Punjab are called Punjabis and they speak a language called Punjabi. Punjabi is an ancient language, and is classified as a member of the Indo-European family of languages. The Punjabi language is a descendent of the Sauraseni Prakrit, a language of medieval northern India. It believed to have developed as a distinct language around the 11th century. It is spoken by approximately 88 million native speakers, making it the 11th most widely spoken language in the world. In Indian Punjab, Gurmukhi script, created from the Nagari script, is the official script for Punjabi and in Pakistani Punjab, Shahmukhi is the official script. Punjabi is most commonly written in the Gurmukhi script which is the most complete and accurate way to represent Punjabi sounds. Unlike Roman script, the Gurmukhi script follows a one sound-one symbol principle. The Gurmukhi script has forty one letters including thirty eight consonants and three basic vowel sign bearers. Development of the Punjabi literature suffered as during medieval times, Punjab repeatedly bore the brunt of Afghan invaders and internal battles. The literary development started around the beginning of 17th century. The first Punjabi literature was written in Shahmukhi, and popular history associates this writing with Sheikh Farid However, the golden period of the language begins with the sacred scriptures of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib, This collection of writings by the Sikh Gurus is probably the first manuscript of the Punjabi language. After the period of the Gurus, it was the Sufi poets who developed the Punjabi language. In fact it is the folk literature developed by the Sufis which had a long and lasting impact on the development of Punjabi literature. The stories of Heer-Ranjha and Mirza-Sahiban are deeply embedded in the everyday life and culture of Punjab. After the partition of India, the Punjab region was divided between Pakistan and India. Although the Punjabi people formed the 2nd biggest linguistic group in Pakistan it did not get any offoicial recognition there. The same happened in the Indian side of Punjab where Punjabi speaking population became a minority. As a result of a prolonged political battle, in 1960 The then Punjab was further divided in to three states on linguistic basis and states of Punjab, Harayana and Himachal were created.

This resuted in Punjabi becoming the majority language and thus the official language of the newly constituted Punjab of Punjab and Chandigarh.Today It is one of the official languages of Delhi and the second language of Haryana. Punjabi is also spoken as a minority language in several other countries where Punjabis have emigrated in large numbers, such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom (where it is the second most commonly used language and Canada, where in recent times Punjabi has grown fast and has now become the fourth most spoken language. The rise of the Punjabi language in the last 40 years speaks for itself and the people who speak the language.