Mods - I am hoping this has a straightforward answer. If not, please feel free to move.
Both the Prefixes (pun) is supposed to mean 5. Punch has traditionally 5 ingredients and The Punjab is the land of 5 rivers. Yet while many of my American friends say Punch correctly, they pronounce Punjab as Poon-jab.
Is there any particular reason for this ?
Probably because Poonjahb is how the people who actually live there pronounce it?
Whether punch (as a drink) was ever pronounced poonch, or had any subcontinental connections, I haven’t a clue, but English is not a language with a single consistently logical spelling or pronunciation system, so there’s no point expecting it to be.
Native Hindi speaker checking in.
No - they dont. It is pronounced Punjab (first part the same as pun - the figure of speech). The Hindi/Punjabi word for 5 is actually “paanch”, but when used as a prefix its gets shortened to punch/punj.
Guy who lives right next door to the Punjab, no they don’t.
They pronounce it Pun JaHb. Panjh Ahub. PunJahab.
Poonjahb is pronounced literally no where.
It’s how it was pronounced in Annie. It’s likely that’s the first and possibly only time most people have run across the name.
Never hear anything but ‘pun - jab’ here in the US, just like the words ‘pun’ and ‘jab’. Although I may have heard one of the variations and not recognized what it meant.
Addressing the question in the OP:
In another thread there was the observation that many people assume non-English words must not be pronounced as they are phonetically written. In that case it was the idea that any non-English word gets pronounced as if it were a French word.
ETA: I’m sure my friend who speaks Mancunian gibberish probably pronounces it as ‘poon - jab’ or something similar.
Out of interest, the first parts of the words Punjab and Pentagon (U.S. Department of Defense HQ) are related, deriving from the same proto-Indo-European root for the number “five”.
Sanskrit: पञ्च (pañca)
Ancient Greek: πέντε (pénte), from Proto-Hellenic: *pénkʷe
Proto-Indo-European: *pénkʷe
I (an American) never knew the origin of the word “punch,” so I wouldn’t have thought to connect it to “Punjab.”
“Punch” looks like a standard English word, so I pronounce it according to standard English pronunciation rules (like “pun” or “punt” or “bunch” or “lunch”). “Punjab” looks “foreign,” but from a language or part of the world where I don’t know what the standard pronunciation rules are, so I have to guess at the proper way to say it.
From Boswell’s Life of Dr Samuel Johnson (1791):
Ignorance. Unfortunately, I don’t have much occasion to say Punjab or Punjabi but if it comes up, I will do my best to more accurately pronounce it.
I do not speak Hindi, but I will just add that a vowel sound in one language is rarely identical to the vowel sound in another language. This is why, for example, Arabic transliterations can vary. A single vowel in Arabic might sound like o to some English speakers and u to others. I suspect that the way a native Hindi speaker says Punjab might not be absolutely identical to how a native English speaker says “pun”.
The ab part of Punjab means ‘water’ and so the name of the region is "five waters’, referring to the five rivers of the area. I would guess that ‘ab’ is a Persian cognate of Latin ‘acqua’.
According to the Wikipedia article on the drink punch, the word was first recorded in British documents in 1632. While this sounds early for an India connection, the English/British East India Company was founded in 1600, and they established a factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India in 1611.
When I was younger, I saw a piece in a British humor publication ( not Punch) that had punning names for places. For Punjab it was “Pun job” (and had a picture of some staffer at the humor publication trying to come up with jokes – puns, presumably – under a deadline. Ever since, I’ve pronounced it “Pun Job” in my head.
Etymology Online says “PIE had two root words for water: *ap- and *wed-. The first (preserved in Sanskrit apah as well as Punjab and julep) was “animate,” referring to water as a living force; the latter referred to it as an inanimate substance.” Latin aqua comes from the PIE root *akwa- which I think is another form of the *ap- root, so aqua is indeed cognate with -ab in punjab. English water and hydro- words come from the *wed- root.
Oh man, I have occasion to say them all the time. Punjab and Punjabi Tadkha are my favorite local Indian (possibly technically Pakistani*) restaurants.
I’m going to be more careful with my pronunciation from here on out!
I mean aside from nearly 2 billion S Asians. And 500 million mid easterners.
Or do we not count as “people”?:rolleyes:
You’re right. I should have specified that I was speaking about people in the US, or at least people that aren’t likely to run into anyone named Punjab.
Maybe about 3/5ths. Possibly a bit more, 'cause you have such good restaurants,
And I’m sure the President would agree. 