2 February 2021
2021/2022 Committee of the New Zealand Sikh Youth to the Education and Workforce Committee

We commend efforts for the proposal of the Education (Strengthening Second Language Learning in Primary and Intermediate Schools) Amendment Bill. As a representative body of young Sikhs in New Zealand, we would like to pursue this as an attempt to have the Panjabi language, the primary language of the Sikhs included as a national priority language under this bill.

Background 

The word Panjabi has been derived from the word Panjab, a compound of two words, panj (five) and āb (water), referring to the territory encompassing rivers Beas, Chenab, Jhelam, Ravi and Satluj in South Asia. The Panjabi language developed from a set of local languages originally spoken in South Asia. Panjabi is part of a large language family native to western Eurasia, which comprises most of the languages of Europe together with those of northern South Asia and the Iranian Plateau. 

In the 16th century, Guru Angad Sahib, the second Sikh guru, developed and standardised Gurmukhi, a writing system used by Sikhs to write the Panjabi language. The Akal Takht authorised Sikh Code of Conduct prescribes learning Panjabi in Gurmukhi as an essential responsibility for a Sikh. For centuries, Panjabi has been commonly spoken in the household of generally all Sikhs.

Statistics 

Panjabi is one of the ten most spoken languages in the world, with more than 100 million native speakers worldwide. It is the most widely spoken language in Panjab and Pakistan, and the third, fifth and tenth most spoken language in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia respectively. 

In the 2018 census, 40,908 and 34,227 New Zealand residents identified as Sikhs and Panjabi speakers respectively. The Supreme Sikh Society's Sikh Heritage School in Takanini, operational since 1989, teaches proficiency level Panjabi to more than 400 students each year, a proportion considering various other weekend schools that also teach Panjabi across the country.

Recommendations

The demand for learning Panjabi is evidentially sufficient to consider including it in the New Zealand Curriculum. We would like you to include Panjabi as a national priority language under the Education (Strengthening Second Language Learning in Primary and Intermediate Schools) Amendment Bill.