Arabic vocabulary in Punjabi: meanings, borrowing and local grammar

A pen, a cutting and several written expressions

Maya Singh’s 1895 dictionary connects kalam with the Arabic word it transcribes as Qalm. Its recorded meanings include a pen or reed pen, but also a graft or cutting used in planting. The entry supplies expressions for writing, mending a pen, grafting and striking something out. These details document a wider semantic field than the single English gloss pen.[1]

The dictionary labels the noun feminine and records a plural. Those grammatical notes are part of the Punjabi entry, while the Arabic connection concerns its word history. The source does not date the original borrowing or show that every listed meaning is equally common today.[1]

Knowledge and learning

The same dictionary explicitly links ilam with Arabic ilm and gives the meanings science, knowledge and learning. It also records related forms describing a learned person. This is vocabulary of intellectual activity, extending the discussion beyond a list of words restricted to religious practice. The exact meanings remain the dictionary’s historical evidence; they should not be stretched into claims about the preferred terminology of every contemporary school or speaker.[2]

Origin and inflection answer different questions

Mehwish Noor’s 2021 morphological study investigates selected Arabic loan nouns through Punjabi gender, number and case patterns. It draws its main data from Waddi Punjabi Lughat and uses an Arabic–English dictionary to clarify selected forms. The sample is deliberately selected for qualitative analysis, not a random count of Arabic vocabulary across Punjabi conversation.[3]

The study groups nouns according to how their direct and oblique forms behave in singular and plural contexts. Its conclusion emphasises adaptation to Punjabi inflectional structures. That finding concerns grammatical integration: identifying an Arabic connection does not mean a Punjabi sentence must follow Arabic noun rules. The paper’s noun-centred scope also leaves other word classes and the full range of regional usage for separate investigation.[3]