Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was sent to live with a Bedouin family soon after his birth; Bedouins were thought to be the pure speaker of Arabic language, while people living in urban center of Mecca were considered too cosmopolitan, and it was felt that language spoken in Mecca was corrupted. It is astonishing how much the ancient Arabs cared about the pureness of their language, and the effort they put into their kids learning the pure form of language.
If we look into the situation of present day Punjabi, it is facing similar sort of problem. The only people who truly speak close to genuinely pure Punjabi are the ones mostly residing in the rural areas of the Province. If you belong to cosmopolitan city of Lahore, it is very likely that either you don’t speak the language at all–even if you do speak it, it is corrupted. The requirement to speaking pure Punjabi is that you should have no education whatsoever. This is because all the education is either in Urdu or English. As literacy increases further, the future of Punjabi becomes doubtful.
The trick to completely wiping out a language, no matter how powerful, is stop any kind of written communication in it; it will slowly die off. This is precisely what’s happening with Punjabi in Punjab. There is no written communication in it whatsoever.
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