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Ik Onkar Lullaby (Punjabi Baby Recitation) – Mool Mantar for Babies | BoomerangIN

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Punjabi is my first oral language that shaped my identity, emotions, creativity and imagination. Punjabi is not just a means of communication for me, it helped me to sang my first prayers and lullabies with my grandmother, mother and with my parental aunties in my knitted family with my close relationships. These early experiences reflect concept of 100 Languages of Children which highlights that children express themselves in various modes beyond written and spoken language.

I remembered my first story (Kaan te Chirri), storytelling was using tone and gestures in Punjabi to convey meaning, before I have started learning Hindi and English at school. This complex and interwoven multimodal communication with expressions and movement mirrors the idea that language is not singular but pluralists and embodied.

An English dominant educational environment led to a restricted use of Punjabi language in public places. This situation made me aware that how a particular language is getting benefits over other languages. If I am reflecting back, I feel how my early oral fluency in Punjabi laid the groundwork for empathy. Ultimately, Punjabi was not just a spoken language but one of my “100 languages” a rich, expressive Modality through which I made sense of the world, long before I could write it down.

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According to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of language development, language is acquired not only cognitively but socially, emotionally and culturally. it was same in my experience, as a young child, I learned Punjabi through interactions with elders in community, listening to stories from grandparents, engaging in rituals, and playing games with siblings and cousins. Language here was not taught explicitly it was co-constructed in meaningful contexts.

In context with “100 Languages of Children”, which further expands our knowledge about communication beyond the spoken or written word. Punjabi language was never isolated from storytelling, tone, play and gesture in my early age. As learning to say "Sat Sri Akal" (greeting in Punjabi) wasn’t just about phonology or syntax; it was a social act performed with respectful gesture and voice tone, reflective of deeper cultural meanings.

As I entered English-speaking environments, I began acquiring English as a third language, and I quickly picked up conversational English through peer interactions, but struggled initially with the academic register, as Punjabi and Hindi had provided little exposure to formal schooling language. My early fluency in Punjabi had already developed language awareness, as I intuitively compared linguistic structures and meanings across the three languages, supporting interdependence theory, which states that first language proficiency can positively transfer to second-language acquisition.

Malaguzzi’s idea that children are rich in potential challenges deficit models that position bilingual or multilingual children as linguistically behind. In my experience children can fluidly navigate multiple linguistic and expressive modes when learning environments honour all the languages. Punjabi, then, was not a barrier to English acquisition it was a foundation that enabled deeper, more layered communication.

In sum, Punjabi was one of my “hundred languages,” not just a code to be learned, but a socially situated, culturally expressive, and cognitively rich medium. When viewed through the lenses of Vygotsky, and Malaguzzi, my language journey highlights the complex, multi-modal nature of how capable young children acquire, adapt, and expand their communicative repertoires both in their first and additional languages

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Understanding Punjabi is a social language

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Understanding Punjabi is a social language

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I have learnt Punjabi, from a deeply social community and not in isolation. Interconnected relationships, shared rituals like wedding and festivals and community interactions were very helpful. From my early age, I absorbed Punjabi from daily life activities like overhearing my Parents discussions over community matters, taking part in Gurudwara gatherings, doing prayers and listening to elders recounting family histories. These experiences were not just about language acquisition but also an acts of social bonding and cultural identity-making.

My life experiences aligned with Malaguzzi’s "100 Languages of Children", which describes that children make meaning in diverse, interconnected ways through speech, movement, sound, art, play, and relationship. For example, the way we expressing respect, tone, and gesture in Punjabi carries layers of meaning that go far beyond the words themselves.

Speaking Punjabi was also a participatory act it was not taught formally, but rather caught through shared meals, storytelling, music, and community events. When I sang Punjabi boliyan (folk couplets) at weddings or engaged in playful humorous teasing with cousins, I was participating in a rich, collective form of expression which Lori Malaguzzi might call a "hundred language" way of learning and being.

As I grew older and entered English-speaking educational systems, I noticed a shift, Punjabi Language became more private, limited to home spaces. This division reflects how systems in educational institutes recognize only certain languages of expression, and supressing others.

In essence, my journey with Punjabi illustrates that language is inherently social, learned and expressed in community and that it forms just one part of the vast, interconnected "hundred languages" through which we experience and articulate the world.

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References:

Patricia K. Kuhl (2004)

Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1533

Understanding Oral Language

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/reader.action?docID=4191368&ppg=41&c=UERG

Young children, Language and Literacy

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/reader.action?docID=4191368&ppg=42&c=UERG

Ik Onkar Lullaby

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zO1ZeKR8vvU?feature=share

All the images are selected with google search.

Help of AI for content search but all the written part is based on my own early development experience and learning.