As part of a scholarly project I’m working on (on Saadat Hasan Manto), I recently taught myself how to read the Urdu script. I had briefly learned it as part of a Hindi class in college many years ago, but then immediately forgot it.
I must admit, I’ve been finding Urdu quite difficult. Reading from right to left isn’t so hard to get used to, but there are some letters that seem to be interchangeable (i.e., two different ways of writing ‘k’/’q’), and other letters that look painfully similar to one another on the page (‘d’, ‘r’, ‘v’, etc). Also, some of the vowel markers one sees in Hindi/Devanagari, though they do exist in Urdu as diacritic marks, are frequently omitted, so you often have to guess which vowel should be used based on context. Oh, and did I mention that there often aren’t clear word breaks (depending on how the typography is done in a given book or newspaper)?
But once I got the script down (roughly), I was pleasantly surprised to find that Manto’s Urdu vocabulary isn’t that far off from standard Hindustani — but then, he’s a prose writer known for his accessible style. By contrast, the vocabulary of much Urdu poetry (i.e., Ghalib) is so full of Persian words as to be unintelligible — at least to a barbarian ABD like myself.
Via the News Tab (thanks, ViParavane), I came across a great post at the Language Log blog with a historical linguistics explanation for how the script (and language) divide came to be. I don’t have much knowledge to offer on top of what Mark Liberman says, so the following are the just the quotes in Liberman’s post I found to be most interesting.First, Liberman has several quotes from an article by linguist Bob King on the “digraphia” (Greek for “two scripts”) of Urdu and Hindi. First, we have the background:
Hindi and Urdu are variants of the same language characterized by extreme digraphia: Hindi is written in the Devanagari script from left to right, Urdu in a script derived from a Persian modification of Arabic script written from right to left. High variants of Hindi look to Sanskrit for inspiration and linguistic enrichment, high variants of Urdu to Persian and Arabic. Hindi and Urdu diverge from each other cumulatively, mostly in vocabulary, as one moves from the bazaar to the higher realms, and in their highest — and therefore most artificial — forms the two languages are mutually incomprehensible. The battle between Hindi and Urdu, the graphemic conflict in particular, was a major flash point of Hindu/Muslim animosity before the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947. (link)
Then there are the social implications, which are not trivial:
One can easily imagine a condition of pacific digraphia: people who speak more or less the same language choose for perfectly benevolent reasons to write their language differently; but these people otherwise like each other, get on with one another, live together as amiable neighbors. It is a homey picture, and one wishes it were the norm. It is not. Digraphia is regularly an outer and visible sign of ethnic or religious hatred. Script tolerance, alas, is no more common than tolerance itself. In this too Hindi-Urdu is lamentably all too typical. People have died in India for the Devanagari script of Hindi or the Perso-Arabic script of Urdu. It is rare, except for scholars, for Hindi speakers to learn to read Urdu script or for Urdu speakers to learn to read Devanagari. (link)
(And yes, even those of us who pretend to be scholars struggle with “script tolerance.”)
Another scholar (Kelkar) gives some concrete examples of differences in vocabulary, with specific attention to the points of divergence:
Common words like chai ‘tea’, milna ‘to meet’, and mashin ‘machine’ are the same in either Hindi or Urdu. Vocabulary diverges sharply as we move from Low to High. The Hindi words for ‘south’ and ‘temperature’ (as in weather) are dakshin and tapman, the Urdu words junub and darja-e-hararat. The sentence “Who is the prime minister at the moment?” is ajkal pradhan mantri kaun hai? in Hindi, ajkal vazir-e azam kaun hai? in Urdu.
An Indian linguist has illustrated how far the styles deviate from each other by asking how the abstract expression “salvation’s true path” might be translated into Hindi and Urdu at different style levels and among different ethnic-social groups. Village people would render this as mukti-ki sacci sarak (Bazaar Hindustani). Pandits or educated Hindus would say mukti-ki satya upay (Highbrow Hindi). Cultured Muslims would translate the phrase as nájat-ki haqq rah (Highbrow Urdu). Indians who speak English as their second language might say salweshan-ki tru path. The only indication that these four “languages” are in some sense variants of the same language is the genitive marker -ki. Words like satya and upay in the Highbrow Hindi rendering are from Sanskrit. Every single content morpheme in the Highbrow Urdu version is from Persian or Arabic. One sees how dramatically the character of a language is changed when the sources of borrowed words for new concepts are as far apart as they are in Hindi and Urdu: we might as well be dealing with different languages. (link)
Liberman’s post ends with a reference to Gandhi, who struggled — as early as 1917! — to conceive of a “secularist” solution to the script problem, but failed to do so.
Obviously, with Partition, the terms of the debate over “standard” scripts changed in the Indian subcontinent. The debate in Pakistan is essentially over, and Urdu wins. But according to the scholars Liberman cites, the split over scripts is very much alive in India (especially northern India, though I have Muslim friends from places like Hyderabad who say their families only speak Urdu at home).
The joint/hybrid spoken language spoken in much of northern India is Hindustani (mostly Hindi grammatical structures with a mix of Sanskritic and Persian vocabulary), which seems to have persisted in northern India despite attempts at Sanskritization. But even with that shared spoken language, it appears the division over scripts remains.
what is that from? as i re-read it, maybe i don’t want to know….
melbourne – sorry, yes, i should have distinguished the two. even though malayalam has tamil/dravidian origins, it is heavily sanskritised. i guess tamil is distinct in the sense that its alphabet is without the aspirated (e.g. kh, gh, dh) sounds that the other south indian languages have. my knowing hindi made it much easier to learn hindi than if i had only known tamil…
nyx – your experience is not that off. many of my cousins in madras do not read tamil, and even if they do, some of them learned only through tuitions, not in school. one of my cousins only learned to read tamil when he had to move to the village…
It was an ad for chewing gum. You pervert.
I read a monograph by Gandhi some 15 years ago in which he sets out that Hindi and Urdu are artificial constructs for political reasons based on Hindustani, the true and culturally-blended language of the common man [in the North]. Essentially he’s advocating that people stop the polarization of Hindustani into Hindi and Urdu, which is part of the polarization of Hindus and Muslims. Hindustani = Hindus and Muslims in a blended society, living and working together in unity.
Unfortunately I don’t remember the reference, maybe someone else here has it.
Interesting, so that could be a symptom of a greater movement among non-Arab Muslims to make their identity more congruent with that of Arab Muslims?
But I’ve noticed that the Urdu in India is losing its Persian influence and becoming more Arabic. Notice they’ve started saying “Ramadan” instead of “Ramzaan”? At least in the english language papers
That might be true but Urdu as a language is dying in India. The sales of all Urdu newspapers are dramatically down in India and most of them are going out of business. In North India, Muslims under 50 of low SES mostly read Hindi and not Urdu newspapers. Higher SES Muslims read English newspapers.
I havnt seen any numbers, but I would bet that less than 5% of Indian Muslims under 30 who dont go to a Madrassa can either read or write in Urdu.
Firangi in Urdu now means “foreigner”, but at this time Firangi was Arabic for a Frank. From: Farangi As also the parangi, that even diffused into some sections of Tamil as you are aware.
69 · Divya said
Hello Divya,
If you look at one of my posts, I said that: “I believe that when a language borrows words/syntax from another language, that this has an enrichening effect. I believe that Hindi has borrowed a lot from Daari Farsi, Turkic, Arabic, and even English. But why not take what’s already there from your southie siblings?”
So to answer your question: Why is it so troubling to grant that some languages just may be more cultivated and hence considered superior?
I have no problem granting that some languages are perceived to be more cultivated and superior than others, just like some races/ethnicities are perceived to be more cultivated and superior to others.
Due to these perceptions, I noticed that North Indians will borrow heavily from people whom they percieve as being more cultivated and superior to themselves, i.e. Farsi, Turkic, and Arabic.
That’s right. there is a suburb in Chennai called “parangi malai” and ‘parangiyar’ in Tamil refers to brit whites / foreigners.
And it is true that Firangi was Arabic for the “Frank” and the word derives its origin to the First crusade (of 11th and 12th century) when the French crusading Christians were the ‘Al qaeda’ of that time crusading to establish their control over their “holy lands” from the “Arab Muslim infidels”. For Arabs, ‘firangi’ refers to the Franks, crusading foreigners and that word seeped into all the other languages as the generic word to represent ‘foreign’.
In what way is a race more cultivated? Unless some races have somehow been subjected to 8 billion years of evolution and the others only a mere 4 billion?
Most of the indigenous indian culture is withering and has been for a long time.
Hi, I’m a videshi who’s been studying Hindi and just wanted to jump in and say I love this thread. I have a question about “tu.” When I was living in Rajasthan on a Hindi immersion, I was a paying guest with a family. Once when the rest of the family went out, the ancient dadiji called me in and in Hindi, began ordering me around like a bahu. “YOu will go downstairs and meet the dudhwala,” she would say, all four foot eight of her, banging the table. I was enormously tickled, and jumped right to! She was addressing me using tu form, and since I was in my early forties, I had never encountered that form of address before. Afterward, though, I wondered if this was slightly insulting or not. Any opinions would be appreciated?
Also, does anyone know how I can find out how many English speakers there are in India? It’s for an article I’m writing. Thanks. Kathy krr36@earthlink.net
The way you describe her she sounds like a typical imperious head of the house, who’s used to ordering people around. Perhaps she addressed you in the only way she knows how (she’s the head and everyone else defers to her). I don’t think this is meant to be a deliberate insult but I can understand that it would be off-putting to those not used to being ordered around.
100 · Divya said
Yes, Divya, you accurately captured what I was trying to imply. I believe that all aesthetic judgment should mirror how pre-school teachers think about creative output. Everyone is special, so gold stars, hugs, and candy for everybody. A for effort. A Ramsay Brothers horror film equals Hitchcock’s finest film in its sophistication. Shamita Shetty is as talented as Madhubala. In fact, let’s read the excerpt below where I admit that qualitative judgments are impossible:
All I was saying was that judgments of the this sort seem to be circular: Language A is more refined than Language B, or folk art less mature than high art, or technique C always aesthetically superior to technique D since these are depend on arguments which presume that the conclusion is true. In my (admittedly dilettantish) observations on criticism, it is possible to say that R. Kelly stinks in comparison to Gulzar. From that judgment, one should not (or cannot) infer that the cultural production of Bollywood writers is always superior to rappers. It also should not imply that Hindi is always more expressive or prettier than AAVE.
This is what I principally disagree with. I don’t think you can say that, say, Sindhi is more refined than Kutchhi, or that one dialect of Bengali is superior to another. What you could say is that sort of Bengali grates on my ear, or that some amazing couplets were composed in Sindhi. The first would just be a preference, and the second would be historical accident (Say, the social organization, politics, or literary preferences of the Kutchhis may not have led them to write couplets, but led them to express themselves through dance, visual art, or street plays). Neither of those two sorts of premises can lead to the conclusion that dialect A is globally more refined than dialect B, or language C better than language D.
My (rather amateur) observations relate to aesthetics and criticism, which as far as I know are the domain of humanities. I’m sure the social scientists here would hope that you, at least, direct your veiled contempt toward the discipline that deserves it. I know that’s its all hip to be inter-disciplinary and all, but still.
It’s true that I’m a cultural relativist yaar, but I believe in standards too. Although it’s hard to tell sometimes (cf. my choice in men).
59 · JM said
My mom says the same thing; when she first started learning Spanish she was delighted by the overlaps (you say “azucar” we say “shukar”, you say “armario,” we say “almari”). Most of these cognates, though, are rooted in the common influence of Arabic.
portmanteau, t might be hard, but you might be able to improve your taste with a combination of pineapple juice. And shampoo.
If it has been plowed more, and a lot more seed has been expended on it.
he he. my first thought was actually nutrine, so i wasn’t too far off…i suppose ‘chewy’ is not something one would want to promote in that other context 😉 on the other hand, isn’t it redundant to promote a chewing gum as chewy?
gee, rahul, i wish you wouldn’t be quite so pub(l)ic(k) in your put-downs. if you don’t approve of my tastes, you can at least be more discreet about letting me know. the good news is that because you kiss and tell, i won’t have to go blond.
Your first sentence answers your second. If language is linked to culture and civilization, then to say a language is superior usually leads to the notion that the people and culture it is linked to are superior/more cultivated. (This does not necessarily follow logically but that has nothing to do with anything.)
good vork yaar, on learning the Urdu script.
what is disappointing however, is the increasing polarization of both Hindi and Urdu, especially in the media. I was reading BBCUrdu the other day, and saw the phrase “kam az kam” being repeated, as opposed to “kam se kam”. i may be wrong here, but i’m pretty sure the former is never used in spoken Urdu, as “az” is a pure Persian word. a few earlier posts were right on the mark when they commented on the increasing Arabicization of Urdu, such as Ramzaan becoming Ramadan, Khuda Hafiz now becoming Allah Hafiz (which doesn’t even exist in Arabic), and siyaam replacing roza.
an interesting side note is the term for prime minister. in Arabic it’s “Rais al wuzara2” and in Persian its “vazir-e nokhost”. i wonder how vazir-e azam came about? maybe the founders of Pakistan were inspired by K. Asif’s masterpiece?
Dear all; to have a entirely diferent and ” scientific ” view on urdu/hindi dabate you may want to review a new book “urdu/hindi an artificial divide “; this integrates the languages including the” holy” sanskrit/arabic ,purely secular utilities with the middleeast farmers and african adam; This takes the wind out from all”religious/racial” fundamentalisms,discards well known fictions ” aryan/semitic” races steaming out of Noah’s boat etc; And clearly reveals the urdu/hind/english scripts to have shared origin from mesopotamia without having any religious links whatsoever.The book clearly reveals how hindi/urdu controversey created by britsh succeeded in dividing the ” Hearts/hearth” of Indians.
This same situation has ruined Punjabi unity and i am sure many other languages as well. One can see this silliness in that the BBC Asian network have the same programme combining Hindi and Urdu. How can that be unless the languages are fundamentally the same the language?
Punjabi has it worse due to the split between India and Pakistan and now the new chasm amongst Diaspora Punjabi and traditional ( see anything written by British Indian Writer Rupinderpal Singh Dhillon) follwoing the same pattern as Spanish has done say in Latin America compared to Spain, or French in Canada compared to France.
Reality is it evolution of Hindi and Urdu, via vicious political and relgious hatred.
Aryan/semitic Linguistic race myth is the basis for urdu/hindi,and script divide and ended up in india’s partition; This was a British calculated fraud linked to biblical creation myth revealing Noah’s three linguistic races;Discarding this myth modern linguitics integrates “African adam and mideast farmers” to have fathered all indo-euro-arabian languages and the three scripts.arabic,english.hindi; each of these were bidiectional initially and have no genetic link with any race whatsoever.kindly review the latest book ” urdu/hindi an artificial divide ” published in USA and can be reviewed at Amazon,com; this presents a scientific approach to linguistics and discards all that propagated by all religious nationalists.Will be happy for your comments. Abdul jamil khan M.D NEW YORK ( the author )
Shared birth of Punjabi/urdu/hindi. They have same grammer/syntax and some 90% common vocabulary and their script came from mideastern Aramaic;In fact urdu/hindi and punjabi can be called each other’s dialects;This and much more is discussed in detail in the book” urdu/hindi an artificial divide; the latter also reveals that Sanskrit too came from mideast/syria and not from Germany via Aryan race which itself originated in Noah’s family as falsly propagated by “creation” apologist- linguists of 19th century. Thus Aryan/semitic racism,turned out to be the silver bullet dividing India. The book integrates south asia into one culture/linguistic family and discards religion/ethnic divisions created by the British.
Change Pakistans national language to Farsi or Dari as it was before ! http://www.geocities.com/paklanguage/opinion.html
since when was pakistan’s langauge farsi/dari? what %age of pakistan speak that language? less than 5% probably. 44% of paks speak panjabi whose phonemes/accent/grammar is totally north indian and nothing to do with farsi. the only farsi related languages are pashto and baluchi – and you can notice how different they sound. some ppl really have identity crisis.
No Offence but Urdu and Modern Hindi are the one and same language with different political names..why else do you think BBC Asian Network has a Hindi/Urdu programme as one. Could you ever have Chinese/Spanish as one show? Of course not! They are genuinely two different languages!! Hindi was invented only 150 years ago by a white man!! Google it if you don’t believe me. Urdu is a coupl eof hundred years older, made by Moslems who wanted to separate themselves from everyone else. No wander you can understand Manto’s work!!
Amardeep, I am really impressed you have learnt Urdu. I take it you will also be learning Punjabi script (be the Gurmukhi one, or the Nasleeq one) in the future? As a Sikh, that would be more useful. And as a Punjabi.
By the way I recall you did a thing on Ajeet Cour once..you said you would do some more on Punjabi writers, but I have not seen anything since…I only came on this old subject as I spotted Wanderer wandering into it…
http://uddari.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/punjabi-maanboli-and-the-punjabis-2/
History of urdu/hindi, arabic ,sanskrit etc based on ” out of africa” evolution is the new state of art;It discredits the much popular “semitic,aryan.hametic”linguistic races from mythical/Biblical Noah;The latter had formalized “indo-euro-aryan ” brotherhood in18th-19th cent and resulted in holocaust/india’s partition messacre.The recent book “hindi/urdu an artificial divide covers it all;It reveals that mideast farmers created the mesopotamian cradle, the mother of greek,indian ,persian and arabian civilizatins/languages and their scripts.THe book is focussed on universalism based on evolution and discredits Hindu and biblical creationism of divine languages/races. Of course it reveals the evolution of the indo-euro-arabic scripts from Iraq and exposes the fundamentals of hindu,islamic,jewish holylanguage/scripts as divine “creation’. As a physician/author of the book( algora New york 2006),a believer in evolution, i think the book can bring about much needed peace/understanding between various races/religions, if the history is taught through evolution and not “mythical stories “of creationism.
The Hindustani and Urdu are two different versions of Hindi. Both have at least 80 % common vacabulary and 100 % common syntax. At least in India both Hindustani and Urdu should be merged to the national language Hindi and should be agreed to be written in one script. This will help much in the national integration and Communal harmony between muslims and hindus.
Currently
Hindustani = Basic Hindi + 10 % Sanscrit + Devangari Scrpit Urdu = Basic Hindi + 10 % Persian + 5 % Arabic + Persian Script.
The New Hindi = Basic Hindi + 10 % Sanscrit + 10 % Persian + 5% Arabic + ( one of the chosen script either persian or Devangiri )
If India take up a langauge unification reform it will be better for All indians Muslims and Hindus alike..
UNITY THROUGH SCRIPT; This is really impoosible as long as the scripts are presumed to be HINDU,MUSLIM etc;being divine creations.English language, now another ” INDIAN MEDIUM” has created a subcontinental union; should be really promoted ,but not as ” FOREIGN CHRISTIAN”;As something evolved in the mideast togather as a shared process ” UTILITARIAN/ SECULAR” for all;( see script evolution in my book); This perspective taught in schools can change the whole game; BUT politicians will loose out a valuable asset ,” HINDU,MUSLIM,CHRISTIAN ” culture/language/script;THis was initiated by British via biblical creationism of aryan,semitic linguistic nations of NOAH; THOUGH a fraud but now inscribed on stone; In India best source of unity could be ” absolute human equality,compulsory same lavel education ” along with removal of questions( from all applications) re father’s name,caste religion;people should feel free to use arabic,sanskrit names; Muslim name e g ABDUL Jamil can be SUNDER DAS, ZAFER JAMIL may be VIJAY SUNDER etc; But this is a different topic; Language/scripts will never create unity without a bold step “teaching evolution” and discarding Race CREATIONISM and a perspective that LANGUAGES/SCRIPTS are secular earthy entity and are not DIVINE;THIS has been the greatest priestly fraud driving religious nationalism.
There are three languages of the Sub-continent, which is our common heritage:
(1.) English; our key asset.
(2.) Urdu, which is elegant and hybridised Hindustani. Urdu was created by Hindu Khatris by dipping Khari Boli in the Persianised vocabulary of their Mughal Masters.. Hindu is a reactionary attempt to Sanskritise and “cleanse” Urdu/Hindustani of “alien” elements.
Funnily enough as a side note in the Subcontinent “Zoroastrian/Persian” elements are considered the bulwarks of Islam; the Parsis and the Muslims (who they were escaped) end up having the same names! Basically India’s Muslims substitute Indo-Iranian for Indo-Aryan.
(3) Finally Sanskrit, which is our historical heritage and our grand-aunt so to speak. Its the grand-aunt of all the Indo-Aryan languages of the Subcontinent and its status should be recognised..
For some reason “romantic nationalists” have a very hard time dealing with composite identities.. There’s always this drive to purity..
INDIA”S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE/SCRIPT; It is history that Indians had always imported/utilized a ” usefull foreign language;Going backwards It has been ENGLISH since 19th cent which had replaced Persian of some 1000 yrs an import; Before 10th cent It was another import ” sanskrit”; its script a mideastern import and language itself from Syria not from germany;This latter aryan fiction is a biblical myth not scholarly correct. So even Sanskrit was an import but replaced by Persian; The message is very very clear; Indians take up the best available language for higher education/litrature; BUT they continue to use locally evolved VERNACULAR along with the import; That has been Pali-prakrit folloewed by hindi/urdu and its variations, punjabi,gjrati etc in leisure litrature/ media, stage, film etc ; Indians have been lover of foreign imports including languages. Many indian consider Sanskrit as Aryan endogenous; Written sanskrit is not found prior to 300 Ad; To call something( sanskrit) nonexistent as written ‘ oldest mother ” of all or even indian languages is a mythical faith and NON scholarly, Un correct; FOr a detailed review please see ” Urdu/hindi an artifial divide”.