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Urdu ( trans. Urdu, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is the official language of Pakistan and one of the 23 official languages of India . Its vocabulary developed under Sanksrit, Persian, Arabic and Turkic influence on Khariboli. Urdu was mainly developed in Lucknow, India and began taking shape during the Delhi Sultanate as well as Mughal Empire (1526–1858) in the Indian Subcontinent.
Scholars independently categorize Urdu as a standardised register of Hindustani termed the standard dialect Khariboli.
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Urdu ( trans. Urdu, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is the official language of Pakistan and one of the 23 official languages of India . Its vocabulary developed under Sanksrit, Persian, Arabic and Turkic influence on Khariboli. Urdu was mainly developed in Lucknow, India and began taking shape during the Delhi Sultanate as well as Mughal Empire (1526–1858) in the Indian Subcontinent.
Scholars independently categorize Urdu as a standardised register of Hindustani termed the standard dialect Khariboli. The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Urdu. In general, the term "Urdu" can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions.The original language of the Mughals had been Turkish, but after their arrival in South Asia, they came to adopt Persian and later Urdu. The word Urdu is believed to be derived from the Turkish, word 'Ordu', which means army encampment. It was initially called Zaban-e-Ordu or language of the army and later just Urdu. It obtained its name from Urdu Bazar, i.e. encampment (Urdu in Turkish) market, the market near Red Fort in the walled city of Delhi.
Standard Urdu has approximately the twentieth largest population of native speakers, among all languages. It is one of 23 official languages of India and the national language of Pakistan and is well-spoken in both the countries.
Urdu is often contrasted with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani. The main differences between the two are that Standard Urdu is conventionally written in Nastaliq calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and draws vocabulary more heavily from Persian and Arabic than Hindi, while Standard Hindi is conventionally written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit comparatively more heavily. Some linguists nonetheless consider Urdu and Hindi to be two standardized forms of the same language; however, others classify them separately due to sociolinguistic differences.
Speakers and geographic distribution
There are between 60 and 80 million native speakers of standard Urdu (Khari Boli). According to the SIL Ethnologue (1999 data), Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world. According to George Weber’s article Top Languages: The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages in Language Today, Hindi/Urdu is the fourth most spoken language in the world, with 4.7 percent of the world's population, after Mandarin, English, and Spanish.
Because of Urdu's similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can usually understand one another, if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. Indeed, linguists sometimes count them as being part of the same language diasystem. However, Urdu and Hindi are socio-politically different, and people who describe themselves as being speakers of Hindi would question being counted as native speakers of Urdu, and vice-versa. Due to interaction with other languages, Urdu became localised in the different parts of the world it is spoken in. As a result Urdu can now be distinguished into many dialects like dakhni(Deccan) of South-India and Khariboli of Delhi region. Similarly in recent years, the Urdu spoken in Pakistan has undergone some changes and incorporated more native Pakistani words thus allowing speakers of the language in Pakistan to distinguish themselves more easily.
In India, Urdu is spoken in places where there are large Muslim minorities or cities which were bases for Muslim Empires in the past. These include parts of Uttar Pradesh (namely Lucknow), Delhi, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bangaluru, Kolkata, Mysore, Patna, Ajmer, and Ahmedabad. Some Indian schools teach Urdu as a first language and have their own syllabus and exams. Indian madrasahs also teach Arabic as well as Urdu. India has more than 3,000 Urdu publications including 405 daily Urdu newspapers. Newspapers such as Sahara Urdu, Daily Salar, Hindustan Express, Daily Pasban, Siasat Daily, Munsif Daily and Inqilab are published and distributed in Bangaluru, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai (see List of newspapers in India).
In Pakistan, Urdu is spoken and understood by a majority of urban dwellers in such cities as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Abbottabad, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Sargodha. It is used in all provinces of Pakistan despite the fact that the people from region-to-region may have different mother-tongues, due to the fact that it is the "base language." It is also taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems. This has produced millions of Urdu speakers from people whose mother tongue is one of the regional languages of Pakistan such as Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Siraiki, and Brahui. It is absorbing many words from the regional languages of Pakistan. This variety of Urdu is now called Pakistani Urdu. This facet changes the basis of language censuses, i.e. An Urdu speaker is one who speaks Urdu, though he may be a native speaker of other indigenous languages. The regional languages are also being influenced by Urdu vocabulary. There are millions of Pakistanis whose mother tongue is not Urdu, but since they have studied in Urdu medium schools, they can read and write Urdu along with their native language. Most of the nearly five million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pathan, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazarvi, and Turkmen) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdu. With such a large number of people(s) speaking Urdu, the language has in recent years acquired a peculiar Pakistani flavour further distinguishing it from the Urdu spoken by native speakers and diversifying the language even further.
A great number of newspapers are published in Urdu in Pakistan, including the Daily Jang, Nawa-i-Waqt, Millat, among many others (see List of newspapers in Pakistan).
Outside South Asia, it is spoken by large numbers of migrant South Asian workers in the major urban centers of the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. Urdu is also spoken by large numbers of immigrants and their children in the major urban centres of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, Norway and Australia.
Countries with large numbers of native Urdu speakers:
- India (51,536,111 [2001], 5.1%)
- Pakistan (10,800,000 [1993], 7%) (Only refers to Pakistanis with Urdu as native language , i.e people who do not additionally speak the provincial
and regional languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun and Balochi- See Muhajir) - United Kingdom
- Bangladesh (650,000, 0.4%)
- United Arab Emirates (600,000, 13%)
- Saudi Arabia (382,000, 1.5%)
- Nepal (375,000, 1.3%)
- United States (350,000, 0.1%)
- Afghanistan (320,000, 8%)
- South Africa (170,000 South Asian Muslims, some of which may speak Urdu)
- Canada (156,415 [2006], 0.5%)
- Oman (90,000, 2.8%)
- Bahrain (80,000, 11.3%)
- Mauritius (74,000, 5.6%)
- Qatar (70,000, 8%)
- Germany (50,000)
- Norway (27,700 [2006])
- France (20,000)
- Spain (18,000 [2004])
- Sweden (10,000 [2001])
- World Total: 60,503,578
Official status
Urdu is one of the officially recognised languages in India and has official language status in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh, and the national capital, New Delhi.
Urdu is also the national and official language (Qaumi Zabaan) of Pakistan and is spoken and understood throughout the country, while the state-by-state languages (languages spoken throughout various regions]] are the provincial languages. It is used in education, literature, office and court business. It holds in itself a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country. Although English is used in most elite circles, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers, Urdu is the lingua franca in Pakistan.
The importance of Urdu in Muslim world is visible in Holy cities of Makkah & Medinah-Al-Munawarah (Saudi Arabia), where most of the Information Signboards are written in Arabic, English & Urdu.
Dialects
Urdu has four recognised dialects: Dakhini, Pinjari, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Sociolinguists also consider Urdu itself one of the four major variants of the Hindi-Urdu dialect continuum.
Dakhini (also known as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, Mirgan) is spoken in Deccan region of southern India. It is distinct by its mixture of vocabulary from Marathi and Telugu language, as well as some vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and Turkish that are not found in the standard dialect of Urdu. In terms of pronunciation, the easiest way to recognize a native speaker is their pronunciation of the letter "qaf" as "kh". Dakhini is widely spoken in all parts of Maharashtra, Karnatka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Urdu is read and written as in other parts of India. A number of daily newspapers and several monthly magazines in Urdu are published in these states.
Modern Vernacular Urdu is the form of the language that is least widespread and is spoken around Delhi and Lucknow while the Pakistani variant of the language spoken in Karachi and Lahore; it becomes increasingly divergent from the original form of Urdu as it loses some of the complicated Persian and Arabic vocabulary used in everyday terms.
In addition, Rekhta (or Rekhti), the language of Urdu poetry, is sometimes counted as a separate dialect.
Phonology
Grammar
Levels of formality
Urdu in its less formalised register has been referred to as a rekhta (?????, ), meaning "rough mixture". The more formal register of Urdu is sometimes referred to as zaban-e-Urdu-e-mo'alla (????? ????? ????, ), the "Language of Camp and Court".
The etymology of the word used in the Urdu language for the most part decides how polite or refined your speech is. For example, Urdu speakers would distinguish between ???? pani and ?? ab, both meaning "water" for example, or between ???? admi and ??? mard, meaning "man". The former in each set is used colloquially and has older Hindustani origins, while the latter is used formally and poetically, being of Persian origin.
If a word is of Persian or Arabic origin, the level of speech is considered to be more formal and grand. Similarly, if Persian or Arabic grammar constructs, such as the izafat, are used in Urdu, the level of speech is also considered more formal and grand. If a word is inherited from Sanskrit, the level of speech is considered more colloquial and personal.
That distinction has likenesses with the division between words from a French or Old English origin while speaking English.
Politeness
Urdu is supposed to be a subtle and polished language; a host of words are used in it to show respect and politeness. This emphasis on politeness, which is reflected in the vocabulary, is known as adab and to some extent as takalluf in Urdu. These words are generally used when addressing elders, or people with whom one is not acquainted. For example, the English pronoun 'you' can be translated into three words in Urdu the singular forms tu (informal, extremely intimate, or derogatory) and tum (informal and showing intimacy called "apna pan" in Urdu) and the plural form ap (formal and respectful). Similarly, verbs, for example, "come," can be translated with degrees of formality in three ways:
- ???? aiye/ or ????? aen/ (formal and respectful)
- ??? ao/ (informal and intimate with less degree)
- ? a/ (extremely informal, intimate and potentially derogatory).
Vocabulary
Urdu has a vocabulary rich in words with Indic and Middle Eastern origins. The language's Indic base has been enriched by borrowing from Persian and Arabic. There are also a small number of borrowings from Turkish, Portuguese, and more recently English. Many of the words of Arabic origin have different nuances of meaning and usage than they do in Arabic. Other words have exactly the same pronunciation, spelling, and meaning. For instance, the words "Sa'waal" (lit. "Question") and "Ja'waab" (lit. "Answer") are exactly the same in both Urdu and Arabic.
Writing system
Urdu is written right-to left in an extension of the Persian alphabet, which is itself an extension of the Arabic alphabet. Urdu is associated with the Nasta’liq style of Arabic calligraphy, whereas Arabic is generally written in the modernized Naskh style. Nasta’liq is notoriously difficult to typeset, so Urdu newspapers were hand-written by masters of calligraphy, known as katib or khush-navees, until the late 1980s.
Historically, Urdu was also written in the Kaithi script. A highly-Persianized and technical form of Urdu was the lingua franca of the law courts of the British administration in Bengal, Bihar, and the North-West Provinces & Oudh. Until the late 19th century, all proceedings and court transactions in this register of Urdu was written officially in the Persian script. In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and Bihar and ordered the exclusive use of Kaithi, a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi. Kaithi's association with Urdu and Hindi was ultimately eliminated by the political contest between these languages and their scripts, in which the Persian script was definitively linked to Urdu.
More recently in India, Urdu speakers have adopted Devanagari for publishing Urdu periodicals and have innovated new strategies to mark Urdu in Devanagari as distinct from Hindi in Devanagari. The popular Urdu monthly magazine, ????? ???? (Mahakta Anchal), is published in Delhi in Devanagari in order to target the generation of Muslim boys and girls who do not know the Persian script. Such publishers have introduced new orthographic features into Devanagari for the purpose of representing Urdu sounds. One example is the use of ? (Devanagari a) with vowel signs to mimic contexts of ? (‘ain). To Urdu publishers, the use of Devanagari gives them a greater audience, but helps them to preserve the distinct identity of Urdu when written in Devanagari.
A list of the Urdu alphabet and pronunciation is given below. Urdu contains many historical spellings from Arabic and Persian, and therefore has many irregularities. The Arabic letters yaa and haa are split into two in Urdu: one of the yaa variants is used at the ends of words for the sound [i], and one of the haa variants is used to indicate the aspirated consonants. The retroflex consonants needed to be added as well; this was accomplished by placing a superscript ? (to'e) above the corresponding dental consonants. Several letters which represent distinct consonants in Arabic are conflated in Persian, and this has carried over to Urdu. The National Language Authority of the Government of Pakistan has finalized the list and collating order of Urdu letters.
| Letter | Name of letter | Phonemic representation (in IPA) |
|---|
| alif | | | be | | | pe | | | te | | | | | | se | | | jim | | | ce | | | | | | khe | | | dal | | | | | | zal | | | re | | | | | | ze | | | zhe | | | sin | | | shin | | | su'ad | | | zu'ad | | | to'e | | | zo'e | | | ‘ain | | | ghain | | | fe | | | qaf | | | kaf | | | gaf | | | lam | | | mim | | | nun | nasal vowel | | va'o | | | | | | do cashmi he | indicates that the preceding consonant is aspirated or murmured . | | hamzah | | | | | | | |
Software
The Daily Jang/daily waqt was the first Urdu newspaper to be typeset digitally in Nasta’liq by computer. There are efforts underway to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and the Internet. Nowadays, nearly all Urdu newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals are composed on computers via various Urdu software programmes, the most widespread of which is InPage Desktop Publishing package. Microsoft has included Urdu language support in all new versions of Windows and both Vista and Office 2007 are available in Urdu through Language Interface Pack support.
Transliteration in English
Urdu is occasionally also written in the Roman script. Roman Urdu has been used since the days of the British Raj, partly as a result of the availability and low cost of Roman movable type for printing presses. The use of Roman Urdu was common in contexts such as product labels. Today it is regaining popularity among users of text-messaging and Internet services and is developing its own style and conventions. Habib R. Sulemani says, "The younger generation of Urdu-speaking people around the world are using Romanised Urdu on the Internet and it has become essential for them, because they use the Internet and English is its language. A person from Islamabad chats with another in Delhi on the Internet only in Roman Urdu. They both speak the same language but with different scripts. Moreover, the younger generation of those who are from the English medium schools or settled in the west, can speak Urdu but can’t write it in the traditional Arabic script and thus Roman Urdu is a blessing for such a population."
Roman Urdu also holds significance among the Christians of North India. Urdu was the dominant native language among Christians of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan in the early part of twentieth century and is still used by some people in these Indian states. Indian Christians often used the Roman script for writing Urdu. Thus Roman Urdu was a common way of writing among Indian Christians in these states up to the 1960s. The Bible Society of India publishes Roman Urdu Bibles which enjoyed sale late into the 1960s (though they are still published today). Church songbooks are also common in Roman Urdu. However, the usage of Roman Urdu is declining with the wider use of Hindi and English in these states. The major Hindi-Urdu South Asian film industries, Bollywood and Lollywood, are also noteworthy for their use of Roman Urdu for their movie titles.
Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into Roman letters omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin alphabet. It should be noted that a comprehensive system has emerged with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but it can only be properly read by someone already familiar with Urdu, Persian, or Arabic for letters such as: or and Hindi for letters such as . This script may be found on the Internet, and it allows people who understand the language but without knowledge of their written forms to communicate with each other.
Examples
| English | Urdu | Transliteration | Notes |
|---|
| Hello | ?????? ????? | | lit. "Peace be upon you." (from Arabic) | | Hello | ? ????? ?????? | | lit. "And upon you, peace." Response to (from Arabic) | | Goodbye | ??? ???? | | lit. "May God be your Guardian" (from Persian). | | yes | ??? | | casual | | yes | ?? | | formal | | yes | ?? ??? | | confident formal | | no | ?? | | casual | | no | ????? ?? ???? | | formal;ji nahin is considered more formal | | please | ??????? | | | | thank you | ????? | | | | Please come in | ????? ????? | | lit. "Bring your honour" | | Please have a seat | ????? ?????? | | | | I am happy to meet you | ?? ?? ?? ?? ???? ???? | | | | Do you speak English? | ??? ?? ??????? ????? ???? | | lit. "Do you speak English?" | | I do not speak Urdu. | ??? ???? ???? ?????/????? | | bolta is masculine, bolti is feminine | | My name is ... | ???? ??? ??? ?? | | | | Which way to Lahore? | ????? ?? ??? ??? | | | | Where is Lucknow? | ????? ???? ??? | | | Urdu is a good language. | ???? ???? ???? ?? | |
Sample text
The following is a sample text in (formal Urdu), of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):
Urdu (Nastaliq) text (used in Pakistan & India) :
- ???? 1: ???? ????? ???? ??? ???? ? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ???? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ??? ????? ?? ???? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??????
Urdu (Devanagari) text (used in India) :
- ???? 1: ???? ????? ????? ?? ???? ? ???? ?? ????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ???? ?????? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??????
Transliteration (ALA-LC)
- .
IPA Transcription
- .
Gloss (word-for-word)
- Article 1: All humans free[,] and rights and dignity *('s) consideration from equal born are. To them conscience and intellect endowed is. Therefore, they one another *('s) with brotherhood *('s) treatment do must.
Translation (grammatical)
- Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, they should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Note: *('s) represents a possessive case which when written is preceded by the possessor and followed by the possessed, unlike the English 'of'.
Literature
Urdu has become a literary language only in recent centuries, as Persian and Arabic were formerly the idioms of choice for "elevated" subjects. However, despite its relatively late development, Urdu literature boasts some world-recognised artists and a considerable corpus.
Prose
Religious
Urdu holds the largest collection of works on Islamic literature and Sharia after Arabic and Persian. These include translations and interpretation of Qur'an, commentary on Hadith, Fiqh, history, spirituality, Sufism and metaphysics. A great number of classical texts from Arabic and Persian, have also been translated into Urdu. Relatively inexpensive publishing, combined with the use of Urdu as a lingua franca among Muslims of South Asia, has meant that Islam-related works in Urdu far outnumber such works in any other South Asian language. Popular Islamic books, originally written in Urdu, include Qasas-ul-Anbia, Fazail-e-Amal, Bahishti Zewar the Bahar-e-Shariat.
Literary
Secular prose includes all categories of widely known fiction and non-fiction work, separable into genres.
The dastan, or tale, a traditional story which may have many characters and complex plotting. This has now fallen into disuse.
The afsana, or short story, probably the best-known genre of Urdu fiction. The best-known afsana writers, or afsana nigar, in Urdu are Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Qurratulain Hyder (Qurat-ul-Ain Haider), Ismat Chughtai, Bhupendra nath Kaushik"fikr" Ghulam Abbas, Banu Qudsia and Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. Munshi Premchand, became known as a pioneer in the afsana, though some contend that his were not technically the first as Sir Ross Masood had already written many short stories in Urdu.
Novels form a genre of their own, in the tradition of the English novel.
Other genres include saférnama (travel story), mazmoon (essay), sarguzisht(account/narrative), inshaeya(satirical essay), murasela(editorial), and khud navvisht (autobiography).
Poetry
Urdu has been one of the premier languages of poetry in South Asia for two centuries, and has developed a rich tradition in a variety of poetic genres. The 'Ghazal' in Urdu represents the most popular form of subjective poetry, while the 'Nazm' exemplifies the objective kind, often reserved for narrative, descriptive, didactic or satirical purposes. Under the broad head of the Nazm we may also include the classical forms of poems known by specific names such as 'Masnavi' (a long narrative poem in rhyming couplets on any theme: romantic, religious, or didactic), 'Marsia' (an elegy traditionally meant to commemorate the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain, grandson of Muhammad, and his comrades of the Karbala fame), or 'Qasida' (a panegyric written in praise of a king or a nobleman), for all these poems have a single presiding subject, logically developed and concluded. However, these poetic species have an old world aura about their subject and style, and are different from the modern Nazm, supposed to have come into vogue in the later part of the nineteenth century.
Urdu poetry forms itself with following basic ingredients:
The major genres of poetry found in Urdu are:
Foreign forms such as the sonnet, azad nazm or (Free verse) and haiku have also been used by some modern Urdu poets.
Probably the most widely recited, and memorised genre of contemporary Urdu poetry is nat—panegyric poetry written in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. Nat can be of any formal category, but is most commonly in the ghazal form. The language used in Urdu nat ranges from the intensely colloquial to a highly Persified formal language. The great early twentieth century scholar Imam Ahmad Raza Khan, who wrote many of the most well known nats in Urdu (the collection of his poetic work is Hadaiq-e-Baqhshish), epitomised this range in a ghazal of nine stanzas (bayt) in which every stanza contains half a line each of Arabic, Persian, formal Urdu, and colloquial Hindi. The same poet composed a salam—a poem of greeting to the Prophet Muhammad, derived from the unorthodox practice of qiyam, or standing, during the mawlid, or celebration of the birth of the Prophet—Mustafa Jan-e Rahmat, which, due to being recited on Fridays in some Urdu speaking mosques throughout the world, is probably the more frequently recited Urdu poems of the modern era.
Another important genre of Urdu prose are the poems commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain Allah hiss salam and Battle of Karbala, called noha and marsia. Anees and Dabeer are famous in this regard.
Indian film industry has long history of Urdu Poetry in the songs, in fact, popularity and success is some time song dependent. The quality of language and expression is much higher than Hindi language.
Terminology
Ash'ar (Couplet). It consists of two lines, Misra; first line is called Misra-e-oola (???? ????) and the second is called 'Misra-e-sani' (????? ????). Each verse embodies a single thought or subject (sing) She'r.
Famous poets of Urdu Literature
Wali Deccani, termed "Bava Adam" of Urdu by Maulana Mohammad Hussain Azad.Mir Taqi MirMirza Asadullah khan GhalibAllama IqbalZauqShaidaMirza DabeerMeer Bbar Ali AneesShowqRaghu Pati Sahai (Firaq)Josh MalihabadiIsmail MerathiMalik Mohd. JaiseeDagh DehlaviMominAkbar IlahabadiNazeer AkbarabadiJigar MuradabadiBahadur Shah ZafarBegam Hazrat MahalHasrat MohaniHasrat JaipuriShaad Azeemabadi
Faiz Ahmad FaizNajm AfindiAllama Ijtiba Hussain RizviDr. Syed Murtaza Azhar RizviEr. Syed Jarrar Hussain RizviDilawar FigarNazeer BanarsiJan Nisar AkhtarAhmed Faraz AhmedAkhtarul ImanAnvar BanarsiKamal Amrohvi Imam Ahmed Rida Khan*Obaid Azam Azmi
Urdu poetry example
This is Ghalib's famous couplet in which he compares himself to his great predecessor, the master poet Mir:
Transliteration
- Rekhta ke tumhinustad nahin ho Ghalib
- Kahte hain agle zamane men ko'i Mir bhi tha
Translation
- You are not the only master of Rekhta*, Ghalib
- They say that once there also was someone named Mir
*Rekhta was the name for the Urdu/Hindi language in Ghalib's days, when the distinction had not yet been made.
History
Urdu developed as local Indo-Aryan dialects came under the influence of the Muslim courts that ruled South Asia from the early thirteenth century. Its Indic vocabulary has been enriched by borrowings from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English and other Indian languages.
The official language of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature, was Persian, while the language of religion was Arabic. Most of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic as their mother tongue. The Mughals were also from Central Asia, they spoke Turkish as their first language; however the Mughals later adopted Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of north India before the Mughals entered the scene. Babur's mother tongue was Turkish and he wrote exclusively in Turkish. His son and successor Humayun also spoke and wrote in Turkish. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The influence of these languages on Indian apabhramshas led to a vernacular that is the ancestor of today's Urdu. Dialects of this vernacular are spoken today in cities and villages throughout northern India and Pakistan . Cities with a particularly strong tradition of Urdu include Delhi, Hyderabad, Karachi, Lucknow and Lahore.
The name Urdu
The term Urdu came into use when Shah Jahan built the Red Fort in Delhi in 1639 A.D. The word Urdu itself comes from a Turkic word ordu,which means "camp", "tent" or "army", from which English also gets the word "horde". Hence Urdu is sometimes called "Lashkari zaban", Persian for "the language of the army". Furthermore, armies of India often contained soldiers with various native tongues. Hence, Urdu was the chosen language to address the soldiers as it abridged several languages.
Wherever Muslim soldiers and officials settled, they carried Urdu with them. Urdu enjoyed commanding status in the literary courts of late Muslim rulers and Nawabs, and flourished under their patronage, partially displacing Persian as the language of elite in the then Indian society.
Urdu continued as one of many languages in Northwest India. In 1947, Urdu was established as the national language of Pakistan in the hope that this move would unite and homogenise the various ethnic groups of the new nation. Urdu suddenly went from a language of a minority to the language of the majority. It also became the official language of some of the various states of India. Today, Urdu is taught throughout Pakistani schools and spoken in government positions, and it is also common in much of Northern India. Hindi, which is very similar to Urdu, is the official language of India.
Urdu and Hindi
Because of their identical grammar and nearly identical core vocabularies, most linguists do not distinguish between Hindi and Urdu as separate languages—at least not in reference to the informal spoken registers. For them, ordinary informal Urdu and Hindi can be seen as variants of the same language (Hindustani) with the difference being that Urdu is supplemented with a Perso-Arabic vocabulary and Hindi a Sanskritic vocabulary. Additionally, there is the convention of Urdu being written in Perso-Arabic script, and Hindi in Devanagari. The standard, "proper" grammars of both languages are based on Khariboli grammar — the dialect of the Delhi region. So, with respect to grammar, the languages are mutually intelligible when spoken, and can be thought of as two written variants of the same language.
Hindustani is the name often given to this language as it developed over hundreds of years throughout India (which formerly included what is now Pakistan). In the same way that the core vocabulary of English evolved from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) but includes a large number of words borrowed from French and other languages (whose pronunciations often changed naturally so as to become easier for speakers of English to pronounce), what may be called Hindustani can be said to have evolved from Sanskrit while borrowing many Persian and Arabic words over the years, and changing the pronunciations (and often even the meanings) of those words to make them easier for Hindustani speakers to pronounce. Therefore, Hindustani is the language as it evolved organically.
Linguistically speaking, Standard Hindi is a form of colloquial Hindustani, with lesser use of Persian and Arabic loanwords, while inheriting its formal vocabulary from Sanskrit; Standard Urdu is also a form of Hindustani, de-Sanskritised, with a significant part of its formal vocabulary consisting of loanwords from Persian and Arabic. The difference, thus is in the vocabulary, and not the structure of the language.
The difference is also sociolinguistic: When people speak Hindustani (i.e., when they are speaking colloquially) speakers who are Muslims will usually say that they are speaking Urdu, and those who are Hindus will typically say that they are speaking Hindi, even though they are speaking essentially the same language.
The two standardised registers of Hindustani — Hindi and Urdu — have become so entrenched as separate languages that often nationalists, both Muslim and Hindu, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. However, there are unifying forces. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi", but the language used in most of them is Urdu. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally neutral Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India and in Pakistan.
Also see Hindi.
Urdu and Bollywood
The part of the Indian film industry based in Mumbai (Bombay) is often called Bollywood (???? ??). The language used in Bollywood movies uses a dialogue vocabulary which is primarily Hindi, but its song lyrics are often based in Urdu, which use elevated, poetic language. This was due to the preponderance of Urdu speaking lyricists in the early development of Bollywood. Often, this means using poetic Urdu words of Arabic and Persian origin. A few films, like Jodhaa Akbar, Umrao Jaan, Pakeezah, Heer Raanjha, Mughal-e-Azam, and The Chess Players, have used vocabulary that leans more towards Urdu, as they depict places and times when Urdu would have been used. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Bollywood films displayed the name of the film in Hindi, Urdu, and Roman scripts. Most Bollywood films today present film titles in the Roman alphabet along with the Devanagari script, and Nasta`liq scripts are getting rarer. This is also due to the increasing sophistication and segmentation of the Hindi films, which are mostly directed towards the Indian diaspora spread around the world, who are more comfortable with Hinglish (a mixture of Hindi and English) than Urdu.
Footnotes
Dictionaries
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- English to Urdu Dictionary
- Urdu to English Dictionary
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See also
External links
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- , BBC
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- , Pakistan
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- , reading and writing Urdu on the Web
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- , interactive and with colorful pictures
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