Culture Cloning

Tahmed #256:

``the turkish ``urds`` were there in india, and gave rise to urdu, even before the mughals came to india. hindi came centuries later,``

If the Turkish ``Urds`` had not been in India, we would all be still grunting like baboons because the Turkish Urds gave rise to Urdu. And do not forget Amir Khusro. He used Urdu Script. Hindi came centuries later.

Who can argue with such twisted mind and confused logic?

Some remixes are really works of art. I have a couple of VCD (made in Pakistan I think) of oldies like Saiyyaa.n Dill Mein Aanaa Re, Aake Phir Naa Jaanaa Re (original singer Shamshad Begum), Tere Naseeb Mein Mein Hun Ke Naheen, Mere Naseeb Mein Tu Hai Key Naheen (original singer Asha Bhosle?), etc. These are really good. But most remixes are vulgar and full of suggestive movements. Some day these good ones will be classics.

re:#273 by anil
Hindi as a spoken language is popular even in south (thanks to bollywood) but as a literary language, there is nothing much to commend it. Neither it has the depth and sheer grandeur of sanskrit nor the beauty of urdu (even a novice like me can appreciate ghazals!). Hindi has also not grown the way it should have, considering it is constantly influenced by contact with people from non-hindi speakng regions. Tamil has many hindi words (i am not talking about sanskrit root words) like bazaar, shaabash. The word ``parwah illay`` in tamil is actually a local version of the urdu/hindi word ``parwah nahin``!
Anyway, i think the hindi purists have stifled its growth and made it too sanskritised to be of interest to some layman wanting to learn it as a literary language.
Sridhar

Re: # 278

Sridhar:

YOu are correct, Hindi could have benefited more if rather than its blind supporters had not tried to prove it to be the direct descendant of Sanskrit. But instead had allowed it to absorb vocabulary from other Indian languages. I can never forget an incidence that I had observed many many years ago in Bangalore, shortly after DWH (Down With Hindi) campaign. DWH posters were still on the walls, and two three-wheeler drivers were fighting in Kannad but all the swear words were from Hindi. Sanskrit was never a spoken language, in fact it was ``designed`` to be a romance and court language. Panini is recognized as world`s first formal grammarian. Hindi`s evolution has been from ``grass-roots``. Its proof is in phonetic base, you write what you speak.

Anil

Re: #273 by anil

[In Hindi the emphasis had been to import from Sanskrit...]

WHY do you guys HAVE to make such moronic statements? I mean, WHY?

Hindi is a DIRECT DESCENDENT OF SANSKRIT!

And you say the ``emphasis`` has been to ``import`` (as from a different, unrelated language) from Sanskrit?

By god, HOW MUCH more idiotic can you get?

WHY do you guys say such obviously idiotic things? WHERE do you guys come from?


What SPECTACULAR idiocy! Boggles the mind!

Re: # 277

Ajeya:

Please control you language when you respond and expect me to respond.

BTW, please check your facts, Pune Marathi (Pune has been a center of Sanskrit), and for some reason Malyalam are much closer to Sanskrit than Hindi. Although pure Banarsi hindiwalas like to claim that hindi is direct descendent of Sanskrit, becasue Benaras has been another center of Sanskrit and Hindi. This is pure rivalry, please do more research on this. You may learn something valuable than profanity and insult.

Anil

Re: # 289

How about Bangla? I have heard many Bengalis taking pride in Bengali being
closest to Sanskrut.

anil#273:

I am not aware if the number of Urdu/Arabic alphaets have collapsed over time. As for Hindi, I cannot even pronounce some of the alphabets and I never see them being used. Perhaps, they are used in sanskrit.

I am personally persuaded that Urdu-Hindi are the same languages, though with different scripts. It seems important for the identity of subcontinental Muslims to think that ``their`` language, Urdu, has like themselves, roots outside India. And this is fine with me, too. What is undeniable is the beauty of Urdu and the Muslim contribution to it.

Re: # 276

Dost-Mitter:

I am sorry, I did not mean Urdu / Arabic alphabets have collapsed. I am saying to represent all phonetics of Hindi / Sanskrit / Marathi, there are 52 alphabets. To represent this entire set of all phonetics Urdu has only 24 or 26 alphabets. Therefore, phonetic sound must have been collapsed on to 24 or 26 alphabets in Urdu. For instance Arabic does not have ``Pa`` phonetic, and has ``Ba``. Therefore, when you hear an Arab speak, he may more comfortably say ``Car Bark``, rather than ``Car Park``. I suppose, Urdu resorts to equivalent of in Hindi to come closer to the phonetic. Likewise, Hindi did not have an alphabet to represent ``Za``, instead has ``Ja``. A bindi, underneath ``Ja`` is an import to make a compound phonetic, ``Za`` out of ``Ja``. One can frequently hear ``Ja`` being used where ``Za`` should be used.

Anil

Netizen: interesting write up you provided. Thanks. I think my post to rsridhar also touches upon the issues you mention (and sorry for making the post unduly lengthy).

Anyway, I wish you and rsridhar and all other chowkies a happy thanksgiving day. Let us use this occassion to thank the Lord for both hindi and urdu. :-)

Re: # 275

tahmed:

``Anyway, I wish you and rsridhar and all other chowkies a happy thanksgiving day. Let us use this occassion to thank the Lord for both hindi and urdu. :-)``

as we are discussing the turkish influence on the subcontinent, have a happy Turkey day :)

rsridhar: That quote you provide is from a website of Penn State on a section having to do with the IT aspects of providing fonts for different scripts, not on indian history. That explains the misleading generality you quote fro that website on that big bogeyman of hindu extremists - conversion of hindus to islam - which clearly has nothing to do with the basic purpose of that webpage, and has obviously been tossed in by whoever was asked to write that web page - not that anyone outside india really cares about this earthshaking issue of hindu conversions.

Let us therefore focus on the facts, rather than looking for something on the internet to support some point of view. The fact is that, like I said, urdu developed as a result of the incursions into india of turk armies. The word urdu itself is of turkish origin, meaning camp. of course Old Panjabi (or Hindustani as the englishman gilchrist called it i think, or kharri boli) was a key feed into urdu (along with turkish originally, and later persian, arabic and now english as well). Thus, urdu developed in pre-mughal times, contrary to the ``knowledge`` being shed (and put in bold) to that website. And initially it had a lot of turkish words, with persian becoming more prominent after being adopted as language of the court.

i didnt say anything about urdu being the great liberator for us pakis - I did say that we pakis have accepted urdu as our common language, and in doing so changed it from the original urdu that the urdu-speaking muhajirs had brought with them in 1947 (see my post below to dm on this). The pakistan government did try to force urdu as a national language in the beginning (mostly thanks to urdu-loving liaqat ali khan), and that was met with language riots of the early 1950`s in bengal. But urdu in pakistan has never had that ideological push to it that hindi (i.e. thru introduction of words from a dead language, sanskrit) has had in india. It has found roots in the fertile soil of the panjab, the land which has remained open to new ideas for centuries, and whose people are not a single racial group but rather (as the name panjab itself reflects) merely anyone who made the land of the five rivers their home. With musharaff (from an urdu speaking delhi family) with his panjabi-accented urdu a perfect example of this.

This is why urdu does not need the pakistan government`s support to thrive. It is now very much a part of the pakistan national identity, at least for now. Although, like i wrote earlier, ultimately both urdu and hindi are withering under a far more powerful force, namely globalization - and that is why you and i communicate in english, not in hindi or urdu.

Re: # 274

Tahmad:

...``of course Old Panjabi (or Hindustani as the englishman gilchrist called it i think, or kharri boli)...``

Oh no, Kharri Booli is very different from Punjabi. It is also called Braj Bhasa. The accents and words (some of the words - Dost-Mitter has written from Braj Bhasa) are no where near Punjabi. Amir Khusro, if I am not mistaken, lived, and his grave is in Nizamuddin, New Delhi. In his days, Nizamuddin, being closer to Mathura / Brindaban - center of Kharri Boli, probably influenced his choice of Kharri Boli, over the Purabia Boli, spoken Benaras. My maami is from Braj, and still at the age of 80 speaks Kharri Boli. It is spoken more from throat and mouth than nasal, and quite lyrical to listen.

Anil

Re: # 274

tahmed:

``But urdu in pakistan has never had that ideological push to it that hindi (i.e. thru introduction of words from a dead language, sanskrit) has had in india.``

as i understand you are trying to say that current hindi is basically urdu minus the persian/arabic words, which are replaced by sanskrit/prakrit words.

don`t you think that by doing so hindi is brought back to somewhat close to the original language as it was spoken (may be like khari boli) before the addition of persian/arabic words?

i do think there is ideoloical push behind urdu too, or else why would pak have it as a national language when non-urdu speakers overwhelmed urdu speakers.

people do associate language as a part of cultural definition. in india too, tamil nadu exploded in violence when the center tried to impose hindi on them. they thought that north indians are imposing their culture on tamils.

unfortunately, urdu has been ``associated`` with muslims and hence pak accepted it as a part of its national identity whereas india favored hindi in its place.

re:#256 by tahmed32
Ha, ha.
Tahmed sahib,
You almost sound like Urdu is this great liberator of Paki muslims from oppression. If Urdu was meant as a way of communication, are u aware that barely 8% of Paki population can even read or write the language?
Compare that to hindi being spoken/understood by at least 40% of Indian population and u will know how urdu is losing out after the zealots deemed it a muslim language in the prepartition era
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=URD
Not to burst your bubble, but this is what another site has to say:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/urdu.html
(The Urdu Language
Urdu is one of the national languages of Pakistan. The language is not related to Arabic, but to languages of Northern India, especially Hindi. In fact, many linguists consider Urdu and Hindi to be the same language written in two different scripts with different technical vocabulary.

During the Mughal period in Northern India, some people in the Hindustan region converted to Islam and began using the Arabic script. This language became Urdu. Others remained Hindu and used the Devanagari alphabet. This language became Hindi.

Because Urdu is close to Hindi, their language uses letters not found in Arabic. Urdu speakers need both Arabic script support and Urdu support. )
Sridhar

#256
tahmed:

``hindi on the other hand is an artificial creation (with words from a dead language (i.e. a language no longer spoken by anyone, like Latin), replacing some words of the hated ``foreign origin`` in urdu). urdu, on the other hand, resulted from the need for soldiers from different ethnic groups to communicate - and thus became known as the language of the ``military`` camp, or urd (in turkish). ``

urdu developed due to interaction of turks with the local population, who spoke khari boli (local form of hindi).
do you think an iranian will inderstand urdu (other than the persian loan words)?

read this:

Originally the term Hindustânî (``of the land of the Hindus``) was the name given by the Turco-Persian Mogul conquerors of India to Khariboli, the local form of Hindi at their capital, Delhi, and nearby cities. As a contact language between the two cultures, Hindustani absorbed large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic words, and with further Moslem conquest it spread as a lingua franca across northern India. It remained the primary lingua franca of India for the next four centuries, although it varied significantly in vocabulary depending to the local language, and it achieved the status of a literary language, along with Persian, in the Moslem courts. In time it came to be called Urdu (zabân-i-urdû ``language of the army/camp`` in Persian), and as the highly Persianized court language, rexta, or ``mixed``.


Colloquial Urdu, on the other hand, basically is Hindustani; it has been argued that Standard Hindi is a form of colloquial Urdu, intentionally de-Persianized and de-Arabicized, with its formal vocabulary borrowed instead from Sanskrit. This kind of argument is popular with those who want to see show Urdu as a distinct language as compared to Hindi, with considerable cross-pollination from either side, in keeping with their distinct identity as Muslims of the sub-continent. But linguistically speaking, the root of a language is identified by its grammar - Urdu grammar is 100% Sanskrit derived. Today we find more and more English words used in Hindi. If the proportion of English words used in Hindi were to increase dramatically, and people started writing Hindi using English alphabets - that would be similar to the scenario that describes the divergence of Urdu from Hindustani as it stands today. The colloquial language spoken by villagers and the lower classes of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Arab-Persian script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi. However, since independence and partition the formal registers used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, Standard Urdu uses Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while Standard Hindi uses Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official languages being heavily Sanskritized or Persianized, and nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the other standard. At the end of the day, however, linguistically, Urdu, because of its grammar and structure, is a Sanskrit-derived language - albeit with a plethora of Arabic and Persian words that reflect the yearning of the Muslims of the subcontinent to adopt a more ``Islamic`` identity.

Urdu has become so entrenched as a separate language in the psyche of the Muslims of the subcontinent that they often claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. However, there are unifying forces as well. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in ``Hindi``, but the language used in most of them is the same as that of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. 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 itself and in Pakistan. The songs, however, are typically pure Urdu (meaning that they have a high concentration of Persian and Arabic words in them, like raisins in a pudding), and many of the top Urdu poets make their livings writing for ``Hindi`` films. That is why Indian film is extremely popular in Pakistan, and Pakistani TV is likewise popular in India.