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| History | |
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Main article: History of Urdu
Eastern and Western Hindi (red). Hindi-Urdu is one of the Western Hindi languages.
The word Urdu is derived from the same Turkish word that has given English horde.[18] Urdu arose in the contact situation which developed from the invasions of the Indian subcontinent by Turkic dynasties from the 11th century onwards,[19] first as Sultan Mahmud of the Ghaznavid empire conquered Punjab in the early 11th century, then when the Ghurids invaded northern India in the 12th century, and most decisively with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
The official language of the Ghurids, 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 Chagatai, but later adopted Persian. Muzaffar Alam asserts 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.[20] However, the armies, merchants, preachers, Sufis, and later the court, also incorporated the local people and the medieval Hindu literary language, Braj Bhasha. This new contact language soon incorporated other dialects, such as Haryanvi, Panjabi, and in the 17th century Khariboli, the dialect of the new capital at Delhi. By 1800, Khariboli had become dominant.[21]
The language went by several names over the years: Hindawi or Hindī, "[language] of India"; Dehlavi "of Delhi"; Hindustani, "of Hindustan"; and Zaban-e-Urdu, "the language of the [army] camp", from which came the current name of Urdu around the year 1800.
When Wali Mohammed Wali arrived in Delhi, he established Hindustani with a light smattering of Persian words, a register called Rekhta, for poetry; previously the language of poetry had been Persian. When the Delhi Sultanate expanded south to the Deccan Plateau, they carried their literary language with them, and it was influenced there by more southerly languages, producing the Dakhini dialect of Urdu. During this time Hindustani was the language of both Hindus and Muslims. The communal nature of the language lasted until it replaced Persian as the official language in 1837 and was made coofficial along with English in the British Raj. This triggered a Hindu backlash in northwestern India, which argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script. This "Hindi" replaced traditional Urdu as the official register of Bihar in 1881, establishing a sectarian divide of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide that was formalized with the division of India and Pakistan after independence from the British, though there are Hindu poets who continue to write in Urdu to this day.
Although there have been attempts to purge Urdu and Hindi, respectively, of their Sanskrit and Persian words, and new vocabulary draws primarily from Persian and Arabic for Urdu and Sanskrit for Hindi, this has primarily affected academic and literary vocabulary, and both national standards remain heavily influenced by both Persian and Sanskrit.[22] English has exerted a heavy influence on both as a coofficial language.
[edit] Tags:Persian,Pakistan,India,Western Hindi,Khariboli,Register,Muslims,Lingua Franca,States,Arabic,Delhi Sultanate,Turkic,Sanskrit,Contact,Indian Subcontinent,Sultan Mahmud,Ghaznavid Empire,Punjab,Ghurids,Mughal Empire,Sultans,Central Asia,Mughals,Muzaffar Alam,Sufis,Braj Bhasha,Haryanvi,Panjabi,Delhi,Hindawi,Hindī,Dehlavi,Hindustani,Wali Mohammed Wali,Rekhta,Deccan Plateau,British Raj,Deccan,Hindi,Bihar, | |
| Speakers and geographic distribution | |
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See also: Languages of Pakistan and Languages of India
The phrase Zaban-e Urdu-e Mualla ("The language of the exalted camp") written in Nastaʿlīq script.
There are between 60 and 70 million speakers of Urdu: there were 52 million in India per the 2001 census, some 6% of the population;[23] 13 million in Pakistan in 2008, or 8%;[24] and several hundred thousand apiece in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, United States, and Bangladesh, where it is called "Bihari".[25] However, a knowledge of Urdu allows one to speak with far more people than that, as Hindi-Urdu is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world, after Mandarin, English, and Spanish.[1][26]
Owing to interaction with other languages, Urdu has become localized wherever it is spoken, including in Pakistan itself. Urdu in Pakistan has undergone changes and has lately incorporated and borrowed many words from Pakistani languages like Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi and Balti, thus allowing speakers of the language in Pakistan to distinguish themselves more easily and giving the language a decidedly Pakistani Flavour. Similarly, the Urdu spoken in India can also be distinguished into many dialects like Dakhni (Deccan) of South India, and Khariboli of the Punjab region since recent times. Because of Urdu's similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can easily understand one another if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. The syntax (grammar), morphology, and the core vocabulary are essentially identical. Thus linguists usually count them as one single language and contend that they are considered as two different languages for socio-political reasons.[27] In Pakistan Urdu is mostly learned as a second or a third language as nearly 93% of Pakistan's population has a mother tongue other than Urdu. Despite this, Urdu was chosen as a token of unity and as a lingua franca so as not to give any native Pakistani language preference over the other. Urdu is therefore spoken and understood by the vast majority in some form or another, including a majority of urban dwellers in such cities as Karachi, Lahore, Sialkot, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Multan, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Jhang, Sargodha and Skardu. It is written, spoken and used in all Provinces/Territories of Pakistan despite the fact that the people from differing provinces may have different indigenous languages, as from the fact that it is the "base language" of the country. For this reason, 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 State languages of Pakistan such as Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Potwari, Hindko, Pahari, Saraiki, Balti, and Brahui but they can read and write only Urdu. It is absorbing many words from the regional languages of Pakistan. This variation of Urdu is sometimes referred to as Pakistani Urdu. So while most of the population is conversant in Urdu, it is the mother tongue only of an estimated 7% of the population, mainly Muslim immigrants (known as Muhajir in Pakistan) from different parts of the Indian subcontinent (India, Burma, Bangladesh etc.). 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 Pashtun, 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.
Autograph and a couplet of Last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, dated 29th April 1844
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#Urdu-language newspapers).
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, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra (Marathwada), Karnataka and cities namely Lucknow, Delhi, Bareilly, Meerut, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Roorkee, Deoband, Moradabad, Azamgarh, Bijnor, Najibabad, Rampur, Aligarh, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Agra, Kanpur, Badaun, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mysore, Patna, Gulbarga, Nanded, Bidar, Ajmer, and Ahmedabad.[28] 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, The Munsif Daily and Inqilab are published and distributed in Bengaluru, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai (see List of newspapers in India).
Outside South Asia, it is spoken by large numbers of migrant South Asian workers in the major urban centres 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. Along with Arabic, Urdu is among the immigrant languages with the most speakers in Catalonia, leading to fears of linguistic ghettos.[29]
[edit] Tags:Nastaʿlīq Script,Uttar Pradesh,Languages Of India,United Kingdom,Saudi Arabia,United States,Bangladesh,Mandarin,Spanish,Pashto,Punjabi,Sindhi,Dakhni,Karachi,Lahore,Sialkot,Rawalpindi,Islamabad,Multan,Faisalabad,Hyderabad,Peshawar,Quetta,Jhang,Sargodha,Skardu,State Languages Of Pakistan,Balochi,Potwari,Hindko,Pahari,Saraiki,Balti,Muhajir,Afghan Refugees,Pashtun,Tajik,Uzbek,Hazarvi, | |
| Official status | |
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Urdu is the national and one of the two official languages of Pakistan, the other being English, 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.[30] It holds in itself a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country.[31] Although English is used in most elite circles, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers, Urdu is the lingua franca and national language in Pakistan.
Urdu is also one of the officially recognised languages in India and has official language status in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,[32] Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and the national capital, New Delhi.
In Jammu and Kashmir, section 145 of the Kashmir Constitution provides: "The official language of the State shall be Urdu but the English language shall unless the Legislature by law otherwise provides, continue to be used for all the official purposes of the State for which it was being used immediately before the commencement of the Constitution." As of 2010, the English language continues to be used as an official language for more than 90% of official work in Kashmir.[33] There are ongoing efforts to make Kashmiri and Dogri, spoken as mother tongues by nearly 80% of the population of Indian-administered Kashmir, as official languages alongside English.
The importance of Urdu[34] in the Muslim world is visible in the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, where most informational signage is written in Arabic, English and Urdu, and sometimes in other languages.
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| Dialects | |
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Urdu has a few recognised dialects, including Dakhni, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Dakhni (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 Konkani, as well as some vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and Turkish that are not found in the standard dialect of Urdu, and may actually be a distinct Hindi language. In terms of pronunciation, the easiest way to recognize a native speaker is their pronunciation of the letter "qāf" (ﻕ) as "kh" (ﺥ). Dakhini is widely spoken in all parts of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. 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.
Pakistani variant of the language spoken in Pakistan; it becomes increasingly divergent from the Indian dialects and forms of Urdu as it has absorbed many loan words, proverbs and phonetics from Pakistan's indigenous languages such as Pashto, Panjabi and Sindhi. Furthermore, due to the region's history, the Urdu dialect of Pakistan draws heavily from the Persian and Arabic languages, and the intonation and pronunciation are informal compared with corresponding Indian dialects.
In addition, Rekhta (or Rekhti), the language of Urdu poetry, is sometimes counted as a separate dialect, one famously used by several poets of high acclaim in the bulk of their work. These included Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Muhammad Iqbal.
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| Vocabulary | |
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See also: Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) word etymology
Urdu has a vocabulary rich in words with and Middle Eastern origins. The language's Indic base has been enriched by borrowing from Persian and Arabic. There are also a smaller number of borrowings from Chagatai, Portuguese, and more recently English. Many of the words of Arabic origin have been adopted through Persian and have different pronunciations and nuances of meaning and usage than they do in Arabic.
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| Levels of formality | |
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Urdu in its less formalised register has been referred to as a rekhta (ریختہ, [reːxt̪aː]), meaning "rough mixture". The more formal register of Urdu is sometimes referred to as zabān-e-Urdu-e-mo'alla (زبان اردو معلہ [zəbaːn eː ʊrd̪uː eː moəllaː]), the "Language of the Exalted Camp", referring to the Imperial army.[35]
The etymology of the word used in the Urdu language for the most part decides how polite or refined one's speech is. For example, Urdu speakers would distinguish between پانی pānī and آب āb, both meaning "water" for example, or between آدمی ādmi and مرد 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.[36]
That distinction has likenesses with the division between words from a French or Old English origin while speaking English.
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| Politeness | |
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Urdu syntax and vocabulary reflect a three tiered system of politeness called ādāb. Due to its emphasis on politeness and propriety, Urdu has always been considered an elevated, somewhat aristocratic, language in South Asia. It continues to conjure a subtle, polished affect in South Asian linguistic and literary sensibilities and thus continues to be preferred for song-writing and poetry, even by non-native speakers.
Any verb can be conjugated as per three or four different tiers of politeness. For example, the verb to speak in Urdu is bolnā (بولنا) and the verb to sit is baiţhnā (بیٹھنا). The imperatives "speak!" and "sit!" can thus be conjugated five different ways, each marking subtle variation in politeness and propriety. These permutations exclude a host of auxiliary verbs and expressions which can be added to these verbs to add even greater degree of subtle variation. For extremely polite or formal situations, nearly all commonly used verbs have equivalent formal synonyms (Row 5 below). The phrase category '[āp] bolo', mentioned in Row 3 below, is associated with the Punjabi usage 'tusi bolo' and is rarely used in written Urdu. It is considered grammatically incorrect, particularly in the Gangetic Plain, where the influence of Punjabi on Urdu is minimal.
Literary*
[tu] bol!
تو بول
[tu] baiţh!
تو بیٹھ
Casual and intimate
[tum] bolo.
تم بولو
[tum] baiţho
تم بیٹھو
Polite and intimate
[āp] bolo
آپ بولو
[āp] baiţho.
آپ بیٹھو
Formal yet intimate
[āp] bolen
آپ بولیں
[āp] baiţhen.
آپ بیٹھیں
Polite and formal
[āp] bolīye
آپ بولیئے
[āp] baiţhīye.
آپ بیٹھیئے
Ceremonial / Extremely formal
[āp] farmaīye
آپ فرمایئے
[āp] tašrīf-rakhīye.
آپ تشریف رکھیئے
Similarly, nouns are also marked for politeness and formality. For example, uskī vālida, "his mother" is a politer way of say uskī ammī. Uskī vālida-mohtarmā is an even more polite reference, while saying uskī mān would be construed as derogatory. None of these forms are slang or shortenings, and all are encountered in writing.
Expressions are also marked for politeness. For example, the expression "No!" could be nā, nahīn or jī-nahīn in order of politeness. Similarly, "Yes!" can be hān-jī, hān, jī or jī-hān in order of politeness.
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| Writing system | |
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Main article: Urdu alphabet
Further information: Hindustani orthography
The Urdu Nastaʿliq alphabet, with names in the Devanāgarī and Latin alphabets
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| Persian script | |
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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 Nastaʿlīq style of Persian calligraphy, whereas Arabic is generally written in the Naskh or Ruq'ah styles. 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.
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| Kaithi script | |
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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 were 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.[37] 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.
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| Devanagari script | |
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More recently in India, Urdu speakers have adopted Devanagari for publishing Urdu periodicals and have innovated new strategies to mark Urdū in Devanagari as distinct from Hindi in Devanagari. Such publishers have introduced new orthographic features into Devanagari for the purpose of representing the Perso-Arabic etymology of Urdu words. One example is the use of अ (Devanagari a) with vowel signs to mimic contexts of ع (‘ain), in violation of Hindi orthographic rules. For Urdu publishers, the use of Devanagari gives them a greater audience, while the orthographic changes help them preserve a distinct identity of Urdu.[38]
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| Roman script | |
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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, especially Pakistan Tags: | |
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