From: tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Tariq Hamid)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Need help with Urdu, too
Summary: sci.lang
Keywords: sci.lang
Date: 21 Dec 92 14:24:19 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London

From sci.lang:

In <ONEIL.92Dec19163322@husc10.harvard.edu> oneil@husc10.harvard.edu (John O'Neil) writes:

>In article <1992Dec19.172133.18284@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Tariq Hamid) writes:

>   This difference is due to the nationalistic
>   tendencies of the rulers of India and Pakistan. After independence, from the
>   British in 1947, the Indians decided to write the language known as
>   "Hindustani" in the Devanagri script, the ancient script in which Sanskrit 
>   is written.

>Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Hindi had been a
>written language -- written in Devanagari -- since the 12th century.

>Hindi and Urdu are closely related, I know, the first being influenced
>by Sanskrit and the latter by Farsi and Arabic.  Hindustani is
>supposed to be a language which is neutral between them, but its
>linguistic status (rather than its political status) is unclear to me.
>--
>John O'Neil
>"Occasionally I believed I had thoughts of my own --  who does not now
> and then become the victim of such delusions?"
>						-- Paul Feyerabend


It all depends on how history is interpreted. Hindi and Urdu
are both directly based upon a dialect of indo-european that was spoken in
Lucknow (circa 1700 A.D.).

And yes I do agree that Urdu is this language with Farsi etc tacked on,
and Hindi is this language with Sanskrit tacked on. Unfortunately the
distinction between Urdu and Hindi is not so clear cut, since there are a large
number of Farsi (, etc) words that appear in Hindi, and a very large number of 
Sanskriti words that appear in Urdu. As to what this base dialect is to be 
called is a matter of debate. I admit that to call it "Hindustani" is too much
of a generalization as this is a later development.

Now for the good bit. Many of my friends who have learnt Hindi at school
in India are baffled by many Hindi texts with big Sanskrit words in them. And I
am talking about highly educated people here. Similarly some words in Urdu
are difficult to interpret (since they have been artificially introduced from
Farsi (, etc)).

Nevertheless after 1947, there has been a concerted attempt to exaggerate these
differences. This is ironic because a lot of "Hindi" literature is based on and
in "Urdu" literature.

We can end up getting caught up in a debate similar to that raging in
alt.usage.english, where there is this pretentious nutter going out of his
way to state that the language the Americans speak is not English.

(Remember that a counter argument can be supported by the language spoken 
in "Hindi" movies, and also by the language spoken by Hindu/Urdu speakers).

C'est la vie,

                                        Tariq
--

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Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan