A question about the Urdu letter 'ژ'

[-blitzkrieg-]

It's Bakistan also in Tunisia and all the Arab world I guess : باكستان

mon frere en maghreb ill nous appelent pé-kiss-thon

 

[313ghazi]

We say Z in pahari. I wonder why it skipped Punjab?

 

[Zee-shaun]

mon frere en maghreb ill nous appelent pé-kiss-thon

Je crois qu'ils parlent berbère au Maroc. Le berbère a plus de sons que l'arabe. Contrairement aux Arabes, ils ont le 'P'.

 

[_Nabil_]

mon frere en maghreb ill nous appelent pé-kiss-thon

There is no "P" in Arabic, so it's normal we spell باكستان Ba-kiss-tan باكستان

 

[Meengla]

There is no "P" in Arabic, so it's normal we spell باكستان Ba-kiss-tan باكستان

Yes.
I don't know if people know here the joke some Desis in America knew in the 1990s. It was like:
An Arab asked a cop in America about parking is car: 'Can I bark here?' The puzzled cop: 'Sure, it is free country. You can bark wherever you want!'
(No disrespect--just mentioning what some of us Desi students in America laughed about accents).

Back to topic: This 'Zhe' for 'Y' has been bugging me lately to the point of questioning my own understanding of the pronouncement. But now I know!

 

[SQ8]

Yes.
I don't know if people know here the joke some Desis in America knew in the 1990s. It was like:
An Arab asked a cop in America about parking is car: 'Can I bark here?' The puzzled cop: 'Sure, it is free country. You can bark wherever you want!'
(No disrespect--just mentioning what some of us Desi students in America laughed about accents).

Back to topic: This 'Zhe' for 'Y' has been bugging me lately to the point of questioning my own understanding of the pronouncement. But now I know!

Unfortunately ignorance is letting people lump “bastardized” urdu coming from an influence of Indian media and “coolness” become representative of accents.
The finest Urdu I heard apart from old high society families in Karachi was in Peshawar.
Karachi Urdu depends upon the area - the inner lower middle class especially MQM flush areas will use Array with a twang while others will carry the language twist of the area. The dehli(also found in some areas of Lahore) accent to the Hyderabadi one.

The Lucknow ones sound all proper until they use the “Hum” instead of “mein”.

Worse off are the mumbai slum inspired “apun this and sapna that” due to constantly being dosed up on bollywood. Think of the flats of gulshan and otherwise.
Lastly, there is a brown Americans or brits who haven’t ventured beyond Dubai but go all “Yars please chalieniez yehan se” and couldn’t write 5 words in Urdu but will need to somehow pass O level urdu somehow.

 

[Paitoo]

There is no 'zhe' in Hindi. In fact there is no 'z' either. So when I say shayari it sounds like this:

Arj kiya hai...
Jimbabwe ho ya Jambia,
Hujoor ki julfon ki najakat aur shorat pe jindagi qurban,
Jaalim shehjadi na sahi, koyi jaleel hi ho jaye meherbaan.

@SIPRA

I like this language. Saala idar ich thok da ga. Akha shehar etc

This is our latino swag

 

[Bratva]

ژالہ باری

 

[SIPRA]

@SIPRA aap na ژ ko nursery k urdu qaiday main kya parha tha

Yes. It's pronunciation is very close to "ye", as in "yaala baari", "puy-murda".

 

[m52k85]

Karachi wale isko 'zhe' he parhte hain.

Oh dear this chart is completely off. The fact is some letters can not be pronounced in english. period.

 

[Meengla]

Unfortunately ignorance is letting people lump “bastardized” urdu coming from an influence of Indian media and “coolness” become representative of accents.
The finest Urdu I heard apart from old high society families in Karachi was in Peshawar.
Karachi Urdu depends upon the area - the inner lower middle class especially MQM flush areas will use Array with a twang while others will carry the language twist of the area. The dehli(also found in some areas of Lahore) accent to the Hyderabadi one.

The Lucknow ones sound all proper until they use the “Hum” instead of “mein”.

Worse off are the mumbai slum inspired “apun this and sapna that” due to constantly being dosed up on bollywood. Think of the flats of gulshan and otherwise.
Lastly, there is a brown Americans or brits who haven’t ventured beyond Dubai but go all “Yars please chalieniez yehan se” and couldn’t write 5 words in Urdu but will need to somehow pass O level urdu somehow.

Lots of good points.
In my case, born and raised Karachiite, there is no difficulty switching from SaRak Chaap Urdu when talking when old Karachi University friends to talking in Salees Urdu when talking with Karachi University professors or, as in the previous trip to Pakistan, with journalists at the Karachi Press Club; so from the Bollywood inspired Urdu to nice U.P Urdu in no time! BTW, I tend to think the influence of Bollywood is exaggerated in Pakistan.

But it does somewhat bother me when, with very few exceptions like the journalist Saleem Safi, most anchors and media persons use English words in Urdu talk-shows/news when there are plenty of widely recognized Urdu words available. Urdu language, along with the religion, is one of the strongest bonds linking Pakistanis from all over Pakistan and should be respected and promoted. It is a beautiful language anyway.

 

[Paitoo]

In my case, born and raised Karachiite, there is no difficulty switching from SaRak Chaap Urdu when talking when old Karachi University friends to talking in Salees Urdu when talking with Karachi University professors or, as in the previous trip to Pakistan, with journalists at the Karachi Press Club; so from the Bollywood inspired Urdu to nice U.P Urdu in no time! BTW, I tend to think the influence of Bollywood is exaggerated in Pakistan.

Actually Bollywood Urdu is no Urdu. If you listen carefully in the older movies there is a repetitive set of words they use all the time. As if someone handed them an Urdu starter kit and they took it as the complete manual. Nowadays we have dispensed with that formality and the language sounds like people actually speak, which tends to include a fair bit of English words and local slang.

 

[Meengla]

Actually Bollywood Urdu is no Urdu. If you listen carefully in the older movies there is a repetitive set of words they use all the time. As if someone handed them an Urdu starter kit and they took it as the complete manual. Nowadays we have dispensed with that formality and the language sounds like people actually speak, which tends to include a fair bit of English words and local slang.

No. The older Bollywood movies--and I am not at all familiar with movies after late 1980s, whether Pakistani or Indian--were mostly Urdu movies! I had seen hundreds of them growing up, both Indians and Pakistani movies!! I think basically a team of writers: Saleem-Jawed (both Muslims. Brothers??) in Bollywood wrote a lot of screenplays for movies. It was pure Urdu! For example, watch 'Pakeezah' with Meena Kumari from the early 1970s. Plenty other Indian movies from the old times which would be fairly called Urdu movies. Pure Urdu and Pure Hindi are oddly similar and dissimilar enough to be different languages and yet 400-500 million people across the borders of Pakistan-India are able to converse with each other!

I don't want to get into political reasons for the change in India except my guess is that India after 1947 was still decades into coming out of the Mughal rule AND India had a need for Hindu-Muslim communities to gel together and hence Urdu was tolerated; that need is gone, especially after Modi.

Coming back to the topic: The range of sounds/voices in Urdu, as confirmed by the availability of alphabets, is astounding. I have no problem coming up with any sound except, admittedly, in distinction between 'V' and 'W'. Try saying 'Weaverville' or 'Wolverine'! It has brought smiles to Americans' faces around me, but then they can't say the 'Gh' in Afghanistan or 'Kh' in Loch Ness!! I beat them and probably most others in the range of sounds which Urdu language provides me!!

<All in good humor!>

 

[Zee-shaun]

I heard a new one today; 'lay ýer' (leasure)

The guy is a London based journalist. Listen at 3:42