What's new

Indo Aryan Languages of South Asia

I call bull. What's hindustani? Also your comparing common urdu to hindi heavily influenced by urdu. They are not the same languages whatsoever.

Urdu also takes vocabulary from Turkish and pakhto. You seem to be missing some very important information. Also what is your background? An American intrested in south asia?

@Indus Pakistan @Pan-Islamic-Pakistan @Mangus Ortus Novem
The mainstream Urdu we speak is not really Urdu. This confusion started when Hindustani-speaking Muhajirs migrated to Pakistan and referred to their language as Urdu.

If you read up on early Urdu literature, you will see just how different it is to 'our mainstream Urdu' to the extent that most Pakistanis would not even be able to understand it. Many cannot even understand the shairs of Allama Iqbal, let alone early Urdu literature. This has led to us terming original Urdu as 'formal Urdu' or 'Persianized Urdu'. Most Pakistanis even think that our national anthem is in Farsi.

Previously. Aryan vocabulary entered into our HIMALAYAN Prakrit languages the same we have English vocabulary today.
Inaccurate comparison...

The British occupation of modern-day Pakistan lasted about 100 years, they did not mingle with the population and were viewed as hostile occupiers.

The Aryans on the other-hand were a full-scale migration into the Indus Region, that absorbed the Harrapan remnants to birth our core cultures and languages.

Do our languages become Anglo-Saxon just because we use English vocabulary ? Absolutely not. Our languages remain Prakrit to the core to these days. Similar way, despite having a large Turko-arabic vocabulary, Farsi did not become a semitic or Mongol language.
Prakrit Languages descend from Sanskrit, primarily as regional variants. Prakrit itself is a category for non-Sanskrit Indo-Aryan languages that naturally developed out of Sanskrit. Prakrit languages were distinct from each other in the same sense that Punjabi and Bengali is.
 
.
Could you explain what you mean by this?

Not much, since I am fundamentally a one/two liner poster.:lol:

I am basically agreeing to the posts of @Old School. May be that can be helpful.

Previously. Aryan vocabulary entered into our HIMALAYAN Prakrit languages the same we have English vocabulary today. Do our languages become Anglo-Saxon just because we use English vocabulary ? Absolutely not. Our languages remain Prakrit to the core to these days. Similar way, despite having a large Turko-arabic vocabulary, Farsi did not become a semitic or Mongol language.

It is also incorrect that the flow of loan words was only one way, from Sanskrit to the Prakrit languages. The exchange was reciprocal, in nature, though, may be, with varying quantum of flow.
 
.
I call bull. What's hindustani? Also your comparing common urdu to hindi heavily influenced by urdu. They are not the same languages whatsoever.

Urdu also takes vocabulary from Turkish and pakhto. You seem to be missing some very important information. Also what is your background? An American intrested in south asia?

@Indus Pakistan @Pan-Islamic-Pakistan @Mangus Ortus Novem

Hindustani is the old name for Urdu when Muslims ruled Hindustan. Since, Hindustan no longer exists and the Muslim educated class had been wiped out or forced to flee to Pakistan by the British and Hindus, it no longer exists in India. Urdu in its true form is a dialect of Dari, which was the official language of the Dilli Sultanat, Ghaznavi, Ghori, and Mughal Empire. Afghanistan still speaks Dari as their main language today.

Hindi is a relatively recent language, being a manipulated version of the Urdu language where Arabic, Farsi/Dari, and Turkish words were removed to add archaic Sanskrit words and other words from South Indian languages or Bengali/Pali.

Urdu and Hindi are the same language, there's no debate about this. Very slight differences as Urdu has more loanwords from Farsi and Hindi from Sanskrit, but they are 95% the same.

I'm American with Pakistani roots interested in South Asian history, linguistics, and culture.

Totally wrong here, if you speak another Pakistani language like Pakistani Punjabi, Hindko, or Pukhto, you will realize just how close Pakistani Urdu is to those languages.

Common street language among poor and uneducated sounds Indian because of heavy influence of Bollywood, but if you listen to college professors, politicians, poets, and religious leaders, you can tell that true Urdu is unintelligible from its bastardized version, Hindi.


Shah Mehmood Qureshi here is speaking proper Urdu.
 
.
The mainstream Urdu we speak is not really Urdu. This confusion started when Hindustani-speaking Muhajirs migrated to Pakistan and referred to their language as Urdu.
I don't think this is the case.. while it's true that Urdu has evolved over time and many Muhajir communities didn't belong to pure urdu speaking areas, there were many who migrated from Luchnow and urdu speaking areas of MP and UP. The new generation might be weak in understanding the poetry of Allama Iqbal due to mixture of languages in Karachi, but you you just go back one generation they can understand Allama or Ghalib etc.

Muhajirs didn't just arrive from Central India, they came from Bihar, Gujrat, Bombay, Hyderabad etc, and in Punjab they arrived from Eastern side of Punjab and Dehli etc.. Then the people from other parts of Pakistan started settling in Karachi.. Punjabis, Saraikis, Pakhtoons, Balochis, Kachhi Memons (and Sindhis were already here of course).. we can safely assume that 25% of the Karachi population belongs to Central India, the rest is from all over India and other parts of Pakistan. This evolved Urdu over time.. But still in those 25% households, very good urdu is spoken..

If you watch 70s and 80s PTV dramas, you will see very good Urdu... and you will see many people in Karachi still speaking in the same manner inside their houses (street language is different though).. but inside our homes, we still use Urdu..

So when we talk to our fathers, mothers or uncles/ aunties, we talk like this:

"Kia Haal hain Janab", "Allah ka Karam hai"..
"Tashreef rakhain", "Khana Lag gaya", "Chalain aap pehlay shuru karain", "Nahi pehlay aap lijiey", "Khana lazeez bana hai, bhabhi ke haath main zaiqa hai", "aap isi tarah tareef kartay raha kijiey"

But when we talk among friends:

"kidhar tha bhai?, main samjha nikal lia patli gali se", "tu fikar na kar tujh se pehlay nahi marunga"

"beth ja kaantay nahi lagay jo tashreef main lag jaeingay", "shukar hai khana lag gaya, warna main tou samjha tha aaj bhooka marega", "abey le bhi le jaldi, doosray wait kar rahay hain".. "bc khatam karega kia"

Its not about words.. but the way we speak on streets is completely different..

Most Pakistanis even think that our national anthem is in Farsi.
The national anthem was written in a manner that can be understood by both Farsi and Urdu speakers..

There is not a single word I don't understand in our national anthem, but all the words used are originally persian words, also used in Urdu..
 
. .
Can you understand Punjabi?
Pashto is a totally different language. Punjabi Sindhi and Urdu are similar
Not completely but close to 75%, because my susrael is from Punjab.. and I have many Punjabi friends from Faisalabad I made during my stay in UK. They forced me to watch Punjabi comedy stage shows..

But yes, Punjabi is closest to Urdu. Infact, it is easier to understand Punjabi than Farsi.
 
. . .
English takes vocabulary heavily from French, and Latin. That still doesn't mean that English is a romance language, it is still considered a Germanic language.

Urdu originated in central India. A pakhto speaker and an Urdu speaker can not communicate with each other. Therefore they're languages aren't mutually intelligible
I call bull. What's hindustani? Also your comparing common urdu to hindi heavily influenced by urdu. They are not the same languages whatsoever.

Urdu also takes vocabulary from Turkish and pakhto. You seem to be missing some very important information. Also what is your background? An American intrested in south asia?

@Indus Pakistan @Pan-Islamic-Pakistan @Mangus Ortus Novem
 
.
Not just poor and uneducated, even educated class speaks street language. But I think it is a common phenomena in every country.

The thing is, if we want, we can speak Urdu perfectly.

In fact, intelligibility of a language is an altogether different thing than the comprehension and appreciation of the higher literature in that language.
 
.
Urdu is marvel of PakCivilisation...which is in itself The Synthesis of the entire IslamicWorld.... so in essence Urdu is the Language of Muslims.... a proto UnifiedLanguage of the IslamicWorld.

From music to architecture ...from cloths to cusines... we brought Civilisation to Hindustan. Even the word Hindu is Ours....

The Heartland Pakistan is the inheritor of the Synthesis of at least 1000 years...and before that many mellania @Rafeh

Sanskrit is Ours....

Any Pakistani can speak Urdu .... and with a bit of education good Urdu... since it is OurNaturalLanuage.

So this is insulting to even have a thread that classifies OurLanguage to be Gangu.... and that hindi is a bastard version of Urdu. Period.

The discussion must be more about Urdu Dynamics, it is ability to absorb anything and Urdufy it... same as Pakistan... we Pakistanify everything/everyone... that is The Heartland!
Ironically, Urdu is a foreign language to Pakistan. Prior to 1947, hardly anyone in modern-day Pakistan spoke it, Farsi was significantly more common despite British attempts to replace it.

Even today, only about 8% of Pakistanis speak it as their mother tongue.
 
.
Ironically, Urdu is a foreign language to Pakistan. Prior to 1947, hardly anyone in modern-day Pakistan spoke it, Farsi was significantly more common despite British attempts to replace it.

Even today, only about 8% of Pakistanis speak it as their mother tongue.

Absolutely. The educated people in those times in the present territory of Pakistan apart from their native languages could speak, understand and were well versed in Dari/Farsi and also used to learn Arabic in madrassas. Urdu was not spoken in these lands by the native Muslims. It was only after the British c**** took over these lands that they imposed one language over the entire British India and Muslims of these lands had to suffer the most as over one century they imposed a language on these lands that was not native to the Muslims of these areas.

@Mangus Ortus Novem Sir don't you think that in a hindsight this decision of making Urdu our national language after creation of Pakistan was wrong. Not having Urdu as our language could have protected our society better from gangu influence like their POS movies, songs etc over the last 30 years. Now our harami entertainment media having learnt from them is in a race that who will do more kanjar khana. Its all a big kanjar show on entertainment media these days. A total "Ikhlaqiaat ka Janaza".

Also Allama Iqbal's two thirds poetry is in persian btw.
 
.
80% Pakistanio ko RSS chief Mohan Bhagat ki Hindi speach samjh he n aayy.
 
.
Previously. Aryan vocabulary entered into our HIMALAYAN Prakrit languages the same we have English vocabulary today. Do our languages become Anglo-Saxon just because we use English vocabulary ? Absolutely not. Our languages remain Prakrit to the core to these days. Similar way, despite having a large Turko-arabic vocabulary, Farsi did not become a semitic or Mongol language.


I think the underlying grammar structure, subject-pedicate differentiation are what define a language
 
. .

Latest posts

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom