Urdu should be replaced with Farsi - Interesting Read

[Developereo]

we have to eradicate this mentality in Pakistan where people say

'mera bacha tu jee English medium school mein partha hai'

Well, I think it is more about the fact that public schools are horrible so people have to send their kids to private school to get a good education. And, as far as I know, most private schools are English medium.

If public schools were on a par with private schools, you would see less of it.

 

[salman nedian]

Urdu is lot easier and flexible than most of the languages of the world. It is derived from Turkish and Farsi so that people can have a bridge language to communicate and it serves as a language of communication so no need to replace Urdu.

 

[ANDUBYLL]

English has been a bane not a boon for Pakistan and India. Both nations are at the wrong side of statistics with the worst Human development index and prosperity in the world.

I am not against English. It has been successful as a native language in USA , Australia etc, however the learning of English has not translated into the same success in India and Pakistan.

More ever, I see educated Indians and Pakistanis, the product of english medium schools and universities cannot wait to migrate to the West. The sub-continent is just not good enough for them and they are ready to provide services to their new nation, all at the expense of the poor South asian nation.

English hasn't been successful in Pakistan. Its time to give Urdu a chance !

 

[greatsequence]

Neither Pakistanis nor Bangladeshis are Arabs, and i see no reason why we should adopt arabic as our national language. We should be proud of who we are, we are DESIS. Not Arabs.

According to you we are not British or American so we should not learn English. Quran is in Arabic and the sayings of the prophet are in Arabic and to understand them properly you should know arabic. Allah has sent this beautiful book with so much love but we are not even bothering to understand what he is saying.
I am proud of myself and my language and that is exactly why I say we should have our languages as national language. Arabic is also very important as i mentioned above its not about being Arab but about being Muslim.

 

[Al-zakir]

I think it is better to have arabic then persian (if you are looking for change, otherwise we are happy with Urdu) because it will help us (muslims) to understand Quran, & hadith. & certainly try to worship Allah better then 2day we do, which is actually our main goal of life (As per Quran).

According to you we are not British or American so we should not learn English. Quran is in Arabic and the sayings of the prophet are in Arabic and to understand them properly you should know arabic. Allah has sent this beautiful book with so much love but we are not even bothering to understand what he is saying.
I am proud of myself and my language and that is exactly why I say we should have our languages as national language. Arabic is also very important as i mentioned above its not about being Arab but about being Muslim.

My point exactly. Arabic over Farsi if needs to change otherwise Urdu is just about Right for Pakistan..........

 

[alirulesall123]

I think it is better to have arabic then persian (if you are looking for change, otherwise we are happy with Urdu) because it will help us (muslims) to understand Quran, & hadith. & certainly try to worship Allah better then 2day we do, which is actually our main goal of life (As per Quran).

Or we could keep Urdu,( and learn arabic on the side) and try to interpret the Quran ourselves instead of listening to the mullahs and radicals? That will be much better than changing to language the arabic and destroying our identity.

 

[alirulesall123]

According to you we are not British or American so we should not learn English. Quran is in Arabic and the sayings of the prophet are in Arabic and to understand them properly you should know arabic. Allah has sent this beautiful book with so much love but we are not even bothering to understand what he is saying.
I am proud of myself and my language and that is exactly why I say we should have our languages as national language. Arabic is also very important as i mentioned above its not about being Arab but about being Muslim.

When did i say that? I'm saying that English should be Mandatory. And take a look at the Indonesians for example, they are thousands of miles away from the arab world, but why are they better and more gentle muslims than us? It's not about the language, it's about the mindset.

 

[Pasban]

Salam.

I just found this thread. I speak both Persian and Urdu. I cannot comment on the title of the thread because this is for Pakistanis and for Pakistanis alone to decide.


There are three things though which I have noted reading which I like to address briefly.

- Many users seem to think of Persian as a difficult language compared to Urdu. This is not true. For a non-speaker, between Urdu and Persian, he'd learn Persian quicker than Urdu for Persian is easier and more flexible.

I'll pick out a simple example, it is "Dookhtar Khoob" (good girl) and "Pisr Khoob"(good boy) in Persian where as it is "Acha Larka" but "Achi Larki" for the same. Also, where as a car or "Gari" has a female tense, a "Tanga" or cart has a male tense. You can imagine the difficulty for a learner. Now add future and past tense to it. There are no male and female tenses in Persian at all. Plus, where one could say "gana gah raha hai" and "gah raha hai gana" in Urdu for "he is singing," there is only one way in Persian. Poetry is another thing entirely.

- Also, many seem to think that Urdu and Persian are entirely the same in vocabulary or 90%. Honestly, it could be more than that but the pronunciation, grammar and sentence structure is entirely different. Urdu shares much vocabulary and the majority of the roots are derived from Persian as well but I will illustrate a simple example, take the English word "Revolution." For Urdu speakers it is "inn-qe-labh" or Persian speakers it is "enn-ge-labh."

- If a Persian speaker witnessed a conversation of Urdu speakers and had no background Urdu knowledge, or vice versa, at most he'd be able to deduce the meaning or subject of the conversation or sentence by catching some common words after guessing that the other is pronouncing them that way.

This is true for written Persian and Urdu as well. An Urdu speaker can read Persian with absolute fluency (because both use identical Persian-Arabic script) but will understand only through key words. He will pronounce the text incorrectly 90% or more though as explained above.

 

[Waffen SS]

The arabs and iranians (persians) can go to hell as far we are concerned.

Urdu is our national language but I would like the regional languages be given the status of national languages (Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi)

By the way, my mother tongue is Urdu but after the debacle of 1971, we need to respect other regional languages.

 

[Waffen SS]

People are confused with the term MOTHER TONGUE.

MOTHER TONGUE is NOT the language which OUR ANCESTORS/PARENTS speak but the language in which OUR OWN MIND THINKS.

I live in Lahore where many young people are taught in Urdu instead of Punjabi.

Therefore, they their brain (or conscience) thinks in Urdu; they are Punjabis in their ethnicity but their MOTHER TONGUE is URDU and not PUNJABI.

The term "mother tongue" is actuallty a misnomer. A lot of people have this mis-conception that it has to do something with our mother's language.

 

[Ahmad]

The arabs and iranians (persians) can go to hell as far we are concerned.

Urdu is our national language but I would like the regional languages be given the status of national languages (Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi)

By the way, my mother tongue is Urdu but after the debacle of 1971, we need to respect other regional languages.

dont be angry with persians and arabs. if you dont want their language then nobody is forcing you. at least look at the other members, they might not accept the idea, but they have respect to the other languages and people.

 

[Ahmad]

i think persian is one of the easiest languages. the absence of feminine and masculine makes it alot easier.

 

[Nima]

People are confused with the term MOTHER TONGUE.

MOTHER TONGUE is NOT the language which OUR ANCESTORS/PARENTS speak but the language in which OUR OWN MIND THINKS.

I live in Lahore where many young people are taught in Urdu instead of Punjabi.

Therefore, they their brain (or conscience) thinks in Urdu; they are Punjabis in their ethnicity but their MOTHER TONGUE is URDU and not PUNJABI.

The term "mother tongue" is actuallty a misnomer. A lot of people have this mis-conception that it has to do something with our mother's language.

I admire your thoughts b/c as a nationalist I think the same way about Iran.
But kind of ironic how your name is "waffen ss" and what's with the SS avatar? Can't you admire your own fighters instead of Germans?

 

[Frankenstein]

I think that Urdu's arabic script should be replaced with Roman Script, it would make things a hell of a lot easier, as well as drastically increase our competitiveness in the world market.

Sooraj Humein har shaam yeh darss deta hai.
Ke maghrib ki taraf jao ge toh doob jao ge

-- Allama Iqbal.

 

[niaz]

I am also an Urdu as well as Persian speaker. To say that Urdu is 90% Persian is incorrect. Actually about 50% is more to the mark. Syntax that is the way sentences are put together is quite different. However ‘Dastoor - e – Zubaan (grammar) has similarities.

Most words in Urdu belong to Old Persian or Dari, modern Persian as spoken in Tehran is different. During Shah's era, deliberate attempt was made to remove words with Arabic roots from the vocabulary.

Also meaning changes over time and meanings of some words in modern Persian and Urdu are quite different. For example the word “Aitbaar” means Credit in Persian (as with Bank) whereas in Urdu it means trust.

Language is not something that you can impose on people. Turkey tried to replace Kurdish with Turkish without success. Instead language is something that evolves over a period on its own. Just as water takes the path of least resistance, language being essentially a means of communication, incorporates new words overtime and evolves into something which is understood by majority of the people.

Farsi or Persian was the written language for official records in the subcontinent for about 800 years. Even Ranjeet Singh spoke fluent Farsi and many official documents of his time are written in Persian. However Farsi was never language of the common man. The language that the general public spoke and understood was Hindustani or Urdu. Slightly different in each region of North India but the most commonly understood language in the undivided Northern India. This is also true for current Pakistan where each province has her own spoken language but majority would understand Urdu.

English has been official language of the subcontinent for the last two hundred years; still only a small fraction of the population can speak it. Teaching English from class 1 has some benefit. This would make literate population of Pakistan bilingual, some thing not uncommon. Majority of the Swiss population is either bi or tri lingual and English is the common business language of the world.

During my time, in school we had to choose between Arabic and Persian as the optional language; just they take French or German in the UK. However, suggestion to adopt Persian or Farsi in place of Urdu is absurd. Wouldn’t it be better if we learn other regional languages such as Baluchi, Pushto or Sindhi instead?