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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 138.217.74.59 (talk) at 10:46, 3 August 2010 (→number of speakers). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Influences

No mention of Telegu, Gujurati, Bihari etc.. on the influence of urdu

While Urdu does borrow on Persian and Arabic, the root and sources of the language(vis a vis grammer/structure) was Sanskrit and the language developed in regions where native indian languages were spoken. More recently, it was the official language of Hyderabad princely state where there was a majority Telegu speaking population. That is why, even when spoken by a native speaker, urdu still sounds very similar to other native indian language and not like Persian or arabic. Just because there are many now native urdu speakers and/or mohajirs (indian refugees in pakistan) who have forgotten their native/mother tongue, the fact of the matter is that, Urdu is not a true native language, but rather a more modern innovation and amalgamation of several languages with Sanskrit and native indian languages at its root. I think these other native languages like Telegu need to highlighted as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.63.229.127 (talk) 20:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sanskrit

Its really funny to see Arabic, Persian and Turkic mentioned as major influences on Urdu while leaving out the biggest influence of all, Sanskrit! For God's sake dont parade you servilke attitude towards Persians and Arabs on Wikipedia! When we say Hindi is Sanskritised Hindustani, we imply that its higher vocabulary is of Sanskrit origin, that doesnt take away the fact that Hindi and Urdu's basic vocabulary IS of Sanskritic origin. Thats why it is placed in Indo-Aryan languages language family. File:England flag large.png अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 18:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As is Persian:}

Grammar provides the basic structure of any language. Grammatically, urdu is not structured like Persian (order of subject,object,verb, tense association, gender association, etc). urdu grammar is entirely that of Hindi. Chibber (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[User Chibber][reply]
Actually Persian dialects comes form Old Persian and Avestan which are the closest relatives to Sanskrit (especially Avestan), but not derived.76.181.237.245 (talk) 11:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments. As a result of them, I included that Urdu was an Apabhramsha in the introduction. If you would like to make any additions, please feel free to do so. Thanks, AnupamTalk 00:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Influence of Pashto on Urdu's Development

While it is undeniable that Urdu was born and grew under the influence of Sansikrit, Persian, Arabic and Turki, the same cannot be said about Pashto. The influence of the former category of languages on literary Urdu is manifest and clear. I don't think you can find of significant traces of Pashto's influence, if any traces at all, on pre-20th century Urdu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.3.207.51 (talk • contribs)

I agree with you. As a result, I removed the mention of Pashto on Urdu's influence. Thanks, AnupamTalk 00:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some glaring factual inaccuracies

(1) The most concise, easiest definition of Urdu is: it is Hindi, augumented with a heavy Persian and Arabic influence - which occured during the Muslim Mughal rule in South Asia; the long, arduous definition of Urdu in this article's start actually applies to Hindi and not Urdu. However, it is a fact that most of those belonging to the Pakistan or Indian Muslim lobby like to fudge over deliberately such issues for various reasons of subtle historical rivalry rather than any reasons of academic merit. A few sentences below this definition, the writer him (or her) self acknowledges the fact that the main difference between Urdu and Hindi is the "imported" Arabic script in which Urdu is written!

(2) Neither Urdu or Hindi are spoken ANYWHERE in Afghanistan. This is a fallacy that is also deliberately promoted by some Urdu speakers for the same historical reasons described above. If it is indeed spoken there, a valid reference should be cited. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.56.30.129 (talk) 15:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I'm sorry, but I don't think you entirely understand the situation of Urdu relative to Hindi. Although they are, indeed, essentially the same language, neither is a form of the other. They're both basically artificial augmentations of the Khariboli dialect of the North Indian dialect continuum. Hindi's vocabulary is augmented by Sanskrit, Urdu's by Arabic and Persian. BovineBeast 19:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry too, but I think you've given a very POV statement yourself on Urdu and Hindi. I will completely agree with you if can state references but if not then I'm sure we can leave it at your POV. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Apermal (talk • contribs) 20:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]
I agree with Bovine Beast partly, that neither is a form of the other, but they are not a form of Khariboli either. They are both different forms of Hindustani as per the linguistic community. This "Khariboli" as known is spoken in the region of Uttar Pradesh adjacent to Haryana, i.e. Meerut-Saharanpur districts, and is different from standard Hindi/Urdu grammar for sure, even though it is considered to be the closest of all known dialects. I have lived in Meerut myself for more than half of my life. Maquahuitl 14:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blacklisted site

I had to remove this: *[http://www.ishipress.com/wordlist.htm Hindi-{{Unicode|Urdū}}-Pashtu-English Word list:] Comparative list of 210 words in English, Hindi/{{Unicode|Urdū}}, and Pashtu/Pashto/Pukhtu

because it was on the spam blacklist. TimBentley (talk) 18:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.samsloan.com/wordlist.htm should work, if you want (for some reason ishipress.com is on the list, but not samsloan.com, even though they seem to be identical). TimBentley (talk) 19:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for language help

Please put all request for Urdu translations or script transliterations in WP:WikiProject Pakistan#Language_requests. - Syockit (talk) 18:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu translations?

hi,

I'm in a process of creating a uniform system of creating articles on political parties across wikipedias of different languages. I need help with Urdu translations, please contribute at User:Soman/Lang-Help-ur. --Soman 14:10, 26 اکتوبر 2006 (UTC)

Need Urdu script

Can someone please add the Urdu script at Red Mosque? Badagnani 07:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done, AnupamTalk 08:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Days of the Week

I'm trying to translate the days of the week. I believe they are;
Itwaar (Sun)
Peer (Mon)
Mangal (Tue)
Budh (Wed)
Jumaaraat (Thu)
Jumaah (Fri)
Haftah (Sat)

Two appear to be the same in Hindi and originate from Hindi gods;
Mangal : Mangalavār : Mangala
Budh : Budhavār : Budha

And Friday being the Islamic gathering day originates from Arabic;

Jumaah : yaum al-jum‘ah : Jumu'ah

But I cannot find where the names originate for;

Itwaar ?
Peer =?
Jumaaraat =?
Haftah = Week?

Can anyone help?--Pnb73 (talk) 12:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Days of the week were named after planetary gods. The first two days are almost always associated with the Sun and the Moon, thus in hindi - Ait- or Ravi- var (both named for the Sun, and Som- var for the moon. Chibber (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[User Chibber}[reply]

  • "Peer", if I am to believe informal input from elders, comes from the word for "master" (as in Sufi Pir)--because The Prophet was born on a Monday.

--iFaqeer (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Jumaraath is "Jumah raat", the eve (raat) of Friday.
  • Haftah means week, yes.
  • Itwaar I believe comes from the Sanskrit/Hindustani name for the day and you would need to look it up there.

Yes, the names are shared with Hindi (the two languages are joined at hip, after all). In fact, IMHO, it is entirely valid Urdu to use whole naming schemes based on the Sanskrit roots, the Persian roots, and the Arabic roots. Thus:

  • Monday is also "Do Shamba" (from the Persian Yak Shamba/Shambah (for Sunday), Do Shamba... see for example this place name in Xinkiang/Chinese Turkestan --I emphasize the dated, almost un-PC alternative name as a nod to the Turkish and Persian roots that Urdu also has, and shares with the culture in that region);
  • Saturday is also saneechar and, from the Hindustani root, soamvaar (BOTH of which might actually be from a Sanskrit root, also); . In fact, saneechar is commoner than haftah, if I am not mistaken.
  • and so on...

Poets, in particular will resort to using, for example, "Shambah" if it fits the meter and register of their piece.

Oh, and were you asking so you could help with: http://www.unilang.org/wiki/index.php/Urdu_days ? In that case, Juma is not "reunion", but "gathering"; as in the day the "ummah" (community) gathers (jama' hothee hai). Thus you could say it is short for what you wrote above: Yaum-ul-Juma'ah; or the day of the gathering (for Friday prayers).

Thank you both very much! (assume two people as 2nd text unsigned).
No, I was not aware of the unilang page, this was for the article week-day names. I was aware it translated to gathering like many other arabic names for the same day. Urdu was not included in that article but had been mentioned in the discussion page so I wanted to include it. (Now done).
Just need to find more or the meaning of Itwaar (Sunday), doesn't appear to relate to Surya like other Sanskrit/Hindustani names for the same day??--Pnb73 (talk) 09:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pakistan Scouting

Can someone help render Almustaid (Be Prepared), the Scout Motto, into Urdu script? Thanks! Chris 06:23, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Almustaid in Urdu script would be المستعد, but this is Arabic. Be Prepared in Urdu would be تیار ہو tayaar ho. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Azimsultan (talk • contribs) 00:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need Urdu

Need Urdu script at Tawaif. Badagnani (talk) 06:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have added the requested Hindi and Urdu scripts. In Devanagari, the word is spelled तवायफ़ and in Nastaliq, the word is spelled طوائف. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 00:44, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Normalizing the transliteration of the name "Urdu"

This article uses both the forms "Urdu" and "Urdū". Shall we normalize the name as "Urdu" without the macron above the 'u' when referring to the name of the language? Sarayuparin 03:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I propose that "Urdū" be normalized as "Urdu" in this article. We should drop the macron or use the technical transliterations for the other languages mentioned here: Arabic, Balochi, Brahui, Gujarati, Hindi, Hindko, Kashmiri, Pashto, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Siraiki, etc. etc. Sarayuparin 03:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(Just an observer here) I was actually noticing that the name of the language varies a lot in such way. Why is that? If you have to write the name of the language according to the language itself, there would be no "French", but only "français", or "português" for "Portuguese". The names should all be in English, no? After all, this is the English version of Wikipedia and most people who speak English won't know how to pronounce the macron. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.139.129.3 (talk • contribs) 04:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with anon. Personally, while there are some words (e.g. "café") that are written with diacritics often enough that they're considered normal, it annoys me that people feel the need to use them for such common imported words as "Urdu", when the vast majority of English speakers do not. Over at Nasta`liq script someone even felt the need to use "Pākistān", despite the fact that English writers have almost never written it like that (it's the first time I've ever seen it; 133 Google hits for "Urdū -Urdu", 5.2m for "-Urdū Urdu"). Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that article titles should use English; while this doesn't extend to article text I think it is the most sensible approach in general. I'm going to make this change. Hairy Dude 23:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed this article used the macron on "Hindi", "Hindustani" and "Pakistan" as well, so I changed those for the same reason. Hairy Dude 00:04, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What about 'Ordou'?

I believe that's the Turkish word from the same root, if not the root of the name for "Urdu"...
--iFaqeer (talk) 08:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Does it mean "camp"? If it does, it's the root word, since zabaan-e-urdu is persian for language of the camp (referring to the Mughal camps).67.209.48.2 (talk) 15:47, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two issues

First: The warning for missing citations is probably appearing for some time. Especially the 'Footnotes' need attention

Second: This artcile is too long for a single page viewing and needs separation into more articles. --Islescape 12:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Number of speakers

Actual population of Urdu Speakers

What's the actual population of native Urdu speakers the world over?? There are no completely reliable statistics available. The 61 million figure is quite doubtful, as the population of native Urdu speakers in India alone, is around 80 million, if we speak of today. I think there are more than 100 million native Urdu speakers in this world. Realton 16:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Number of speakers in Pakistan

According to The World Factbook of CIA, Pakistan's population is 165.8 million, and only 8% speak Urdu, which equals to about 13 million people. According to the article, 160 million Pakistanis speak Urdu. Quite a discrepancy here! I say, for me the trustworthiness of information I get from Wikipedia has just gone way down... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.149.184.142 (talk) 19:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Read it again. It says native speakers. Only 13 million people may speak Urdu as a native toungue, but due to its status as a national language everyone can speak it.

Yes it is mother language for 13 million people in pakistan but virtually it is spoken almost by everyone as second language because it is the lingua france for the people of different regions of pakistan to communicate with one another.

Added dubious tag - bad speakers count

I added 3 dubious tags to relevant areas in the info box.

It claims 130m native speakers, while the "rankings by speakers" page claims 60m. It claims 270m total speakers, while the rankings by speakers, which is sourced, claims 104m total as a maximum, with 60m as a lower end. It claims a near tie with Italian and Turkish - yet there are no sources that claim either 130m Italian/Turkish native speakers, or even less 270m total speakers for these. I'm not sure what to believe, but I think it it best to keep the dubious tag until this is sorted, rather than to mislead. Althena (talk) 05:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu Speakers in India

I made the following edit because as per the reference given, India only had 48,062,000, (which makes around 4.5% of the population) as per 1997. To make it easier as there's a long list on the initial reference page, click here.

I'm not sure how the initial 200mil+ figure was arrived at; but it is certainly incorrect. If the figure was arrived by adding the number of Hindi and Urdu speakers together, it is an extremely inaccurate way of tabulating. This is because, the list represents the number of Native Urdu speakers. How can native Hindi speakers be Native Urdu speakers? The two languages are considered different! --Flexijane (talk) 18:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The various numbers of speakers given (Urdu, Urdu plus Hindi, first language speakers of Urdu and/or Urdu plus Hindi) need to be better sourced and they should agree with each other - there should not be more first language speakers of Urdu than there are total speakers of Urdu, for example (that mistake does not occur in the article as far as I know, it is just an example). The estimates of the number of speakers are wildly different. As for the sources, one of the main ones is a high school web page that uses the old Encarta encyclopedia of 1998 and a religious group SIL International, that has their own motives for manipulating the reported number of speakers of different languages. However, other than the fact that their numbers do not agree with those of linguists, I did not find evidence that they are doing anything improper (I only investigated for a few minutes). Finally, since the article is about the Urdu language instead of Urdu and Hindi, I suggest that Hindi speakers not be included in any statistics. -- Kjkolb (talk) 12:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not only are Urdu and Hindi mutually intelligible, they are also indistinguishable. Urdu's uniqueness comes from its borrowed vocabulary, which oddly enough is manifest in even the most Sanskritized Hindi.76.181.237.245 (talk) 11:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


8% population of Afghanistan speak Urdu?

In the article there is written.........

" Afghanistan (320,000, 8%) "

How is it possible? Any source for it? There are no Urdu speakers in Afghanistan. I am an Afghan Pathan. I can understand and speak Urdu, but when needed. I don't speak it as my native language. I speak Pashto, but when I talk to Urdu speakers then I speak Urdu. So saying that 8% population of Afghanistan speaks Urdu is 100% incorrect. I would request you to correct this and provide sources, otherwise remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.102.16.67 (talk) 04:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there are Urdu speakers in Afghanistan. Just because they don't speak it as their native language doesn't mean they don't know it. Plus, there are those people raised speaking Urdu at home as a native language. And just because you are an Afghan doesn't necessarily make you an authority on the subject. - azimsultan (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request For Re-Evaluation of Number of Urdu Speakers

The numbers given at 60 million native and 180 million total is simply wrong. I see no documentation or method of analysis here. If I get a chance to do research I will revise the numbers, but in the meantime if there is a knowledgeable person interested in this subject I would ask them to please do this. Several people in the discussion have already pointed out important issues regarding the estimtes. Here are my points.

  1. Urdu and Hindi as spoken by the majority of the people in India and Pakistan are virtually indistinguishable. There are often regional differences but these are as much from the influence of local languages than the difference between Hindi and Urdu.
  2. It is true that what people consider Hindi contains more sanskrit words and what they call Urdu contains more Persian words and Arabic words, most of which came trhough Persian and not directly from Arab contact. This prevailing dicotomy is reflected in the news casts from India and Pakistan. It is quite possible for an Urdu or Hindi speaking person NOT to be able to understand either the Pakistani or Inidian newscasts!
  3. It is commonly understood that changing the script does not change the language. Therefore the difference between the scripts of Hindi and Urdu is not a distinguishing feature of the two languages. They have the same grammer, idiomatic useage of words, expressions and share a majority of their vocabulary.
  4. The issue of "native speakers" is also problematic. There are no references. If a survey was done, it should be cited. We should be able to look at the assumptions made and decide whether to believe the results or not. There are plenty of people who are "truly bilingual" and they may be left out of the "native speaker" category depending on how that is defined. This would be a much larger number of people in the Indian subcontinent than in most other parts of the world.
  5. Is should be recognized that Hindi and Urdu are very closely allied languages and there is no way to distinbuish the two in census numbers on how many speak Urdu and how many speak Hindi. This should be stated clearly in doing the estimate of number of speakers.
    I challange anyone to go to India, take a random sample of 500 people, ask them the same questions and then tell me how many replied in Urdu and how many in Hindi. If you go to Pakistan and do the same you may find as much variance as in India, but everyone is so biased that they would never call any of the subjects Hindi speakers. I believe those of you who are students of the Indian subcontinent and know its languages and customs will agree with this point. If not, I would like to hear your views in the discussion page here and some suggestions on how these numbers can be made more realistic.
  6. There is an article in Wikipedia: Hindustani Language that covers some of this material quite nicely and should be cross-referenced.

So here are some recommendations:

  1. Take out the numbers and say "unknown" or "disputed". This is the most conservative approach and I would rather see this than the present indefensible numbers.
  2. Give a range and explain it: 200 million - 1 billion (the upper limit is taken from the Wikipedia article on Hindustani-language)
  3. Cross list the Hindi and Urdu articles and discuss in the text the ambiguity in defining the two languages. See also Wikipedia: Hindustani Language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.201.107 (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chart numbers completely wrong.

The few pockets of excellence in this unhappy article are overwhelmed by pure rubbish.

A case in point is the Indian chart purporting to show the global penetration of Urdu. It is not credible, start to finish. I'm tempted to just delete it.

The first entry, India, notes 51,536,111 urdu speakers. That's about 4% of the Indian population, not 58.2%. The intended figure is probably 515 million based on the 2001 total population, but this would also mean that all Hindi speakers are also Urdu speakers.

The figures for the second entry, Pakistan, are also fiction. Pakistan's population is close to 200 million. Even in 2001, 38 million sspeakers would have been a lot less than 44.2% of the population. And a lot more than 44% of the Pakistani population speaks Urdu, at least as a second language.

The figure for Bangladesh is lower than people expect, but not THAT low. The same is true for Afghanistan, and in any case the article itself asserts that most of the Afghan population can speak Urdu (which is pure falsehood), not 0.8%.

The global figure of 88 million Urdu speakers is therefore crap. The real figure is probably four times that.

Pristine2 (talk) 04:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Official figures

The matter of counting native Hindi and Urdu speakers (note that I say native, the total number is impossible the calculate anyway) intrigues me. So I checked the official numbers here for Pakistan and here for India. The population of Pakistan keeps growing fast so if we assume the total population is 170 million the number of Urdu speakers is somewhere approaching 13 million in Pakistan. So when Indian and overseas speakers are added the Ethnologue figure is quite realistic.

What bothers me on the other hand is that the Cencus of India says 422 million people "returned the language [Hindi] as their mother tongue" but Ethnologue says only 182 million! --Pollodiablowiki (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Urdenglish?

Can anyone cite the use of "Urdenglish"? I ask because this term might just be a synonym of Hinglish. There may be reluctance amongst code-switching Urdu speakers to term this creole as "Hinglish" because of the perceived association with "Hindi". Realistically, though, the base language used in the creolization of Hindi or Urdu with English is in fact neither Hindi or Urdu, but the elemental "Hindustani" that serves as the foundation of both languages. Besides, the term "Urdenglish" sounds too contrived. Sarayuparin 20:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Urdenglish sound contrived -- but its meant to be -- just like "hinglish" or "spanglish". I have actually heard someone use that word, but it is entirely possible. I agree, citation needed.

I believe the word is "Engdu" or "Urdlish".

--iFaqeer (talk) 08:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meharbani

The word means Thank you not Please as it is written on the page

It literally means "provision of love". Szhaider 18:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In practice the word means something close to the English word "kindness." Functionally, this can be both a "please" (if used in a request) or a "thank you" (after receiving a service). Pristine2 (talk) 04:17, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Possible improvements

I copyedited the introduction of the article. Please take a look and feel free to improve it further.

I think that article needs to be reorganized into a more standard/encyclopedic form, for instance see the section divisions used in French language, Japanese language. Comparing the article structure I don't think "Levels of Formality", "Politeness", "Urdu and Bollywood", "South Indian Urdu" and others need to be top-level sections (although their content should perhaps be retained). I also could not understand what the "Urdu Script" section (as opposed to the "Writing system" section) was meant to convey.

If that is an opinion shared by other editors here, I would be happy to take a stab at reorganizing the article structure. Abecedare 10:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Need for a common "Hindustani" language

I think there is a great need for amalgamation of Hindi and Urdu into a single language. Both are almost the same languages. Unfortunately Urdu has suffered a lot as it's termed as muslim's language by hindus but on the other hand they speak the same lingo. Hindi and Urdu are basically same but have different scripts. The language of common man in hindi speaking states of India ( like U.P, M.P and Delhi) is more Urdu than hindi.Same is the case with bollywood. There is a dire need to de-persianize and de-sanskritize these languages and a common vocabulary should be implemented.It's present day India where Urdu was born and flourished but now the same country is making complete mess of it. The hindustani language should be promoted as it's the second largest language of this world with more than 500 million native speakers.Realton 16:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On literary level, Urdu and Hindi are two completely different languages. An Urdu ‎speaker cannot convey complex analytical ideas to a Hindi speaker as vocabulary ‎becomes more complex and completely different. I personally had such an experience ‎and I had to use English as I had to explain every single word as if I was talking to a ‎child. In fact, Urdu although flourished in present day India was invented by ‎predominantly Muslim army of a Muslim King Babur. And that's why Urdu is still ‎considered a language of Muslims. Hindi or Hindustani is a more sansikratized form of ‎Urdu. Remove Persian from Urdu and Urdu is no more. Remove sanskrit from Hindi and Hindi is no more.‎ Szhaider 16:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True. Hindi and Urdu carry furthur more differences than scripts and religious words.No doubt the languages do carry striking similarities,just as Hebrew and Arabic,but it would be short-sighted to classify them as "the same" language.As for uniting Hindi and Urdu?I don't see what purpose this serves.And why should this new Hindi-Urdu language be "Hindustani"?That would be like combining Persian and Arabic to create "Iranian" Nadirali 20:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)Nadirali[reply]

My friend, you should see the purpose. The political purpose of diminishing Pakistan's culture. [[User:|Szhaider]] 20:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes I see it.But we wont allow that to happen and as long as people like us are around,it wont happen.Nadirali 21:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)Nadirali[reply]

K--D-Boy 22:30, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I disagree with Mr Szhaider views totally. The purpose of combining these two languages doesn't carry any negative aspirations. Also correct your history as Urdu was not invented by army of Babur, If that's the case then whats about the poetry of Amir Khusru, Who died centuries ago before Babur's invasion. Actually most narrow minded people start the same rhetoric of hindu and muslim identities. Urdu can be termed as islamic version of hindi. The language of western U.P and eastern haryana, i.e Khari boli is very similar to Urdu and is infact the base of Urdu. The hindi-Urdu conflict is just 150 years old. Most people just start conservative approach while posting their views but I respect your opinion though as my liberal and secular thinking binds me to do so. Regards Realton 16:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Since when has Urdu been a solely Pakistani ownership? India has more Native Urdu speakers than Pakistan.File:England flag large.png अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 18:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Warning! Typical pro-India everything spaz above! azimsultan (talk) 00:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu in Not a real Pakistani language, it was IMPORTED by the millions of Muslim refugees from India who gave up there own mother tongues(Bihari, Gujrati, Sanskrit) centuries ago. Furthermore, the British also wanted to import and impart Urdu on the Pakistani population. Urdu is the mother tongue of less than 3% of Pakistani, the other 97% have learned it as a 2nd or 3rd language. Even the Urdu spoken in Pakistan today is still changing. In fact most Pakistani dont like speaking the Urdu spoken by the Mohajir (indian muslim refugees) as many of the phonetics and proverbs are unnatural for them. Many people in Pakistan also oppose Urdu, as they feel its promotion as a national language is not a good idea and want to revert to Persian or another language. There is much controversy over the Urdu language in Pakistan despite its official recognition, as the biggest supporters of the Urdu language are the Mohajirs, and some Panjabi's who have given up their mother tongues in favour of Urdu, but most self-respecting Pakistani's are acutely aware of their mother tongue and the controversy with URDU. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.164.238 (talk) 21:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]


If you push me to take sides, I come from generations of Urdu speakers. And actually think that "Hindi movie" and particularly "hindi songs" for the products of Bollywood, for example, is just plain wrong.

But just behold the whole mix of Urdu, Hindi, Hindustani and affiliated dialects offer us in terms of diction, vocabulary, registers, literature, content. The whole cultural mix offers us both content (literature, philosophy, forms) and linguistic richness (vocabulary, structure, grammar) that draws on three if not more of the world's most important cultures: "Sanskriti", Arabic, Persian, Turkish--and even down to Dravidian and so on. Personally, I think we should not obsess about whether they are separate or one; but revel in and enjoy that diversity and use it to become richer, deeper, better people.

So I hear you, and might agree with parts of what you say, but I don't believe the Wikipedia is a place to discuss or promote opinions. The wikipedia's job is to document things as they stand. And as the linguists say, "a language is a dialect with an army to back it up"; and especially today, Hindi and Urdu have two of the world's largest armies backing them up. Not to mention that Urdu is officially recognized as an official language in India, too.

--iFaqeer (talk) 08:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Very well said!!! " think we should not obsess about whether they are separate or one; but revel in and enjoy that diversity and use it to become richer, deeper, better people." WAH, kya baat hai! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.209.48.2 (talk) 15:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prespectives on Urdu, Hindi and Hindustani

I agree with the last writer (iFaqeer). I would say that yes - you can make Urdu and Hindi very different from each other if you choose some legitimate but ultimately esoteric forms of the two languages. If you do this, you don't get the languages that everyone speaks. Most of "urdu" becomes Persian and Arabic words with Urdu grammer, so they are not even understandable to Persian and Arabic speakers and also not understandable to a majority of Urdu speakers. This is also true with Hindi as it becomes highly sanskritized.

The question is: What is Urdu? Is it this highly Persianized language or is the language that people actually speak, write and read in everyday affairs. That latter language is a fusion of all Indian cultures - Hindu and Muslim, modern and ancient. It's roots pre-date Islamic influences. That fused Urdu and fused Hindi is very much the same language. It is the means by which diverse peoples of India and of Pakistan, communicate with each other; it is the symbol of the fusion of cultures and it is a bond of common heritage. An encyclopedia article, such as this one, needs to express this common reality of Urdu and Hindi, in neutral terms, rather than continue endless debates on how to separate one language from the other.

And I also agree that Bollywood movies are this fusion language and thus cannot be claimed as either just Hindi or Urdu. From a linguistics point of view it is possible to make a count of words by origin as used in a movie say. A criteria can be developed of where the dividing line is between Urdu and Hindi. If that is done, I hypothesize that a vast majority of Bollywood movies will fall near that line. In this linguistic sense if we take Hindustani-Language as a fusion language, it is bipolar. That is if pushed in one direction with higher content of Persian and Arabic words it will go to one language let's say "pure urdu" and if taken in the other direction it will become "pure hindi". I hesitate in using the word "pure" because of its other connotations. Neither of these "pure" forms are used in a majority of applications. Moreover, no matter how hard you try it is unlikely that either of these extremes can expunge all words of the opposite origin. Other languages have similar polarities, but perhaps not as extreme as Hindustani.


Revision!

Referring to revision of 21:07, 29 November 2006 by Sarayuparin, I appreciate the enthusiasms but disagree with this particular change. If there is no political significance, then let's leave the order as it has been since 2004. If someone is really eager to contribute, there is enough room for improvement in the main text. --Islander 23:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not "enthusiasms"; it's objectivity. What's wrong with alphabetical ordering? Look at English. Obviously, the language was spoken in the United Kingdom before Australia, Canada, and the United States, but the United Kingdom appears, appropriately, in alphabetical order in the list of countries where English is spoken. Alphabetical order is used for Arabic as well. Why not apply the same principle to Urdu? Just because the order has been "Pakistan, India" since 2004 is no justification not to change it to "India, Pakistan" now. So, what is the objective reason to leave it out of alphabetical order? Is it the size of the population of speakers in the respective country? If so, then should India (with 50 million Urdu speakers) not come before Pakistan (with its 11 million)? This appears to be the rationale for other South Asian languages that are spoken across contiguous borders or that are transnational; see the Punjabi article; the Bengali article (100 million in Bangladesh, 70 million in India); and the Kashmiri article (4.4 million in India, 105,000 in Pakistan). If there truly is no political significance, let us at least order the countries rationally, either by alphabetical order or size of population of speakers. I've already contributed to the article, now I'm just continuing to make improvements. I look forward to your comments. Thanks for keeping an eye on the article. Sarayuparin 00:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


The aim for making you aware of the history was to imply that since 2004 many learned people must have gone through this Infobox and did not manage to interrupt it, for there must have been a reason. So let’s discuss the reason. We are talking here about the status of the language in a country and not the number of people (as they are indicated seperately in Infobox). So,

  • National languages of Pakistan are: Urdu and English
  • National languages of India are: Hindi and English (Urdu is official language of few state governments, and not of the central government, see Official languages of India)

Moreover,

Hence, ordering should naturally give preference to the country that gives the language a higher status. As in the case of Bengali you referred, according to the Infobox there, Bengali is:

  • Spoken in: Bangladesh, India and several others.
  • Official language of: Bangladesh, India, and Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura

Obviously the situation is that Bangla is the national language of Bangladesh, whereas it seems to have official status only in two Indian states.

All Arabic and English speaking countries have given the respective languages more or less the similar national status. And if you look harder, you will discover that in neither case of the 'Official language' column do the country names appear in any strict alphabetical order. In fact the countries with minority language populations appear later.

Even if I consider your suggestion of population ordering, Urdu seems to be spoken by around 5% of Indians (and is a minority language) whereas the ratio is higher in Pakistan (additionally, it is the lingua franca).

And lastly, I am surprised at your concern on alphabetising the countries whereas the Indian state names themselves do not appear in accordance with your proposed ‘rational’ order? Also your edit summary pleads to “...keep the states listed in the Infobox in alphabetical order.” Mind you Pakistan is an independent country! --Islander 10:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Islescape, for the explanation. Isn't Urdu spoken by only 8% of the Pakistani population? Does the higher status given to Urdu in Pakistan come from the government's support of it or can it be attributed to a more popular sentiment? If so, where: Balochistan and Sindh? Also, my use of states' refered to nations or countries, not administrative regions within these entities. The percentage of Urdu speakers in India is greater than 5%: the issue lies with the reporting of mother tongues in census records, speaker's own awareness of official classifications of languages they speak, and distinguishing 'dialect' variation. In any case, the justification of "higher prestige" in the listing of states (read: countries) is weak, but not significant enough to continue debating. Thank you for taking the time to give me your explanation. Sarayuparin 20:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify your political question for 'popular sentiments', please read through Section 1 (Speakers and geographic distribution) of Urdu article, which says: Urdū is used as the official language in all provinces of Pakistan. Next, according to definition at countries your use of the word ‘state’ is problematic when the group comprises both sets of dependent states and independent countries. As for the justification of priority, in all encyclopaedic entries (Encyclopaedia Mauritiania, Encarta, Britannica, etc.) on Urdu language, Pakistan is always mentioned first, followed by others due to obvious reasons. See for example, Encarta: Urdu, language spoken in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of India,…--Islander 12:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Mualla

I dont think Mualla means society , it means something like exalted or esteemed . I guess somebody confused Mualla with Muhalla. 203.170.71.58 14:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. Mu`alla معله means 'exalted'. Sarayuparin 20:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's spelled معلی. azimsultan (talk) 00:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was under the impression that the phrase "Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla" was translated as "Language of Camp and Court", referring to it's usage in both the army camps and royal courts, not "Language of the Exalted Camp". Also, apparently it has ways of being spelled, one with "laam-alif", and the other being that provided by Azimsultan - Spekkio —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.101.167.230 (talk) 14:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox display is skewed

The Infobox display is skewed. The reason is the IPA notice that is set in a div on the right side of the table. Is there a way to fix this? When the Indic text notice was there, it appeared below the ISO codes. Can we do the same for the IPA notice? Sarayuparin 20:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Is this article a link farm? A load of links and will take a while for anybody to check and remove irrelevant ones. I will do it a while later. --Webkami 21:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

started cleanup now. I have removed the whole blogs section, everybody will want to push in their blogs. --Webkami 12:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your willingness to improve the article. I raised another concern here. Maybe you would be interested in reading it. With regards, AnupamTalk 16:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers. --Webkami 17:27, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It says here that research has been done that shows Urdu is a carrier of "Islamic literature" second only to Arabic. What research is this? Shouldn't this require footnotes? 142.157.6.37 06:15, 24 June 2007 (UTC)BDB[reply]

Since no one has responded to this, I'm going to take off the claims since they are unverified. I'm also putting a "citation needed" beside the claim that religious literature in Urdu outnumbers other South Asian languages.

142.157.6.30 01:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)BDB[reply]

Examples

Request for a language sample

Could anyone who can read Urdu enter the first article of the Urdu version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and provide it with a transliteration and, if possible, even a word-to-word gloss? That would be very helpful for people not acquainted with the situation to understand the differences between Hindi and Urdu, as this sentence appears as a sample in the Hindi article. Thank you! --Daniel Bunčić (de wiki · talk · en contrib.) 07:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good idea. I have created a sub-section "Sample Text" in "Examples" modeled on the Hindi sample. - Aslamt 15:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your quick action. The difference between the two texts is much bigger than I would have thought (cf. the differences between Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian in the same text). Is this due to the big differences in vocabulary, or are there just different formulations because of the translators' individual choices that would have been possible in the other language as well? --Daniel Bunčić (de wiki · talk · en contrib.) 17:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the inquiry. Urdu and Hindi are standard registers of Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu (see diasystem). The colloquial vocabulary is the same. For example, Urdu speakers will call the language used in Bollywood films Urdu while Hindi speakers will call the language used in Bollywood films Hindi. However, the formal vocabulary (i.e. court language) from Hindi is borrowed from Sanskrit whereas the formal vocabulary from Urdu is borrowed from Persian. I feel that this link will be helpful to you in explaining the relationship. I hope this answers your question. Please let me know if you have any more questions. With regards, AnupamTalk 19:53, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sample Texts

As of now, we have two sample texts in the article (here and here. Is it worth keeping both or should we delete one of them? Another idea involves moving the latter sample to the section on Urdu poetry. Any comments on this matter would be appreciated. With regards, AnupamTalk 18:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Urdu script section should be changed and moved to Poetry section. --Webkami 17:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input. I'll go ahead and make the appropriate changes. With regards, AnupamTalk 04:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

need words

Can someone come up with good examples of ʈ, ɖ, ɽ in Urdu words that Brits and Yanks might be familiar with, to illustrate the examples at Help:IPA pronunciation key? Thanks. kwami 18:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu Numbers

I couldn't find a separate Urdu numbers section on Wikipedia. Also, on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numbers under the section "Evolution of symbols", the "Eastern Arabic Indic Urdu/Persian" isn't exactly what we use in Urdu.

Also, the number grouping that we use in Urdu is not exactly the same as in Hindi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system ), right?

--Zybez 15:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

File:Http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/3614/92426350dl2.gif==Junk linguistics==

I've just removed:

The Dialect is very reflective of the relaxed attitude of the people which allows the coinage of words, much like ebonics.

The writer probably meant African American Vernacular English.

Yes, AAVE allows the coinage of words. So does any other lect of English. So does standard English. So, I presume, does any lect of Urdu, of course including standard Urdu.

AAVE is not reflective of the relaxed attitude of the people who speak it. It's a rule based language. Please consult any good book (written by a linguist, of course) about AAVE: I recommend Lisa Green's African American English. -- Hoary 07:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slang words

Is there information on urdu slang words ? Perhaps there should be a section/article on this. Does anyone know what the word 'parki' or 'parkhi' means (not sure if it's slang) ? Thanks. MP (talk•contribs) 08:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

‏ Most Used Words

I have personally read many articles and found that ka is along with its other variants ki, kay and ko is the most common or used word in Urdu. I was in search of the most common words but could not find. I will be very thankful if some body write the other words.

Khalid Mahmood —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Khalid Mahmood (talk • contribs) 06:37:45, August 19, 2007 (UTC).

Status in India

this is flase

Urdu is spoken in places where there are large Muslim minorities (in India)

Actually, no. West Bengal is 25% muslim and assam is 29% muslim. none of them speak urdu. Huh? Lakshadweep is 95% muslim, all of them speak malayalam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.156.156 (talk) 11:41, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The state with the largest Muslim minority in numbers is Uttar Pradesh, and the Muslims there speak Urdu. Muslims in all of Northern India speak Urdu. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, the official language is Urdu, not Kashmiri. Okaywhatever (talk) 18:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong info!

Urdu is not the official language of State Governments of Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. As far as I know regarding Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu I'm sure. Concerned editors, please revert back the changes done or provide citations.

Thanks, --VinodSBangera (talk) 15:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone add Urdo as a redirection?

can you please make it so that when you type "urdo" it redirects you to urdu?Obaidz96 (talk) 23:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pinjari

Can someone please describe Pinjari. What is it? Where is it spoken? etc...

Ahassan05 (talk) 05:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)ahassan05[reply]

Contradiction in article

The last paragraph in "Urdu and Hindi" reads:

it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi", but the language used in most of them is Urdu.

This is clearly contradicted in the very next section, "Urdu and Bollywood." Please fix! Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 09:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hindi/Standard Hindi/Khariboli/Urdu etc

Request editors of this article to comment on this message:Talk:Hindustani language#Hindi/Standard Hindi/Khariboli/Urdu etc --Deepak D'Souza (talk • contribs) 18:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu script needed

Urdu scrip needed at Shan Masala. Badagnani (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible...

... then the article should just come out and say that, rather than dancing around in some kind of ambiguous way and just saying they are both "standard registers," whatever that means. Some of us dumb Westerners keep wondering whether they are actually mutually intelligible or not. I would appreciate it if someone who knows the answer could clear that up. Thank you in advance. 24.174.30.146 (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, well never mind, it looks like this issue was discussed after all, I just missed it somehow. Sorry! 24.174.30.146 (talk) 03:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think and speak in Urdu hence understand the language spoken on TV Channels Star Plus or Zee Tv although they call their language Hindi. But I dont undersatand the language spoken on the Hindi version of Tv channel National Geographic. Why is that ? Are these the same Hindi? By Ch Jameel Hyderabad Pakistan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChJameel (talk • contribs) 00:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some hindi channels like Astha etc., and in some english dubbed moviesm they use pure Hindi instead of spoken hindi.thats why you have problems understanding it.sometimes even the native speakers find it difficult understanding some words. Consider them like American English and British English ,sometimes these speakers have difficult understanding each others words/phrases but its still the same language.

Since both Hindi & Urdu descended from the commom ancestor Sanskrit and they have same grammar n vocabulary(except some loan words from arabic & perisan) westerners term them as a dialect of Hindi or refer to them as Hindustani.

--Neal007 (talk) 11:05, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology

Is this a spelling mistake in the Urdu? 

first line is called Misra-e-oola (مصرع اولی) and the second is called 'Misra-e-sānī' (مصرعہ ثانی).

One is "مصرع" the other is "مصرعہ" yet both should have izafah according to the latin characters.
- azimsultan (talk) 00:21, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Name from "Urdu Bazaar"

Are you serious? I always thought the market was named for the language, since it is a place for books, etc. --iFaqeer (talk) 08:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two poets names

two poets names were deleted and pased here; **Obaid Azam Azmi


Urdu

Shad360 (talk) 21:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC) Factor360. 08/18/2009 In India is Urdu spoken only in 5 states?[reply]

That is the official status of the language in India.Khokhar (talk) 21:58, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu Nation

Now time has come to evolve a nation based on Urdu Language called Urdu Nation. By definition a person who can speak in Urdu is a member of Urdu Nation. There are more than 250 million Urdu Speakers in the world. Almost all Pakistanis can speak in Urdu. The fact is that most of the Indians who claim that they are speaking Hindi actually are speaking Urdu and writing this language i.e, Urdu, in Dewnagri Script. Bollywood is almost 100% Urdu

Once Muhammed Ali Jinnah said: " Let me make it clear that the national language of Pakistanis going to be Urdu and no other language. Without one state language no nation can remain tied up solidly together "

The Urdu movement was a socio-political movement aimed at making Urdu the universal language and symbol of the cultural andpolitical idnetity of the muslim communities of India and pakistan.The movement began with the fall of Mughal empire in the mid 19th century fuelled by the Aligarh movement of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan

Urdu developed as local Indo-Aryan dialects, came under the influence of the Muslim courts, that ruled South Asia from the early thirteenth century. Its Indic vocabulary has been enriched by borrowings from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English and other Indian languages

The term Urdu came into use when Shah Jahan built the Red Fort in Delhi in 1639 A.D. The word Urdu itself comes from a Turkic word Ordu, which means "Camp", "Tent" or "Army", from which English also gets the word "Horde". Hence Urdu is sometimes called "Lashkari zaban"

Urdu continued as one of the many languages in North West India. In 1947, Urdu was established as the national language of Pakistan in the hope that this move would unite and homogenise the various ethnic groups of the new nation

Shaukat Ali and Maulana Maududi emphasised the knowledge of Urdu as essential for ordinary and religious Muslims

The contemporary Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European, with more than one billion speakers in total, stretching from Europe (Romani) and the Caucasus (Ossetian) to Xinjiang (Sariqoli) and East India or Bangladesh. SIL in a 2005 estimate counts a total of 308 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu, ca. 540 million), Bengali (ca. 200 million), Punjabi (ca. 80 million), Marathi and Persian (ca. 70 million each), Gujarati (ca. 45 million), Pashto (40 million), Oriya (ca. 30 million)Kurdish (ca. 40 million) and Sindhi (ca. 20 million )

The article on Urdu in the International Encyclopaedia of Linguistics contains the following quotation: The growing popularity of Urdu mushaira (poetic symposia) and literary conferences in the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, Canada, and a number of Middle Eastern and African countries has led to the emergence of a large number of literary organisations and publications which reflect the spread of Urdu as an international language. It would be regrettable if this article with its emphasis on economic power and numbers, contributed in however small a measure to the destruction of such delightful innocence. May Urdu with its poetic symposia and literary organisations become evermore international. The world would be a better place if all expansion was through such charming means

George Weber mentions Urdu/Hindi as the 10th most influential language of the world and 2nd among the top language with respect to the number of speakers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.160.48.0 (talk) 09:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Status in Fiji

Fiji

Urdu ISN'T official language in Fiji check Fiji article, at least —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.220.3.86 (talk) 06:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to this that is true. I've removed the mention of it being an official language in Fiji. --Swift (talk) 05:05, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fiji - No official status

Urdu has no official status in Fiji, Bhojpuri (in Fiji, called Fiji Hindi) is official, written in Devanagari script. Urdu is taught in Muslim schools to Indo-Fijian Muslims, but it is not spoken in daily lives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HistoryGraduatestudent (talk • contribs) 02:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Shair Siddiqui

This article on an Urdu poet is up for deletion if anyone has expertise to weigh in. ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sahir is an excellent poet. I think you guys should reconsider the deletion bit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.186.114.32 (talk) 18:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Undri?

What are the sources for this alternate name 'Undri'? I've removed the reference. Please cite a source if reverting. Sarayuparin (talk) 00:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved.  Skomorokh  11:03, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu language → Urdu — Page was moved from Urdu to Urdu language without explanation; the current policy is to omit the word "language" when the language name can only refer to the language (Urdu can only be a language; English can be a people or language) (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages)). The article Hindi (which is Urdu' sister language) omits the word "language" as well. --Bʌsʌwʌʟʌ Speak up! 03:30, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Is this calligraphy in Urdu?

Following image is of the calligraphy at the Afsarwala mosque, near the Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, see here. It might offer some info regarding the building, if anyone can read it please add the summary to the page Description. Thanks!--Ekabhishektalk 04:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This calligraphy is arabic and says the kalimah for muslims as "La ilaha il-lallaho Muhammad-ur-Rasoolullah"

Transliteration of Urdu/Examples/No

no نہ nā casual (archaic - not used in speech anymore) There is no citation for this and as far as I know this is used in speech nowadays so i will delete that little section, but anyone can reverse it if they find a reliable source that shows that it is indeed archaic. --70.246.146.139 (talk) 21:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WildBot fixes

WildBot found links to DAB pages and a broken link to a section in the Pakistan article that needed repair.

 Done  —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  23:34, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The true origins of the Urdu language

To further distance Muslims from their Persian language and therefore Islamic roots, the British popularized Urdu language as a mass language for Muslims. The reason was that Urdu while sharing the script of Persian happened to be littered with native Indian words, making it more localized in its nature; and inheriting all the class bias of Indian language as well.
Then the British created Hindi language out of thin air as a national language for Hindus. Hindi was spoken like Urdu but had the script of Sanskrit, a Hindu script which had gone extinct centuries ago. Hindi would give Hindus identity making them antagonist to Muslimsand Muslims would be encouraged to abandon Urdu for Hindi, breaking complete contact with Islamic script. A certain John Gilchrist of Fort William College, Calcutta, directed these language politics. Mr. Gilchrist can be aptly called the father of Hindi language. (http://www.rense.com/general53/brith.htm)

If this bears any semblance of truth it is highly interesting and relevant to this article. __meco (talk) 19:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since I only now became aware of the existence of an article on the controversy between the two languages I also posted at Talk:Hindi–Urdu controversy. __meco (talk) 20:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not find this description of Hindi and Urdu origins to be credible. The British couldn't work such miracles with the languages of so many people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.202.151 (talk) 06:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

its actually very credible. The British were the biggest supporters of Urdu for the Moslems and Hindi for the followers of Hinduism. The famous quote is Urdu and Hindi will be sufficient enough to fool the Mohemedans and the Hindus into thinking they have there own language. The British support of the Urdu and Hindi languages undermined the Brahminical castes and pushed Sanskrit into oblivion. Furthermore, they abolished Persian from the lands that now constitute Pakistan to de-link them linguistically with the Persian empire with whom they shared a border with and had cultural links since ancient time. These are unfortunately, colonial facts that the British committed in the South Asia region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.169.146 (talk) 03:16, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't comment on all of the claim, but one part is clearly false, that "Hindi was spoken like Urdu but had the script of Sanskrit, a Hindu script which had gone extinct centuries ago." First, Sanskrit was not a written language; writing was not (re)introduced to India until the time of the Prakrits. Second, AFAIK the script never went extinct. Perhaps there is some truth to the claim, but it's just poorly worded, so as to be false as written? Was Khariboli written only in Persian, with Nagari used for either just Sankrit, or perhaps Marathi, until introduced to Khariboli by the British? But look at the source--an admitted conspiracy theorist. We'd need a reliable source before we add controversial claims like this. — kwami (talk) 20:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Population

Recent claims that Urdu is spoken by 490M people have been added, with the only source being the BBC. First of all, we need a decent source for s.t. like that. But more importantly, such as figure would include all of Hindustani, MSHindi as well as Urdu. While I sympathize, as IMO MSHindi is nothing but a political register of Urdu, common usage treats the two as distinct languages, and we need some discussion before blithely asserting that Hindi and Urdu are the same thing. — kwami (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've deleted the ref, since as Faizhaider correctly notes, the BBC never mentions that they're including Hindi, and so making that claim would be OR. But as it stands, the ref. is clearly spurious: there are not 490M people who ID their native language as Urdu. Of course, if you speak Urdu, you can converse with ~490M people, since Hindi speakers will assume you're speaking Hindi. But it's misleading to claim that Urdu is the 4th most spoken language in the world unless we acknowledge that Hindi is just Urdu with some Sanskrit thrown in, and that's not likely to happen with Hindu nationalists insisting that they don't speak Urdu. (Though, interestingly, there are a number of Hindu nationalists who acknowledge that Hindi and Urdu are the same language, just as long as you don't call it Urdu!) — kwami (talk) 09:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding status of Urdu as 4th language I never claimed that, if you see my edit summary I pointed out to the article which lists Hindi/Urdu combination as 4th language as per primary speakers data and this is mentioned in info-box. If you research you'll find out that until late 1990's many countries (especially in West) used to include Urdu speaking population under Hindi, so when they seperated two languages officially there is a but-obvious boom in number of speakers of Urdu when you compare recent data with data of 1990s. I'm providing one such link, i.e. Tower Of Babel. I think recent data should have more weightage and BBC is not a source which can easily be discredited.
And Urdu & Hindi are in essecence same language and this I can say on my own authority as the person who since birth is speaker of so-called both languages and have dwelt in the region which is attributed to the most regourous friction between the two languages & that region is Lucknow region of Uttar Pradesh. But I never forced this stand on the article as it is my personal POV & I am no acamedician.
--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 12:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that AFAIK the two "languages" are really one, at least colloquially, but we're going to need better sources than what you've provided to demonstrate that there are so many Urdu speakers, or that they were previously counted as Hindi. AFAIK, neither India nor Pakistan have good census data on the matter, which makes things difficult. Also, I assume that the BBC meant total number, whereas we usually indicate number of native speakers in the info box. Total speakers would be a second number, if it's significantly more. — kwami (talk) 13:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reverting info-box edits
Regarding Total speakers, first reference(i.e. H. Dua, "Urdu". In the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2006) although cliaming to be of 2006 is not verifiable second reference(i.e. ethnologue.com) is ambigous, old & sporadic in nature , it states following facts :
  • Language use Official language. Including L2 speakers: 104,000,000 (1999 WA). Used as L2 by most other Pakistanis.
  • Population 10,700,000 in Pakistan (1993). Population total all countries: 60,586,800.
  • Population 250,000 in Bangladesh (2003 SIL).
  • Population 48,100,000 in India (1997).
  • Population 64,000 in Mauritius (Johnstone 1993).
  • Population 12,000 in South Africa (2006). 170,000 South Asian Muslims in South Africa (1987).
  • Total----- 59,126,000
So, this source is very confusing and ambigous as it claims three figures i.e. 59,126,000, 60,586,800 & 104,000,000; also data is based from 1987 to 2006. Above all it leaves western countries like UK, US, etc where there are considerable number of Urdu speakers.
Whereas BBC link in simple words give the data to be 490 million (which although seems to be very inflated but is the only clear reference & which is recent & verifiable & reliable). Also BBC link in itself does not imply any proper interpretation is OR concept so it is a simple POV on part of any editor to interpret in this manner.
Regarding Ranking, 20th rank claim has no reference in its support while wiki article List of languages by number of native speakers clearly lists Hindi/Urdu combo as 4th whic was mentioned in info-box as rank 4th (native speakers of Urdu+Hindi=Hindustani)
And changing referenced content as per POV (contrary to what is said in the refernce) is not an accepted act on Wikipedia; as done with sentence.
  • from -> Modern Urdu has taken almost 900 years to develop to its present form.
  • to -> Urdu/Hindustani has existed as a language for almost 900 years.
while reference does not talks about Hindustani or existed words.
--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 13:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your table, though WP:synthesis, is reasonable, so I don't object. However, the figures add up to 65-66 million, so the pop figure we need to use is 65-66 million. But doubling that figure, you're falsifying data. Do I really need to tell you not to falsify data? And you're back to that ridiculous 490M figure, which you even admit is inflated. This is not editing in good faith. And no, the BBC is not a RS here! You've just admitted that.
I'm changing several other of your edits as well. WP is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a chance for propaganda. Please work out something here on the Talk page rather than edit warring, or I'll need to talk this to WP:dispute resolution.
Also, the statement "Modern Urdu has taken almost 900 years to develop to its present form" is meaningless. That's like the nonsense about X being the "oldest" language in the world. You could say it, like any other language, has taken 50,000-100,000 years to develop its present form. It was also not known as Urdu, and not distinct from MSH, for most of that 900 years. Since you don't like my attempt at improving it, I'll try another way. But please don't simply revert to gibberish.
You also reverted my consolidation of the info on the name. However, those two sections made conflicting claims, and so should either be merged or deleted. I've moved them to a dedicated section now. — kwami (talk) 20:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You have so much talked about my edits & BBC link but have not provide a single word in response for the two references on whome your edits are relying so much and which are actually old, confusing and ambigous. While you have dedicated your full response in negating the only reference which is most recent and clear on numbers. I have made point wise elaborate case in my above response against your edits while you tend to reply in generic manner & just revert the edits. --Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 07:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? I'm relying on your references. Your references, apart from the BBC, which you admit appears to be wrong, indicate that there are 65-66M Urdu speakers. Yet somehow you conclude from that that there are 172M. The only ref of mine that you are using says that there are 61M speakers, yet somehow you conclude from that that there are 88M. You have yet to explain either figure. — kwami (talk) 08:35, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about H. Dua, "Urdu". In the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2006 & ethnologue.com which are being used (specially second one) as primary source for all the data ignoring other references. And I'm not saying that BBC is wrong in contrary I said that ,"it is the only clear reference & which is recent & verifiable & reliable". And its not my table it was already there for a long time. And we are not here to do research on basis of sources we are here to mention them and allow reader to make their own infrences. While you tend to force your POV by eliminating higher numbers (which are sourced) while I never removed lower numbers (even when they were not sourced). Regarding 20th position even the Wiki article List of languages by number of native speakers clearly lists Hindi/Urdu combination as 4th language as per primary speakers data but you insist it to be 20th. And I think 172 number was an error in calculation. And whatdo you mean by saying that, you are relying on my references? Which references are you talking about? --Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 09:42, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I thought that was your table, so I took them as your references.
You didn't like the Dua ref, so you deleted it. I never contested that. So why are you still making an issue out of it?
You yourself said the BBC figure appears to be inflated, did you not? And how is it that that ref is "recent & verifiable & reliable", but the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics is not? Simply because the BBC gives no context, so it's impossible to evaluate the figure, whereas the ELL is more responsible, and so has more details to nitpick?
"lists Hindi/Urdu combination as 4th language". Yes, but we're not talking about Hindi-Urdu, are we? We're talking about Urdu. Last I checked, "Urdu" was not "Hindi", at least not sociolinguistically. Malaysians, for example, call Pakistanis' language "Bahasa Hindi", which annoys the hell out of Pakistanis. If you want to merge this article into Hindi-Urdu, please post a {{merge}} tag on it, and probably best to make a WP:Request for comment as well. I think it will take some discussion to convince people. Meanwhile, this article is about Urdu, so figures should be about Urdu.
As for the figure of 490M, let me say it again, if it is accurate, you should be able to find it in a reliable reference. After all, the BBC had to get the figure from somewhere, and they're unlikely to have conducted a census themselves. As far as I've seen, the BBC is an outlier; everything else supports ca. 60-70M native speakers. In fact, the BBC never defines what they mean by a "speaker"! Until you find something to substantiate the BBC claim, there isn't much point in continuing this discussion. — kwami (talk) 10:41, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

number of speakers

(similar problem w another editor)

We need references for # of speakers. We can't just make stuff up. If I had my druthers, this article would be about standardization and language politics, and likewise MSHindi. IMO, the spoken language is Hindustani, and no-one speaks "Urdu", except that Urdu is the same as Hindustani. Same with "Hindi". Thus I would only have # of speakers for Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu, and make that the language article. But I imagine that would be upsetting. So, if we're going to pretend that Urdu is a separate language from Hindistani, then the number of speakers can't be that of Hindustani. If we're going to say that there are 400M Urdu speakers, then we're saying that Urdu is Hindustani, and the articles should be merged, leaving only a remnant here for standardization and politics. — kwami (talk) 22:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is no evidence for the number 65-66 million. And such a narrow range too. Who can figure this out to within 1 million? You can say what you want, but this number is fiction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.202.151 (talk) 00:15, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The refs are in the table. If you don't like it, we can go back to the Ethnologue figure, which is 61 million. But we can't just say "I think it's more" and add a few million. — kwami (talk) 01:39, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think the basic problem is that people who live in India or Pakistan they themselve are in state of confusion over what is Hindi, Urdu & Hindustani; how similar and how different they are. Another source of confusion is that info-box table staes number of primary users i.e. users who have Urdu as their first language means thwy who speak Urdu in home with their family. There are considerable number of hose who speak (or can speak) Urdu as second or third language specially in Pakistan but they at home speak Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, etc. Its reverse in India people who generally speak Urdu at home will speak Hindi, English or any other local language outside. Usually in Northern-belt of India people never speak Urdu or Hindi (at least not how they are in written form) in general they speak milder language which is called as Hindustani which is understandable by larger number of people. May be the total number of peoplr who understand and speak Hindusatani may be 600 million or so but Urdu as first language as indicated by most of sources is not more tha 100 million (if we extrapolate available data). May be we can wait for 2011 census of India & Pakistan (when???) to get updated data.
I know my edit will not help much but that is the best what I can do as of now ;)
--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 05:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right. I imagine that the figures reflect self-identification, as with Serbian vs. Croatian, even if the speaker is illiterate and his speech is indistinguishable from the 'other' language. This will naturally cause problems with estimates.
We enumerate mother/home speakers in all language articles. If we include the total number of speakers, that's added as a second figure. In a language like Urdu, which is so widespread, we def. need the number of 2nd-lang speakers. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the Hindi Wikipedia article there is much less controversy: It says 350 million native speakers and 350 million as second language speakers making 700 million and 5th overall in languages. It strikes me as odd that many if not most of these 700 million people are speaking a language that would be called Urdu if they spoke it in Pakistan, but this overlap is not reflected in the Urdu Wikipedia estimate. The box here should at least do the same - that is list number of people for whom Urdu is the first language and the number for whom it is the second language. How many of the 174 million Pakistanis would then be included in the second group (that is their second language is Urdu)? How about Afghans? This present Wikipedia article claims that most Afghans speak Urdu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.202.151 (talk) 10:38, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We had a reference for 2nd language speakers, but it was deleted because an editor thought it wasn't enough. Feel free to restore the Ethnologue estimate, or a better one if you have it.
India is a different story, because both Hindi and Urdu are recognized. Because many Indians say that their language is "Urdu", they are not counted as speakers of "Hindi", even though we could argue the language is the same. This is always going to be a problem when nationalists create boundaries that do not exist outside their conceptions. I agree that the situation is odd. IMO, the solution is to merge most of both articles to Hindustani language (which we could perhaps rename Hindi-Urdu), including all history prior to 1947, and have the total number of Hindi+Urdu speakers there. Urdu language and Standard Hindi would then be restricted to issues of language standardization up to and following independence, and not bother with speaker numbers at all. — kwami (talk) 20:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would venture to say that these numbers will not be known without a lot of effort on the part of the India and Pakistan census departments. That's not likely to happen. But we should present the best and most objective picture that can be put together for the Wikipedia readers. So, I would agree that a unified article on Hindi-Urdu-Hinudstani will go a long way towards clarifying the issues and provide a unified estimate and additional data on numbers as appropriate.

Given the large uncertainties I also think it is inappropriate to quote such a narrow range in the box. It gives the false impression that these numbers are well known. Common practice in data reporting is to give the number of significant digits that you can support, which I believe is "one" in this case. I have made minor changes to reflect some of the discussion here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.202.151 (talk) 16:00, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on how good the figure for India is. The Pakistani figure has a presumed error of 0.5M, and the UK figure 0.35M, which is ±0.85M. The other figures are might bring that up to 1M. So if we can get some idea of the accuracy of the Indian census, we'll know how close we are. But even assuming a total error of ±2M, we'd be at two sig figs, and wouldn't need to round up to 70. Two sig figs is also the general convention for such things, unless there's reason to believe a number is particularly inaccurate.
Sayed, that's two of us who think the articles could use some merging. What about you? — kwami (talk) 22:49, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have been known to few on Wikipedia as a supporter of "Hindi & Urdu" as same variant of "Hindustani" and will support the amalgamation but I think it needs more discussion and opinion of other editors especially form Pakistan, India & Language groups.--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 10:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

About the significant digits: I think the census uncertainties are much larger than you have quoted, but I am willing to drop this issue because the problem is much bigger. So Mr. Haider, how do you propose we proceed to implement the one article idea? Combining the articles will take some work, but much of the information is already here. Who decides on combining articles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.202.151 (talk) 03:54, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu derives from arabic, persian and turkic words.

I would request people to be careful of users who POSE as muslims and use muslim sounding names but are hindus working for hindu fanatical organisations like rss.

As for the issue at hand urdu and hindi are completely different and have got nothing to do with one another. urdu derives largely from arabic, persian and turkic. hindi on the other hand derives from sanskrit. kwami thanks for your contributions, i can see that you have put reasonable discussions and are helpful to the progress of the article well done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.217.74.59 (talk) 10:43, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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