Talk:Urdu/Archive 7

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Urdu is not an Indian language

Wikipedia is not a forum. Pointless "discussion" started by a banned troll with the sole purpose of creating an argument. An equally big trout smack to Largoplazo and Fowler&fowler for taking the bait.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Urdu is origannnely Pakistani Better Knowledge (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC) Urdu was Urdu long before there was a Pakistan. Its speakers on the India side of the border didn't magically stop speaking it when the countries split, and Urdu is the native language of 50.8 million people in India today, three times as many as in Pakistan. Largoplazo (talk) 10:27, 12 February 2020 (UTC) @Largoplazo: The bit about the native language is only theoretically true. A large number of people, especially the young, in the Urdu heartland of UP in India, are no longer able to write in Urdu, mainly because Urdu language has not been taught in Government schools for nearly 70 years. Many have also lost not just the proper pronunciation ("talaffuz") of Urdu words, but also the words themselves in their functioning vocabulary. Yet, every ten years they write "Urdu speaker," in the Indian census. They are pretty much all Muslim, the census-exercise is a way of asserting their nearly lost language identity. In Pakistan, on the other hand, Urdu is universally taught. So, although most Pakistanis are second-language Urdu speakers, their Urdu ability stands far above the Indian average. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC) It's almost as though you'd written that Americans don't really speak English because their pronunciation has changed so much with respect to the pronunciation used by Brits. (As though there were a single pronunciation within the U.K. or within the U.S., or as though the way people in the U.K. pronounce it themselves hasn't changed drastically over the centuries.) And—I'm pretty sure we call the colonial language that people in South Asia still speak today "English", though, heaven knows, their pronunciation is tremendously different from that descendants of the old colonists.) Or as though languages people speak aren't really languages, or aren't really *their* languages, if they don't also write them. Largoplazo (talk) 02:51, 26 February 2020 (UTC) I apologize, I shouldn't have said "pronunciation." You are right. That's not important. But the Americans have not lost the vocabulary of American English. They have managed to produce ... lord knows ... since the Boston tea party ... off the top of my head ... from the ones I have read ... only Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathanial Hawthorne, Hermann Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Jack London, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Earnest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, and many more I'm forgetting ... The proper analogy would be if America had been annexed by the French in 1947, and if all English-language instruction had stopped in public schools. Only those Americans with parents wealthy enough to pay for either private schooling or parochial schooling would have received English-language instruction; the rest would have been learning only French. Eventually, America would stop being an English-speaking nation. ( Some old-timers around here shake their heads and say we didn't need help from the French; it is already happening.) But you get the idea, something akin to that is happening in India and Urdu. The words, the collocations, the phrases, ... that make Urdu Urdu, and not Hindi, are gradually being lost by the (mostly Muslim) native Urdu speakers in India. There is encroachment by English as well, which most Indians, I imagine, see to be their ticket to higher education and professional success. The Urdu-speaking population is more likely to spend the extra money they have on, for instance, English-language tutoring than, say, Urdu instruction. But the decline of Urdu in India compared to Pakistan is a well-documented fact. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:49, 26 February 2020 (UTC) But the 50.8 million figure is also a documented fact. Also, your French scenario happened in reality, in England, over the couple of centuries following 1066, yet the language has retained the name "English" since centuries before that. For what it's worth. Largoplazo (talk) 19:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC) It is documented only in the census figures. When the census officer comes to their homes one every ten years they routinely reply, "Urdu" to the question about "Mother tongue." No one tests their ability. The Norman conquest obviously didn't kill the language as there were few Normans and many more Saxons, and Britons. This is a 14% minority. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:36, 26 February 2020 (UTC) I wasn't aware that you aren't speaking the language you speak unless someone tests your ability. Who tested the ability of the English speakers in 12th century England to make sure they were still speaking English? I don't know what you mean about the Normans killing the language. After 300 years it was largely unrecognizable. Also, minorities speak the languages that the speak just as surely as majorities speak the languages that they speak. There, have I addressed your battery of widely dispersed arguments? Largoplazo (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC) Good, you won the argument. Congratulations on your wonderful knowledge. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:34, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Please no data dumps of POV text copied from elsewhere

Anupam Please don't past copied POV text from elsewhere in the history of this article. I haven't looked at the history, but what you have added is not neutral reliable history. I have reverted your additions. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:11, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, I hope you're enjoying Shrove Tuesday. I would be grateful if you could kindly have a look at the information that User:Fowler&fowler removed. He claims it is not neutral, despite the multiple sources that buttress it. Thank you for your time and help. With regards, Anupam^Talk 18:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know the history, so I can't judge. Fowler, you need to say how it is unbalanced. Anupam, it is rather annoying for the reader to come across multiple quotes to justify routine claims. Normally we make the claims in our own words and simply cite them. — kwami (talk) 19:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, thank you for your reply. I understand your point about multiple quotes to justify routine claims; however, I use them so that editors can't simply remove well-sourced information becacuse they don't like it (the quotes help ensure verifiability too). User:Fowler&fowler, based on his comments here, wishes to argue that the development of the language should solely be attributed to Muslims (this is a communal and revisionist POV). The academic and neutral perspective is that Urdu developed as a result of cultural contact between Muslims and Hindus in North India; during the time of Islamic administrative rule in India, the Hindi tongues of the Delhi area absorbed large amounts of Persian loanwords. I am pinging User:Kautilya3, User:RaviC, User:Gotitbro, and User:Fylindfotberserk so that they can offer their comments here as well. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 21:08, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

It's unnecessary to overload the article with references and quotations in cases of disputes. You can present them here on the talk page rather than disrupting the experience of ordinary readers who aren't participants in the argument. Largoplazo (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Please see thissection of Talk:Hindustani language and the section below. I'm saying rather that the languages of the Upper Doab became the base of a lingua franca only because of the Muslims; without them, without their empires centered in and around the upper Doab, they would have remained little-known vernaculars. But where do you find the word "Muslim" mentioned in the Hindustani language lead? The text takes a flying leap from 769 AD and Old Hindi to 1920 and Gandhi. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I see that you have changed it to a grudging acknowledgement in more POV language, supported with more recondite cherry-picked sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler, are you sure about that? You can read the introduction again; it neutrally states: "During the period of Islamic administrative rule in India which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani." The words Islamic/Muslim are mentioned twice (and I was the one who added that information there). I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 23:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Of course I am. What poetry was there in Old Hindi and what script? You're talking like it was hunky dory, a perfectly rich language, to which were added a few Perso-Arabic words. No. It was a mostly illiterate vernacular culture, which the Muslims raised out of anonmity by mixing it with their language(s) and giving it a literature, and which was eventually copied by the Hindus in the late 19th century to create Standard Hindi. There would have been no Maithili Sharan Gupt, no Jaishankar Prasad, no Nirala, not even Premchand without the Muslim conquest of India and their privileging of Delhi as their capital (mostly). If the Muslims had made their capital in Calcutta, Hindustani would have been some variant of Bengali, and north India would very likely have been speaking Bengali with Perso-Arabic words. The original illiterate culture is only incidentally relevant. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:35, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, the "Muslims" didn't raise it. The British did. [1]. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 05:03, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing that source User:Kautilya3. There is helpful information in it that can be added to this article. Kind regards, Anupam^Talk 08:02, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

That article is talking about Urdu instruction in Government schools, which by the way, was not limited to Muslims. In the United Provinces, Urdu, and sometimes and Persian, were routinely taught until 1947 in a very large proportion of schools. High schools in many large towns such as Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Muradnagar, Khoja, Aligargh, Eta, Etawah, Kanpur, Lucknow, Badayun, Bareili, Rae Bareili, Sitapur, Barabanki, Allahabad, ...., required students to take at least Urdu, and sometimes Persian as well.

But here are talking here about the variety of Hindi spoken in the region northeast of Delhi, extending roughly from Delhi to Muzaffarnagar, the heart of Khari boli speech. That language, supplemented with Persian vocabulary, had spread all over north India by the end of the 18th century because of the Muslims. It had been given a literature by the Muslims. (Not prose, to be sure, for that grew out of the College of Fort William after 1800, when the British employed Urdu literateurs to write text-books (in prose obviously) for their civil servants, and to go on to creating a simplified Urdu standard, which they called Hindustani, in which the civil servants had to take exams. Urdu prose literature grew out of that. And eventually Hindi copied. ) We are talking about poetry, of Sauda, Mir, and Insha, ..., that had thrived in the 18th century in Urdu, not in Persian; the latter had stopped being a language of mushairas, qasidas, ghazals, ... after 1700 or thereabouts. There were even prose-poems, the Shahr Ashobs, for example, of Nazeer Akbarabadi, on Diwali, Raksha Bandhan (see my example there), even the Agra famine of 1837–38. (See a bigger list here).

So, again, summing up: the British chose the Khari boli Urdu because it has already become the lingua franca during Mughal rule, especially in the 18th century. Had the lingua franca been a Persianized Tamil, or -Bengali, you can bet your bottom dollar the College of Fort William would have produced the textbooks in those languages. But the point is that without the Muslims, without the accidents of geography that brought the Muslims to that region, these dialects would have remained obscure ones; their role is incidental. The Muslims however are not incidental. They would have created a lingua franca wherever their rule had established itself in India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Here is an example of Mir's poem on his cat Mohini. It is written in Khari boli Urdu. This is not the complete version, which I have somewhere. Anyway, note that though it has very common words, it also has some highly Persianized expressions. His other poems are even more Persianized, sometimes more even than Ghalib, whose poetry is highly Persianized. It runs counter to the POV in all these Hindi-Urdu articles that there was this simple colloquial language Hindi-Urdu, which split on the one hand into Persianized Urdu and on the other hand into Sanskritized Hindi. Urdu was highly Persianized long before 1800 and the College of Fort William. Hindi began to be Sanskritized only in the latter half of the 19th century; in other words, much later. There wasn't a split. There was a highly Persianized language Urdu, which was given a prose during a time when a simplified version of it was promoted by the British. Hindi literature, in Khari boli, then arose, and by the end of the 19th century, had be ramped up sufficiently to be on par with Urdu. Ralph Rusell has written about it, but I can't seem to find the paper. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

PS I found it. It is here. Ralph Russell was Professor of Urdu at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and one of the foremost scholars of Urdu in the latter half of the 20th century. Austronesier had mentioned a textbook of his on Urdu. Here he is:

People who would like to think that Prem Chand wrote Hindustani therefore assume that he did; and he didn’t. In the same way “fair-minded” opponents of excessively Sanskritized Hindi assume that there is a parallel excessively Persianized/Arabicized form of Urdu; and there isn’t. Urdu as written both in India and Pakistan is no more Persianized/Arabicized today than it ever was. Its Persianization, if one wants to use that term, was already accomplished when modern Hindi came into existence, and there is virtually no further scope for it.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

• Urdu was formed as a result of Islamic contact with Hindus (Indians) in South Asia. I don't see any problems with the text that Fowler views as problematic when it's historically accurate. To try to attribute the development of Urdu to one religious community alone is grossly inaccurate. Urdu developed in India as a result of the mixing of two cultures. It was not wholly imported from outside. --RaviC (talk) 02:30, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Please read what I have written carefully. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

S-protection

It's clear that the content of this article is of much concern to various people who are very impetuous. Their edits harm the article and waste the time of responsible editors. I've therefore s-protected the article for one month. -- Hoary (talk) 02:10, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Mistake

In the Vocabulary part it is written “The phrase Zabān-i Urdū-yi Muʿallā ("the language of the exalted camp") written in Nastaʿlīq script.” but it shouldn't be Zabān (زَبان) rather Zubān (زُبان). 12:27, 11 April 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by א. א. אינסטלציה (talk • contribs)

Hindustani & Urdu

one category should be on the top.blocked sock. Kautilya3 (talk) 15:21, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

You need to formulate a clear statement of exactly what you want to be done and why. Jeppiz (talk) 20:21, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I want to explain the statements clearly, hope you understand.

What statements do you want to explain, and how? Jeppiz (talk) 20:26, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

First: Perso-Arabic is also called Nastaliq, and if it's a article for Urdu, so how can be Hindustani language category be on the top????, early forms are also Shauraseni Apabhramsa and persian, in first paragraph Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, Delhi are added but Jammu and Kashmir is not added, and how it can use Indian English, it's spoken in Pakistan and Nepal too. Where did Faraz Ahmed's poetry come from between Ghalib's couplet? and many other, mistakes. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia is written based on reliable sources. Please consult the policy pages posted on your talk page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:29, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing User:ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist in the right direction, User:Kautilya3. That being said, the example of Faraz Ahmed's poetry in between Ghalib's couplet did seem random so I removed it. As for the reason why Jammu & Kashmir is not mentioned in the lede, Jammu & Kashmir is no longer a state, but a union territory. I have seen mixed articles about whether Urdu still retains its official status there (see Exhibit A and Exhibit B). If you can provide a reliable source that demonstrates that Urdu is an official language of the union territory, I would be happy to add that in. Finally, removing the Indian English template and supplanting it with the Pakistani English template seems very trivial, but I wouldn't have any objection with also adding the Pakistani English template to the article, which I have done. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 21:40, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I changed it to Commonwealth English. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Kautilya3 that your submission, ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist should be sourced. And I don't particularly care about which English the article is written in; they are all the same. On the other hand, the article has obvious flaws. This page and all Urdu-related pages have long been hijacked by people who can't shake the monkeys of "Hindustani language" bias off their backs, metaphorically speaking. They are all wrapped in a strange kind of India-related language chauvinism. The typical sentence has at least half a dozen citations, and sometimes more, most to people whose degree of notability in Urdu is yet to reach the realm of positive numbers. Alternatively, a sentence might be sourced to well-known authors who don't really say what the sentence is claiming. A notable example is the nonsensical page "Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb," which until I disabused the authors, was being translated as the ethos of the people who live in the region, the tongue of land, the interfluve, between the two rivers, Ganges and Jamuna, i.e. the Doab! (The expression means "mixed, composite, an alloy! It is applied to jewellery made with gold and silver; to lentils/daals made with arhar and urad") The tehzeeb was a 19th-century Indo-Muslim, not Hindu-Muslim, construct, long post-dating the development and refinement of Urdu, but still, doozies such as, "The contact of the Hindu and Muslim cultures during the period of Islamic administrative rule in India led to the development of Hindustani as a product of a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.[39][40][41][42][43][44]" plod on unconquerable. Other examples of are: "Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ahmad Faraz, Jaun Elia, Rahat Indori and Waseem Barelvi are some famous and widely read Urdu poets.[184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191] The reality here is that the Indian poets together do not have even half of the poetic heft of the three Pakistani poets, Faiz, Faraz, and Jaun Elia. And this is when large numbers of post-1947 Pakistani poets, such as Nasir Kazmi, Munir Niazi, Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Kishwar Naheed, Fahmida Riaz, Iftikhar Arif, are left out, all because the reigning philosophy of the page is to assign equal notability to poetic effusions on both sides of the border. And so it goes, ..., a highly inaccurate article continues to perpetrate, or should I say inflict, untruths about Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:59, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Fowler. I forgot about all these old arguments in the midst of coronafrenzy. Having just done a bit of clean-up on Jai Shri Ram, it occurs to me that your arguments about Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb are similar to those that argue that Jai Shri Ram is a friendly greeting (and not a dogwhistle or battle cry). Language gets re-tooled all the time. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 06:56, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for reading and understanding my statements, but you didn't response, that why Hindustani language's category is on the top?, although it's a article for Urdu, And if Urdu has an Hindustani language category, So, should be in Hindi article too. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk • contribs)

Please read the History section. Hindustani is the name being used for the language spoken around the Delhi area from the 12th century onwards. After the onset of the Delhi Sultanate, this language got mixed with Persian vocabulary and spread throughout the subcontinent. It was written in the Nastaliq script in Deccan, and the written language came back to Delhi in the 19th 18th century and eventually came to be called Urdu.

Fowler doesn't like calling this language Hindustani, but I don't see a good alternative. (It was called Dahlavi, Hindavi, Hindi etc. during various time periods, but those terms are not used any more.)

Frankly, you need to look at the reliable sources that have been cited instead of raising quibbles on the talk page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:08, 21 April 2020 (UTC) corrected date. Kautilya3 (talk) 10:45, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 and Anupam: You are in all likeliness engaging with the LTA abuser sami (WP:LTA/SAMI). Please stop serving the sock, the LTA has in the pushed for Urdu/Pakistan. Not to mention the article largely follows Indian English which shouldn't be arbitrarily changed/templates added unless relevant copyedits are done for the same. Gotitbro (talk) 10:23, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Language may get retooled, and "GJ-Tehzeeb" may now even be claimed by Hindu-nationalists who could be denying a more blatant nationalism by advertising a more rounded, plausible, but specious one. GJT then is a means of achieving greater, but determinedly limited, social acceptability. It is one thing to say that. It is quite another to say that Urdu is a byproduct of GJT, for the language, the highly Persianized version had long existed (as Ralph Russell and others have written) before the Indo-Muslim version of GJT arose in the United Provinces in the 19th-century, which was almost a century before Hindus in India coming from a wide range of political affiliations began to claim GJT as an affectation, a fantasy for an idealized past. When I summon up the energy, I will rewrite these articles, but for now, I am mostly venting at their poor state. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the use of GJ-Tehzeeb on this page is a bit over the top. But on your substantive point, the "highly Persianized version" did not long exist. As per Talk:Hindustani language/Archive 3#Some sources and quotes, Persian and Dehlavi/Hindustani were separate languages in Delhi until about 1700. Then the Dakhini poet Wali arrived there and started mixing them. Subsequently there was an effort to throw out the native Indian words from Dehlavi/Hindustani and replace them with Persian words, a decisive step towards the development of Urdu. So Urdu was very much an eighteenth-century language. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:14, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, the narrative that "there was an effort to throw out the native Indian words" is too simply painted. There was a tendency for "over-refinement", similar to what happened in European Baroque-poetry, i.e. to detach the literary language as much as possibile from the "coarse" spoken language. Persian was the source of choice for creating this refined and stilted vocabulary, but what fell victim to it were both "native Indian words", but also older Persian (or Perso-Arabic) loans, which latter had been well-integrated into Dehlavi for centuries. Tariq Rahman's "From Hindi to Urdu" gives a good and AFAICS unbiased overview of that matter. –Austronesier (talk) 15:12, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3:@Austronesier: By "long existed" above I meant "for a century or more." K3, Thanks for your sources. I will critique them at the RfC. My concern here is not the mixed colloquial speech of Delhi during the period 13th–late 16th/early 17th centuries, whatever you want to call it, Rekhta, Dehalvi, or Urdu, but about the next stage, i.e. the origins of formal Urdu. Please read R. S. McGregor's introduction to the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary here. There is no dispute about Urdu formally beginning in the late 17th or early 18th century (Wali died in 1709). But the poets who began to use words of the mixed speech (Rekhta, Dehalvi, etc) had been writing in Persian—writing ghazals, marsias, qawwalis, nats, ... Their writings are all the record we have.

In other words, Urdu was never Persianized from a mixed speech (as Ralph Russell has remarked as well), as there was no tradition of written literature in the mixed speech; rather, the Indo-Muslim poets/elites of Delhi began to employ local vernacular words, expressions, idioms, and themes while preserving the common forms of Persian poetry or hagiography they had been using; they did this in part as a result of the trend set in Dakhani a little earlier. You can observe that common theme in the Wikipedia biographies of Wali Muhammad Wali, Siraj-ud-Din Ali Khan Arzu, Shah Mubarak Abroo, or even in the Cultural development section of Muhammad Shah Rangila, the Mughal Emperor of the later Mughal period during whose reign Urdu became the court language of the Mughals. It may be—as Austronesier is quoting Tariq Rahman saying—that in this late 17th-century de-Persianization of Mughal court poetry and concurrent induction in it of local vernacular words, the poets/elite avoided the older Persian words already acclimatized in the vernacular/Dehlavi. If this is indeed the case, I would be highly surprised. (But, it is an interesting point that warrants looking at, I'll grant.)

Summing up: "Modern Standard Urdu" therefore is a misnomer, as is the claim that Urdu and Hindi arose in the same way—one by absorbing Persian, the other by absorbing Sanskrit—an ahistorical POV. Urdu literature (for that is the evidence) emerged as a result of Indo-Muslim Persian literature being diluted by the admixture of vernacular/Dehlavi/Rehkta/Khari boli words and idioms. It was never undiluted thereafter in the form of a Persianization. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:50, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

PS I did locate a scholar of the early 18th-century transformation in Mughal Delhi, and to boot a scholar of Persian, whose book might be worth reading. The author seems fairly rigorous in his writing: Keshavmurthy, Prashant (2016), Persian Authorship and Canonicity in Late Mughal Delhi: Building an Ark, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-317-28795-7 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:23, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

PPS He very recently did an English translation of the poem by Mir Taqi Mir about his cat Mohini that I've been talking about above. See here! He is an associate professor of Persian at McGill. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@To whom it may concern: wilful ignorance is a choice, and a—momentary—blessing solely for the one who chooses it. The rant has been deleted, but has already been read, too. In any case, Tariq Rahman is an outstanding sociolinguist and as such perfectly equipped for a no-bullshit approach to the history of Urdu. –Austronesier (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

You seem too smart—as discerned thus far on my dealings with you on Wikipedia—to fall for the fallacy that one person is perfectly equipped. Please tell me how he is perfectly equipped. What has he trained in? His PhD is in Pakistani English fiction. Later, he received a masters in Linguistics. His socio-politico-linguistic work has been on language politics in Pakistan, and the Urdu-English controversy there. But he is not a linguist of Hindi, Urdu, or Indo-Aryan, such as Masica or Cardona. He is not among the sociolinguists of South Asia written about in textbooks of sociolinguistics such as Lachman Khubchandani or Ashok Ramchandra Kelkar; he is not a historian of pre-modern Islamic South Asia such as Muzaffar Alam; he is not a Persianist, such as Keshavmurthy mentioned above or Sunil Sharma; he is not a scholar of Urdu language or its literature such as Christopher Shackle, Frances Pritchett, C. M. Naim, Ralph Russell, Anne Marie Schimmel; he is not a grammarian of Urdu such as Ruth Laila Schmidt, he's not a scholar of Hindi such as Michael Shapiro, or Francesca Orsini, he is not a lexicographer of Hindi such as R. S. McGregor. How then is he perfectly equipped and how by implication, all the other scholars who have actually worked in these fields, whose reflections on Hindi and Urdu I have been collecting, are not? Please list 10 words of medieval Persian that had became acclimatized in Hindawi or Dehlavi, but were dropped in the 18th and 19th century Urdu because of the imperatives of political Islam. Please tell me when in the development of Urdu, the letter se (ث, pronounced in Persian and Arabic as the English voiceless dental fricative "th") and seen (س, pronounced as the English "s") come to have the same pronunciation, on account of the inability of South Asians (both Indo-Aryan speakers and Dravidian) to pronounce se. The same for the Persian ذ (dhaal, the voiced English dental fricative "th") also unavailable in Indo-Aryan/Dravidian speech, which is now pronounced in Urdu as the letter ز (ze/zayn pronounced as the English "z")? Conversely, when was "do-chashmi he" introduced in Urdu to accommodate the aspirated sounds of Indo-Aryan (bh, gh, kh, jh, dh)? That is the history of Urdu of interest, and not (for the 100th time) how Urdu was and is still really an Indian language, and its real name is Hindustani, it was really shaped by the Hindu speakers of Hindustani, only it is written in a weird script, a non-Hindustani one. Wikipedia is no longer in that nascent state of development in which authors who write grand and popular trade-paperback histories of fields that are outside their field of training can be considered reliable scholars. But the Hindi-Urdu related pages have not changed one whit since 2006 when Wikipedia was in its nascent state. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:40, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

At least I am "smart" enough not twist to around the words of my interlocutor in a red-herring fashion. To say that scholar A is perfectly equipped, does not imply nor induce that scholars B, C, D (ect.) are not. All of these sources deserve to be read—and understood. Apart from that I won't engange in a quiz game that conflates language, literature and orthography. Nor cater to ideological fluff. –Austronesier (talk) 08:17, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Commonwealth English is better Urdu is not only spoken in India, it's also national official language and lingua franca of Pakistan, and in Nepal it's an recognized language, ok, my request is like sock, am i make statements to Urdu article, i only request to make statements, and if It does not inspect, that which English is article representing so China article can also written in American English. am i wrong?

Please add that Urdu is an Persianised and Standardised Register of Hindustani language, not a dialect of Western Hindi, but yes, Hindustani language is the part of Western Hindi dialects, It is not necessary that if Urdu's parent, Hindustani is a part of Western Hindi dialects, then Urdu is also a part of it. Hindustani language is totally a part of Western Hindi, if it's excludes Urdu language. Urdu is only considered as standard register of Hindustani, central indo-aryan language, Indo-aryan language, indo-iranian language or indo-european language ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk) 13:14, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3, if Hindustani is the name being used for the language spoken around the Delhi area from the 12th century onwards. After the onset of the Delhi Sultanate, this language got mixed with Persian vocabulary and spread throughout the subcontinent. It was written in the Nastaliq script in Deccan, and the written language came back to Delhi in the 19th century and eventually came to be called Urdu. so it should be written on Hindustani language article, not to Urdu article. ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk) 14:12, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Please note that, it was 18th century, not 19th. I miswrote it earlier, but corrected it now.

The talk of Hindustani belongs on this page as well, because that is still the basic core of Urdu. That is what makes it possible for Indians and Pakistanis to understand each other, despite calling their languages by different names. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

I have now quickly read Tariq Rahman's first three chapters. So littered are they with errors that I am incredulous that the book had the benefit of copyedits. He is unable to read Devanagari, relies on three people to do a translation, and still manages to have errors in the final version. The first three chapters have strings of speculation beginning with, "It appears that," all based on secondary sources, which include the likes of Hobson Jobson. He simply does not have the background either in Indo-Aryan linguistics or historical linguistics to engage in such historical speculation. He background seems to be in modern multilingualism and sociolinguistics of Pakistan. He might be a useful source for more modern material, especially the 20th-century pre- and post-partition, but he is not for early-modern material. I did happen upon the following sentences in the first chapter:

The terms Hindi-Urdu (or Urdu-Hindi) will be used for the ancestor of modern Hindi and Urdu which went by several names which will be mentioned later. It is also used for the language shared between urban Pakistan and north India—indeed—all major cities of South Asia—which goes by the name of 'Hindi' in the Bollywood films but used to be called 'Hindustani' before 1947."

Had he remained the knight sans peur et sans reproche of the history of Urdu in my eyes, I would have used him to drive the final nail in the coffin of the name, Hindustani language, but now I'm in a big dilemma. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:18, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

If you could you overcome your a priori aversion and read until chapter six, you would see that Tariq Rahman certainly rejects the Indian myth—propagated e.g. by Amrit Rai—that both Urdu and Hindi are some kind of artificial products of deliberate "Persianization" vs. "Sansktization" of poor innocent Hindustani. Indeed, by 1800, Literary Urdu had become very different and detached from the colloquial language, but the latter definitely still was Urdu just as well. The gap between these two registers (long before the creation of modern Hindi) was not a product of sectarianism, but elitism—a very natural thing all over the world in stratified civilizations. And it is this kind of sociolinguistic thinking that I find highly conclusive and appealing, regardless of whether TR draws on primary or secondary sources. –Austronesier (talk) 14:25, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

OK, Very well put. I will read on. Elitism is a possible scenario. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:03, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

for this confusion, i have created the page named Old Urdu, it's important for this confusion, so please, don't delete this page. - ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk) 22:22, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: you write that Hindustani is the name being used for the language spoken around the Delhi area from the 12th century onwards. After the onset of the Delhi Sultanate, this language got mixed with Persian vocabulary and spread throughout the subcontinent. It was written in the Nastaliq script in Deccan, and the written language came back to Delhi in the 18th century and eventually came to be called Urdu. I didn't see that on Hindustani article. So please, add that statement to Hindustani article. ImMuslimandimnotaterrorist (talk) 11:24, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

The article already says it. This was just my simplified explanation to you. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:15, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Requesting opinion on a page move request.

Hello,

@ Talk:Aurat (disambiguation)#Requested_move_11_May_2020 is taking place about article relating to women of mainly of Asian origin. In Past 2 days only two opinions are received and more opinions will be preferable. Thanks for your opinion and participation in discussion.

Bookku (talk) 12:02, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Requesting wider attention

I felt article Islamic_literature is in bit of neglect so I added my note on talk page there, requesting to take note of Talk:Islamic_literature#Article_review. If possible requesting copy edit support. Suggestions for suitable reference sources at Talk:Islamic_literature is also welcome.

Posting message here too for neutrality sake

Thanks and greetings

Bookku (talk) 07:17, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aurat (word)

The terms "Aurat", "Arvad", "Avret", and "Awrath" may refer to: Women of Asian religious or cultural descent and identity.

Self nomination for AFD since article copy pasted to Draft:Aurat for incubation because IMHO current article title Aurat (word) is misleading and confusing leading to western systemic bias and stifling the article growth. Please find Detail reason at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aurat (word)

I invite project members to review current and potential sourcing and weigh in on the AfD discussion. Thanks! Bookku (talk) 02:56, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Urdu feminist literature

Starting new article Draft:Urdu feminist literature. Please add relevant information with references.

Bookku (talk) 02:00, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Requesting small help

Hello many greetings,

Requesting your proactive contribution and support in updating Draft:Aurats (word) in relation to the related languages you know well.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 03:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

British India

Lead mentions and links British India. Not sure how people want to deal with it but that is wrong. British India did not exist until 1857/58, after the rebellion/revolt/first war of independence. In 1837, which is the date given in the lead, it was Company rule in India, ie the British East India Company.

I think there may be issues elsewhere with references to colonial India, unless the statements are intended to apply to the Portuguese and Dutch periods etc also. - Sitush (talk) 21:55, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Example of the latter is the phrase colonial period which we use. That is linked to Colonial India, which includes way before the British period. - Sitush (talk) 21:59, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Many people use the term "British India" to mean a British presence in colonial India, regardless of whether that was Company rule in India or direct rule by the British Crown. Nevertheless, to address your concerns, I have replaced the wikilink with company rule in India. The term "colonial India" simply refers to the entire period of colonial rule in India, which historians say started after the Middle Ages; it is used in contrast to "independent India". As long as a year is specified, there is no issue with that wikilink. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 23:27, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Like I said, not fussed about the detail, merely pointing out an apparent inconsistency. - Sitush (talk) 04:31, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Official language in India

Infobox includes J&K as an Indian state where Urdu is an official language but lead section does not mention it in its prose list - error or deliberate due to the issues of disputed territories? - Sitush (talk) 05:24, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars

People seem to get a bit bamboozled with Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Scholars Publishing. There is a theory that the latter intended this, hence their name selection. In any event, CSP exercises very little editorial control and has been trashed at WP:RSN. We cite at least one source published by CSP, so it probably needs to be reviewed. - Sitush (talk) 05:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Joshua Project

Please do not use it. See this. - Sitush (talk) 18:46, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I will add that I removed an entire table that contained a few JP cites. That was because there were only about five sources other than JP for the entire table, which comprised many lines of stats and had been tagged since at least 2018. We start over in such circumstances. - Sitush (talk) 18:57, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

That's not really how it works. If there are five good entries, then keep them. If a source is bad, ideally a better one should be found. Also, once your edits have been reverted once, it is disruptive to restore them without a consensus. Jeppiz (talk) 19:28, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

It is how it works when the entire table has been tagged for that long due to lack of sources. Showing just a couple of lines would completely distort the table's function. Especially since the sources are out of date, as tagged. I do understand BRD; it isn't particularly relevant in this case and the last time I looked was neither policy nor guideline. - Sitush (talk) 20:03, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I am quite prepared to rip out all of the unsourced statements in the entire article if they are not fixed fairly soon. It is ridiculous. - Sitush (talk) 20:04, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Please cool-down, the table in question has some cia & other RS links too, I think whatever rows or data is from JP, they could be removed or definitely the ref should be removed and rows/data tagged for nees-citations.--Fz^tc_s 20:12, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I am perfectly calm but, no. The stuff has been tagged for years. Now, WP:V is a policy, not an essay, and I will go for it if I feel like it. And throughout the article. Fed up of seeing crap. - Sitush (talk) 20:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I am still curious whether any other of the sources is considered problematic, too. This hasn't been communicated to us yet. –Austronesier (talk) 20:41, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

All of them, effectively, because we are comparing apples and oranges, using different sources from different dates that quite probably also use different methodology to derive their figures. It isn't how any half-decent encyclopaedia would present stats. - Sitush (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

A source once being used in WP:SYNTH becomes compromised per se? That's weird. –Austronesier (talk) 21:16, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I know what SYNTH is but fail to see the relevance. That is when we use two or more different sources to reach a unique conclusion which none of the sources actually state.

What I said seems like common sense to me but then judging by the state of the article maybe that is what is needed: for a level-4 article, it is pretty rough on the basics. (I will do a bit more on it but linguistics are not my thing so I'm not going to go mad on source checks etc even though I'm pretty dubious about some of them). One way partially to get round the problem would be to include an extra column in the table that made clear which year was being referred to by the source used for each line. But that still wouldn't get round the methodological issue I raised. - Sitush (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

(←) I removed the unreliable sources.VR _talk 17:06, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vice regent: That only partially solves the problem. For many entries, instead of a bad source, we have no source now. Plus we cannot assemble material from uneven data sources into one table without explicitly mention the year, as pointed out above. And we cannot do arithmetics with data from different sources (like the percentages, or the sums), that's SYNTH and error-prone. The only remedy is a single good source that gives a full overview of Urdu speakers in South Asia and the global diaspora. –Austronesier (talk) 17:40, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, we should give the date figure for each figure as a subscript, like this. Also, figures from uneven dates are not that uncommon, like see the table of figures at Overseas Chinese or French_diaspora#List_of_countries_by_population_of_French_heritage. Lets wait a few weeks for people to put sources in? VR _talk 20:44, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Urdu or Hindustani

Collapse sock trolling.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Foreverknowledge: Hi! I am Ali! I have provided the citation to supports @117.102.50.119:'s posts [] but you were saying that Hindustani is the ancestor of Modern Hindi and Urdu, i want to tell you that the upper line says: "Urdu, which was often referred to by the British administrators in India as the Hindustani language,[61]" so my and his claims must seen, instead of not "making sense", because you didn't read the book provided by 117.102.50.119, which tells "Urdu from a common language of Indian Hindus and Muslims from the fifteenth till the eighteenth centuries to its standardization into two languages: Persianised Urdu and Sanskritised Hindi." and the Hindi article is also claiming that "In the late 19th century, a movement to further develop Hindi as a standardised form of Hindustani separate from Urdu took form.[40] In 1881, Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.[41]" with Paul R's book's citation, and i want to request that as long as until discussion is ongoing, my claims must be seen, in my eyes saying that urdu has not divided is WP:POVPUSH, because the language is divided, and i have find out the LTA abuser from this talk page who push Urdu (and claiming that Hindi is a dialect of Urdu) without any reliable sources, although this is the stupidness, he should know that the Urdu language is belongs to Western Hindi, i request him, that it's also an POVPUSH, because Hindi is now rewarded language, and Urdu was rewarded when Britishs were ruling in India, so according to me he is mental. 45.116.233.46 (talk) 18:29, 7 July 2020 (UTC) Hi. You seem to be misinterpreting what the sources said. Urdu is from a common language (i.e. Hindustani) that developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi, which is different than saying Urdu developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi. You are claiming the latter, which is wrong. The British administrators often called Urdu as Hindustani, but Hindustani also meant the lingua franca that developed into standard Urdu and Hindi and that’s how the term is generally used. Please weigh in @Austronesier, Kautilya3, and Uanfala:. Foreverknowledge (talk) 18:59, 7 July 2020 (UTC) Until the 18th century, the common predecessor of present-day Urdu and Hindi was called by various names, among others Hindi, Hindavi, Hindustani and Urdu. And none of these names originally had a sectarian/communal connotation. Actually, in the sentence "XXX developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi", XXX can be replaced by any of these terms (were it not for the modern connotations). In the late 18th century, Urdu probably was most commonly used, but if we turn the clock back only a few centuries, Hindi was also commonly used for the vernacular spoken in Delhi and surroundings. This is why Tairq Rahman could give his book the title From Hindi to Urdu. In principle, "Urdu developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi" is just as correct as "Hindi developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi", but since both "Hindi" and "Urdu" do not mean the same thing as they did before 1800, both wordings should be avoided. Thus, the wording "Hindustani developed into Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi" is the safest way to avoid ambiguities and retain neutrality. –Austronesier (talk) 19:16, 7 July 2020 (UTC) @Austronesier:, yes, this language had got multiple names in history, but it's a mess Hindi and Hindustani both means Indian or India in the second edition of this book Tariq Rehman writes Hindi was name for the language now called Urdu, and should tell you that when the Hindi-Urdu divide occur (1881), the language's name was shorted to Urdu by Mushafı and the name doesn't makes language older, stop pushing Urdu, and consider it modern. and should recommend the book Language, Religion and Politics in North India by Paul R. Brass, which says Hindi had replaced Urdu in Bihar, and in the late 19th century Hindi was separated from Urdu, let's took you to 20th century, Hindi granted equal status to Urdu in UP in 1900 and in 1950 Hindi granted separate status and official precedence over Urdu and other languages in 1950. 45.116.233.46 (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2020 (UTC) * Hindi, which was born from the womb of Urdu, is now what many Hindu writers call Urdu, They forgot the fact that there was no tradition of prose literature in the vernacular before the 19th century, this has stated by Heer Verma and others, Hindus were using Urdu because Hindi was not exist in that times or not consider separated from Urdu. * When British started their ruling on India, the language they came in contact with was Urdu which they called Urdu, they intially use Persian (or Farsi) as their court and official language. But considering the popularity of Urdu, they decided to use Urdu. * Hindi and Urdu both got there accent from Khariboli dialect, which was later recognized as Hindi dialect. * In 1881, Hindus (Hindi) and Muslims (Urdu) got there separated languages, developed from Urdu/Hindustani. 45.116.233.46 (talk) 20:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC) It’s more accurate to think of Urdu as an elder sister to Hindi and both being born from the womb of prestandardized Hindustani/Hindavi/Rekhta/Hindi-Urdu. Modern Urdu’s standardization began in the 18th century in Mughal courtly circles while modern Hindi’s standardization began in the 19th century in British sponsored academic institutions and was modeled on Urdu’s. The British (example Gilchrist) identified three levels of Hindustani that they initially encountered in the late 18th century: rustic, colloquial, and courtly. Instead of promoting the middle colloquial register, which seems to have been their original intention, they often promoted the higher courtly register as Urdu on the one hand and promoted modern Hindi on the other hand. Both replaced the literary use of Brajbhasha, which until the 19th century was the most common literary language in northern India. Foreverknowledge (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC) @Foreverknowledge: This IP is most likely a sock of WP:LTA/SAMI, please stop wasting your with this vandal. Any IP making POVPUSH claims is most likely him, we don't need to feed the troll (as I have already told multiple users here). I'll be collapsing this now. Gotitbro (talk) 20:18, 16 July 2020 (UTC) References

Semi-protection again?

We're already seeing poor edits here, days after protection expired. Does it need to be set up again? - Sitush (talk) 19:49, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

What is wrong in my edits 117.102.51.64 (talk) 19:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

They seem generally odd. I am no linguist but when an article has just come off a period of protection and anonymous accounts immediately start making large-scale changes, it usually needs discussion. You were certainly wrong to remove the {{dubious}} tags, which relate to the section immediately preceding this one - those sources need some sort of discussion. - Sitush (talk) 19:59, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sitush: FYI I've asked for semi-PP because of "Persistent addition of undiscussed changes by IP." –Austronesier (talk) 20:03, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sitush: i am not removing the Dubious tags now, but removing was not wrong because, the statement was cited 117.102.51.64 (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 August 2020

182.183.154.241 (talk) 11:41, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 11:56, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

The tell-tale sign

The .ogg file has been in place for more than 13 years and has survived more than 5,000 edits, many by the upholders of the various "truths" about Urdu on this page. You can look up the history. I don't want to know who placed it, but Urdu-speakers don't pronounce the word "Urdu" that way, or as I said in my edit of 11 September 2020, "correction: removing the north Indian Hindi-language pronunciation of urdu; the r in Urdu is not pronounced as the allophonic ड़ ṛa /ɽ/" at least never with the retroflex sound of the speaker. I have since reinstated the pronunciation to await a comprehensive change in the page, especially in the lead, to survive until the end, a melancholy symbol of the farce perpetrated on this page, and the abuse, mostly by what I call India-POV promoters, i.e. those who promote various conceits current in India about Urdu, down to the mispronunciation. I'm sure my interlocutors will say, "Pakistani editors edited this article as well," but they will have missed the point. It did not occur to them that Urdu is written as اردو not اڑدو and something was amiss. 13 years, really?

I support Austronesier's approach, but will most likely not be participating, so turned off I generally am by everything related to Urdu on Wikipedia. I'm exhausted. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:20, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

The word Urdu is spelled and pronounced as اردو / उर्दू, not as اڑدو / उड़दु in both North India and Pakistan. There is no separate "north Indian Hindi-language pronunciation of Urdu" and that is an odd statement in light of Urdu's origins in Delhi and Lucknow. I've listened to the sound file and the word Urdu is being pronounced correctly; the speaker properly uses ر / र, not ڑ / ड़. Listen to it again, carefully. Thanks, Anupam^Talk 20:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Let others be the judge of whether the file: File:Hi-Urdu.ogg in Wikipedi's Urdu page sounds like "Urdu" being pronounced by

• the machine in Google translate, whose Urdu box is on the right
• the famed Urdu poet Iftikhar Arif in this interview between 4:55 and 5:05 marks?
• another famous Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz in this interview in India after 2:25 a few times

• or more like the Hindi poet Kumar Vishwas pronouncing "Urdu" in the first 30 seconds of this video?
• I will bite my tongue and not respond to the post above. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:57, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I'll let one of the great living poets of Urdu respond:

انہیں میں جیتے انہیں بستیوں میں مر رہتے

یہ چاہتے تھے مگر کس کے نام پر رہتے

پیمبروں سے زمینیں وفا نہیں کرتیں

ہم ایسے کون خدا تھے کہ اپنے گھر رہتے

افتخار عارف (Will translate in a minute) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:11, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

In these themselves I would have lived, in these settlements, I would have died

I wanted this, but in whose name could I have lived?

Native lands are not faithful even to Prophets

And what God was I that I could have lived in my home?

Iftikhar Arif

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:14, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I wish you all luck. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:17, 17 September 2020 (UTC)