Talk:Urdu alphabet

Urdu chart

I have added a Urdu vowel chart, which was graciously created by Shibo77 on my subpage Urduchart. Thanks. Mar de Sin ^{Talk to me!} 20:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The vowel chart has inaccuracies and is incomplete. I corrected the first entry and will need to make further corrections and additions later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajaiqtedar (talk • contribs) 10:36, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Are these diacritics positioned correctly ـَا ؛ ـَی ؛ ـَہ for long a? Are they supposed to be on the Alif? They're currently on the extension characters before. Irtapil (talk) 22:30, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I think they're supposed to appear on the preceding letter. — kwami (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

History not accurate

The history section is at best badly written and at worst horribly inaccurate. The script used by the Sassanid Empire i.e. Pahlavi immediately before the Islamic conquest was influenced directly by the Aramaic alphabet and Arabic was developed from the Nabatean alphabet. Persia was in contact with Mesopotamia and the Levant more than Arabia. The Arab Invasion saw to it to remove as much Sassanian influence from Iran as possible and thus forced the use of the Arabic script on Persians. The only thing Persian about the script is that both Naskh and Nastaliq were invented by Persians post-conquest but those are styles of calligraphy derived from Kufic, not entirely different systems altogether. Moreover, it seems as though the author of that section tried to rewrite history to provide rationale and precedence for the use of a foreign script by giving it an Aryan (Persian) and thus more dare-I-say "Indian" origin. Of course, there really isn't much need for that since most countries use a foreign script anyway. I suggest that someone rewrite this section. Xerces1492 (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

'a' sound missing

I could not find the symbol for a as in aam عام Please tell if ʿain (as on the Article (item no 24 in the table) has two "initial forms"; one as there and another as here in عام (aam = mango/common)? - Saurabh 117.198.128.110 (talk) 14:44, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

In Urdu ʕɑːm(:meaning common:عام) and ɑːm(:mangoe:آم) are diferrent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.63.143.111 (talk) 08:14, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Letters in Alphabet Table

Do the letters in the alphabet table appear correct for anyone? They don't for me.

I've tried loading the pages from various devices, and they are either not in Nastaliq (when I use Apple products) or don't display correctly (with PC). The dashes before the characters don't seem to change the letters to their medial or final forms.

Just trying to figure out if this issue is limited to me, or something wrong with the page.

Nastaliq: ـجـ

No Nastaliq: ـجـ

Possible solution: use the zero-width jointer "‍" character instead of "ـ"

No.	Name	Transcription	IPA	Contextual forms			Isolated
				Final	Medial	Initial
6	sē	s	/s/	‍ث	‍ث‍	ث‍	ث
7	jīm	j	/d͡ʒ/	‍ج	‍ج‍	ج‍	ج

If the problem's not limited to me, I'll update the table to look like the above format.

Muldoon99 (talk) 16:04, 14 June 2014 (UTC)Muldoon99

@Muldoon99: Nice catch... Actually no Apple device has a Nastaliq font built-in, so displaying Nastaliq is impossible on an Apple device. I don't know any other OS which has a built-in Nastaliq font (Android, Linux, Chrome OS). The only devices with built in Nastaliq fonts are devices running Windows 8.x OS and Windows Phone 8.x OS (thanks to Microsoft for adding the font 'Urdu Typesetting'). Another issue is that the Nastaliq fonts available don't allow for separate contextual forms, one reason being that the contextual forms vary greatly in size and shape depending on the surrounding letters. So it is impractical to include contextual forms when there are so many for a single letter. One solution could be removing contextual Nastaliq forms altogether and avoiding the fuss. Another way to fix this thing for all devices what-so-ever is to create seperate .svg images for ALL possible contextual forms in some Nastaliq font. I am going to start work on the latter proposal. —ШαмıQ✍ @ 16:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

This is because people shouldn't use the presentation blocks (FB50—FDFF, FE70—FEFF) at all, it is strongly discouraged. These blocks are from the 1990s era and have been added only for compatibility. One should use characters only from the basic Arabic blocks. Most if not all contemporary fonts substitute the presentations forms automatically.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:06, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Using the extension character will be using the presentations forms that contemporary fonts substitute the automatically, it's not using the legacy presentations form characters. Irtapil (talk) 22:41, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Does the availability of Noto Nastaliq solve the problem on apple devices? I'll try using zero width joiner to fix the ye table. Is there a reason the full letter table no-longer has presentation forms? Irtapil (talk) 22:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Missing ہ

Hello, I was looking for information on the character ہ but I did not find it here. I am talking about the character used in the first part of the words ہی، ہم، ہوں (hai, ham, houn). This character is not displayed the same way for me as any of the he characters displayed on this page. —biocrite _{{📠Talk • 📝Contribs}} 14:12, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Curious. That's choti he ہ, but for some reason a previous user removed it from the table. They seem to have made a lot of...unusual...changes to the alphabet table that I'm not quite certain of (I don't think "ya" or "lalalif" count as letters, though maybe there could be a section for the unusual conjuncts). I'm going to look for a solid source for the alphabet, since it seems like a lot of alphabet table changes have been done based on personal preference. Muldoon99 (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Nastaliq not loaded?

In the subsection labeled "Kāf or Gāf with Alif or Lām", the difference in the forms is not visible to me because the font loaded is Tahoma, or at least looks much like Tahoma. Nastaliq is not showing!

Edit: I think there is already an issue with Nastaliq (1). 3omarz (talk) 07:31, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

What system/browser are you using? I've got windows 8 running, and all the conjucts for laam and alif appear in Nastaliq. I know some pages load with the font "Urdu Typesetting," which comes standard with Windows 8.Muldoon99 (talk) 23:46, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm using Windows 7 with portable Firefox, but even IE doesn't display the font correctly. 3omarz (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I use Firefox with Noto Nastaliq (by Google) installed, and everything looks well (except for "bari ye", is it really equal to plain "ye" at the beginning and in the middle?) If this does not work right, then change your settings (In Firefox: Tools→ Options→ Content→ Fonts→ Advanced→ Allow pages...; and change fonts in the Arabic part)--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:17, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Kaf

The article says it's plain Arabic Kaf (U+0643), but many sources describe so-called Keheh (U+06A9). Standard keyboard layouts are with Keheh. Any comment?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

@Любослов Езыкин: @Любослов Езыкин:

as far as i know Arabic uses   ك   but   ک   is used by Urdu, Persian, and a few others, but kind of as equivalent letters. But wiktionary: ک    says the name is still 'kaf' in Urdu.

Do you have a reference other than unicode for the name "Keheh"? or do you know where we can find the full documentation for the unicode letter? there's often a copy of the original proposal as a pdf lurking somewhere on line, and they often explain the name, but it might be buried deep for such an old character. Try looking on the Arabic_script_in_Unicode page.

in the version i'm working on i found only kāf so far.

Irtapil (talk) 18:00, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Urdu uses kaf. The reason people think it's keheh is 'cause in Nastaliq...

Nastaliq: ك (keheh), ک (kaf)

Regular: ك (keheh), ک (kaf)

...they look the same The Old Macintosh (talk) 10:44, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Bari ye

Although in the printed texts I saw "bari ye" at the beginning and at the middle written exactly as plain "ye", in most fonts, even special ones like Noto Nastliq Urdu, it is not shown like that. Is it a problem with the fonts or may "bari ye" indeed look like its final form in the middle of words?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

That's because Unicode only has an isolated and final form for bari ye; the initial and medial forms aren't encoded. In printed works, they use the Arabic yah for the medial form of bari ye. The Old Macintosh (talk) 05:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Some questions

Some questions for Wamiq about the recent edits:

1. Were the representation forms in the table so useless? I understand that it might look wrong if a reader has no proper font installed and Nastaliq forms are more complicated and numerous than in Naskh, but the table was "fuller".
2. The same is about the vowel chart. It was full and detailed, now it is somewhat bare.
3. Both ALA-LC and Delacy use "v" for vāo (now wāʾo).
4. Rather a technical issue: should we use a macron below (U+035F) or <u></u> for kh, gh, sh, zh? ALA-LC says nothing specific.
5. Iẓāfāt is rather transcribed as -e not -i/-yi.
6. Iẓāfāt with baṛī ye is rather ۓ, not ئے (looks like a roundabout variant).
7. Now "Nūn ghunnah" seems to lack an iẓāfāt and has a superfluous -h at the end (ALA-LC advises to retain it, but it's not pronounced anyway).
8. Do chashmī are actually two words, why is there a hyphen?
9. What's the use of the excessive italics in the table?

--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:14, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Answers:

1. The contextual forms in the table are useless because of the sheer number of presentation forms for everything. Just the letter be has *so* many distinct contextual forms depending on the surrounding letters (e.g. بج baj, بل bal, بھر bhar, بر bar, بیر bair, قبر qabr, بقر baqr, بی bī, بہ bah, سبی Sibbī, etc) that the table didn't do justice at all.
2. Again, the vowel chart was not helpful (it didn't consider the possibility of ʿain as a placeholder and just pushed in alif as the placeholder for all initials, etc.), outright incorrect in a few places (medial and final au, initial and final ai, etc.) and didn't even acknowledge that short vowels do not occur in final positions.
3. That's a small departure from ALA-LC: v to w. The Urdu pronunciation of the letter isn't a strong v like Persian. And the transliteration gets ridiculous with words like quvvat and khvīsh.
4. I prefer <u>...</u> because it is guaranteed to work almost everywhere.
5. ALA-LC is accurate and better in transliterating the Urdu alphabet.
6. The most used/popular Urdu Nastaliq font (Jameel Noori Nastaleeq) doesn't support that letter unfortunately. So if a user has Nastaliq support, they'll see it fine and if they don't, it won't be bad for them in a Naskh font anyway.
7. Always heard/read it without the iẓāfat. Also, ALA-LC, same as 5.
8. It's just grammar, something I first learnt from here.
9. Transliteration is supposed to be in italics. :)

—ШαмıQ✍ @ 17:11, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

ط

The digraphs section shows uses of several letters with ط appearing over them as an apparent diacritic, but the article doesn't explain this. Shouldn't it? —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: there's two types of diacritics. The optional vowel diacritics that usually get omitted, and the other type, like that one, which are an inseparable part of the letter, like the dot on English "i" vs the double dot we used to put over some vowels that noöne bothers with anymore. does the current version make it any clearer? Irtapil (talk) 18:03, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

The letters with ط above them are retroflex forms of the standard letters and are considered distinct letters. ڈ is not considered a digraph of د and ط. --—ШαмıQ✍ @ 10:19, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

should this be improved or removed?

The introduction had blown out into a debate about the whether it's the same language as Hindi (below), fairly board and completely lacking references. Someone else already softened the language a bit, i moved it to the end and tried to adapt it to show it as points if view without taking a side... but it needs a lot of references to fix it, i don't know if that's worth it? Irtapil (talk) 13:17, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Distinction from Hindi There are conflicting points of view about the division between Hindi and Urdu. (Main article: Hindi Urdu controversy.) Some people hold the view that the distinction is old and intrinsic to the languages. The Urdu language emerged as a distinct register of Hindustani well before the Partition of India. It is distinguished most by its extensive Persian influences. This stands to reason: Persian was the official language of the Mughal government and the most prominent lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent for several centuries before the rise of the Maratha Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. Others claim that the difference is recent, and artificial, and more related to extrinsic cultural factors than it is too the language(s) themselves. The two languages are often collectively referred to as " Hindustani", but generally only by outsiders, and term is regarded by some sources as outdated. Urdu and Hindi, an official federal language of India, are different registers of the same language, and thus they are mutually intelligible and can use each other's script to write the other's language. Usage of script generally signifies the user's faith: Muslims generally use the Urdu (Perso-Arabic) script, while Hindus use the Devanagari script . In addition to Pakistan, the Urdu script is official in five states of India with a substantial percentage of Hindustani-speaking Muslims: Bihar, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.

maybe this should be moved to Hindi-Urdu controversy? but i imagine the same ideas are already there in a much better referenced form? Irtapil (talk) 13:17, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Removed. Both the lead and the history section [of the current version] start with a debate of what Urdu is, which is irrelevant for this article. We could make a simple statement that it's a register of Hindustani, and link to that or the controversy article, but that should be a parenthetical, not the introductory point of the article. — kwami (talk) 07:52, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

thanks @Kwamikagami: but it's back now in the current version. Irtapil (talk) 06:06, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Major changes in this page by an editor

Dear Kwamikagami, Anupam, Austronesier: A user Irtapil (talk · contribs) has been making major changes to this page. They conform to no Wikipedia style of editing that I know of, and the page had become largely unintelligible though he seems to be a well-meaning editor and energetic. I actually did not know or had forgotten about the existence of this page, confusing it with Hindi-Urdu orthography. I have reverted this user's edits to Kwami's last. At the very least if this is to be a serious Wikipedia page, the edits need to be discussed. They appear to be without ancillary explanations that would befit any encyclopedia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree that if User:Fowler&fowler finds some of the major changes made to this article by User:Irtapil problematic, User:Irtapil should gain consensus for his/her edits here before reinstating the changes per WP:BRD. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 03:11, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler deleted 6 months of work on this page from me and multiple other editors @Plastikspork, Rodw, Ahmedraunaq, Malurian123, Taimoorahmed11, Quebec99, Ash wki, MB, Chan-Paton factor, Favonian, Better Knowledge, Abasit909, and Malurian123: (and at least half a dozen others who made minor contributions). I am sorry realise i did leave it in a bit of a messy / unfinished state for a few days, because i got interrupted, was working on tidying it up as fast as i could when Fowler&fowler deleted 6 months of work from 20 different editors a second time. If you read above in this talk page, i actually did seek input on several of my changes, but i got no objections to most of my suggestions for several weeks or months. Fowler&fowler's rollback was destructive and unreasonable: Removing 6 months of work, from about 20 different contributors, most of which was fully referenced, with no consultation. The new content had been there for months with nobody objecting. By the time i noticed the destructive edit by Fowler&fowler it was already difficult to repair without discarding subsequent contributions, so i fixed it as a matter of urgency. I don't know what Fowler&fowler means by "copied from somewhere" in their most recent edit, the things i added were all original work with inline citations from multiple sources. If Fowler&fowler wishes to make a constructive contribution then i welcome their input, but deleting 6 months of work and 80% of the article without consultation is just vandalism. @Kwamikagami and Austronesier: Irtapil (talk) 05:33, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

i acknowledge the version that was there was a bit messy, if i am not allowed to re-revert Fowler&fowler's edit can somebody please suggest where i can work on an alternate cleaned up version that can be discussed? and what do we do about conflicting versions if people edit the version Fowler&fowler damaged? Irtapil (talk) 05:48, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

The version this has been reverted to is heavily reliant on two or three sources, particularly for the tables. The version i was working on used multiple sources, and included detailed inline citations. Irtapil (talk) 06:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

current version i'm tidying up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Irtapil/sandbox i don't know if others can see this? let me know it there's a more appropriate place to publish a draft. Irtapil (talk) 07:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

If there's a proper template to use for the notice i added, or a way to make it only display when someone initiates an edit, can somebody please update that. Irtapil (talk) 07:51, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Without a discussion of what's problematic, I don't know what the issues are. There are several improvements over "my" version, such as getting rid of the debate over what Urdu is, which doesn't belong here (certainly not as the primary introductory material!). Also, 'cn' tags should not be removed unless the info is trivial. (E.g., is Burushaski actually written in the Urdu alphabet? If it has a written language at all, wouldn't it be the Burushaski alphabet, a descendant of the Urdu?)

Irtapil, your work is still there. You might fix up the messy bits, starting from from where you got interrupted, in your sandbox, and see if anyone has any objections to the actual content rather than just the style. I haven't gone over it, so I don't have any opinion other than my points just above.

On style, I find the neon rainbow colors of the sample fonts to be distracting. Visually, they become the most important part of the article. I'd rather see two more muted alternating colors, just enough for people to keep track of which sample is which font without shouting at them. Same thing under 'letter forms' -- the neon colors are so glaring that I can't follow what's being presented. But that's an issue of style, not content. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions @Kwamikagami:. I am currently working on it in my sandbox, but it sounds like you fount it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "your work is still there"?

I hadn't completely removed the debate over what Urdu is and the relationship to Hindi, i just moved it out of the intro. But there are no references in most of it, so possibly the section should just be deleted? but i hadn't removed it yet because nobody had replied to my suggestion above yet.

I can leave that out the rainbow image for now if it's a big problem? I'm not sure if two alternating colours would work either, since they might not line up exactly with the labels, and it's a bit tricky to count through to match them up. What else might work? A repeating set of three colours? Pairs of lines in two colours? Multiple colours but a bit darker rather than bright?

I used some light colours in the other tables (possibly one of F&F's objections?). But they only reinforced the information that was written. So people usung screenreaders or with atypical colour vision could still obtain all the information, but those whose vision and device allowed could see it a bit faster or more clearly.

Irtapil (talk) 08:44, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Is this what F&F meant by "looks copied"? I didn't add this image, and i agree it looks suspicious in terms of possibly copyright infringement.

The Urdu alphabet, depicted with character names.

Irtapil (talk) 08:44, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

That's not a copyvio issue, as you can't copyright an alphabet. It should be moved out of the lead into the alphabet section, though, assuming you keep it. (Minor issue.)

The fonts should line up exactly with their labels. If they don't, then the table needs to be corrected. You could also use alternating background colors or shading. That's how tables like this are usually presented. Oh, I see. It's an image. Could the labels be moved into the image? Could the browser be forced to display the fonts in a table? (I think WP has that ability now, with embedded fonts.)

The Hindi-Urdu section doesn't belong here at all. It's a content fork. Especially with controversial or quickly dated issues, it's best to keep things in one place. Given that it isn't even sourced, best just to delete it.

I'd just call the other script "Devanagari", not "Hindi Devanagari". Urdu is also written in Devanagari, after all. The Nagari letters are the same regardless of what one calls the language. — kwami (talk) 09:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagam: (btw, am i tagging people appropriately? I'm kinda just copying what I've seen) That's kind of why i specify Hindi Devanagari (though if "Devanagari Hindi" is a more typically way to say it I'll switch). It's specific and unambiguous. From the bits and pieces I've read on the issue, there seems to be a bit of debate about whether Devanagari Urdu is "a thing", or possibly that's just about whether it's a good idea. "'Urdu can be written in Devanagari" is controversial and messy, wheras "here is the spelling of the equivilent word / phoneme in a very closely related language" is simple and factual and verifiable (though ideally phrasing to avoid taking a side on language vs register vs dialect etc.). The correct spelling of a word in Hindi is easy to verify, the correct spelling of something in Devanagari Urdu is a lot more elusive and debatable? Irtapil (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:

Sorry, i think maybe i wasn't very clear about what i was asking when i linked that image?

I showed that image here on the talk page because I was confused by what was said in the edit note on the massive rollback. The edit note said the recent additions "seem to be copied from somewhere", but everything i had added was stuff i'd slowly built up a bit at a time on the page, so i couldn't see how they scrolled through all those incremental edits to find the six month old version and somehow concluded the stuff added over that time period was plagiarised. Then i remembered that image and wondered if maybe that had stood out and looked suspicious.

The context: "02:13, 4 May 2020... Fowler&fowler ... 38,390 bytes -239,925 ... you made the edits, I have reverted them, now you need to discuss them on the talk page first. They seem to be copied from somewhere. …"

I don't particularly like that image above; i didn't add it and i don't think it's very useful. It looks like it's a screencap or scan from somewhere? i don't know if the content would count as copyright or not, but of all the changes F&F rolled back, leaving that image out is one i agree with. And yes, having the letter names written in Hindi is kind of irrelevant and inappropriate in an article about Urdu aimed at English speakers. The html tables built by me and the other wikipedians, with the names in Urdu and English, are much more suitable. Are you able to see them in the link to my sandbox?

So, i'm in favour of leaving that image out, i was just trying to work out what looked "copied from somewhere".

Irtapil (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: i guess it would probably make more sense to ask you what you meant? (see above) Irtapil (talk) 21:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Irtapil, I don't know what you are doing. You left a post on my talk page stating you were learning Urdu etc. Nothing wrong with beginners editing any page, but when you do huge data dumps, which are full of tables, which you've done on the Arabic page as well, but with no ancillary English explanations before during or after, what you turn the text into is not that of an Encyclopedia. You are adding incorrect information. Not once but again and again. The Urdu pe is not the same (phonologically) as the Persian pe (which is like the English initial position p). The Urdu te is not the same as the Persian te. The list of errors is long. But the main thing is the relentless table making with no text and the all at once data dumps. I will keep reverting whatever it is you are doing until you turn the additions into digestible explanatory text in English with only minimal tables. And one subsection at a time they need to be. We can't have tables in which you are writing the name of the alphabet in Urdu. Even beginning Urdu books don't write the names of the alphabet in the same language whose alphabet the class is attempting to learn. Seriously, you need to explain what you are doing, in your own words, not copied from somewhere else. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:21, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

PS Also, I am perplexed by the sources you are using. You seem to have copied one table from some site at Hannover, which is hardly a reliable source. The standard sources are:

• Let's Study Urdu: An Introduction to the Script by Ali S. Asani (Harvard) and Syed Akbar Hyder (UT-Austin), Yale University Press, 2008
• Urdu for all: An Introduction to Urdu Script, Editor Roop Krishen Bhatt, National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language, New Delhi, 2005
• Rekhta Urdu Learning Guide by Abdur Rasheed (Jamia Millia Islamia), Rekhta Books, Delhi, 2019
• The classic reference, which is more detailed, is: Naim, C. M., Introductory Urdu. [Chicago]: South Asia Language & Area Center, University of Chicago, 1999.

• Volume 1 (large PDF file)
• Volume 2 (large PDF file)

I could add books by Ralph Russell (SOAS), David Mathews (SOAS) and other, but really at least for a first cut, you don't need anything more. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:09, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Here are some more:

• Matthews, David; Dalvi, Mohamed Kasim (2015), Complete Urdu (Learn Urdu with Teach Yourself), Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1-4736-0257-1
• Bhatia, Tej K; Koul, Ashok (2005), Colloquial Urdu: The Complete Course for Beginners, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-77970-3
• McGregor, Ronald Stuart (1992), Urdu study materials for use with outline of Hindi grammar, Oxford University Press
• Russell, Ralph (1986), A New Course in Urdu and Spoken Hindi for Learners in Britain, London: School of Oriental and African Studies, ISBN 978-0-7286-0131-4
• (Obviously more advanced, but related to the previous book is: Shaw, Alison (1991), A New Course in Urdu and Spoken Hindi for Learners in Britain: Part I, Teacher's Guide, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-7286-0170-3)

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:21, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the resources @Fowler&fowler:. I've not looked at them properly yet, why are those two available as pdf? i did an obsessive dig into two or three archives of scanned books and found mostly stuff that was illegible or outdated, e.g. one that Romanised it as "Oordoo" in the title. I think "colloquial Urdu" one on that list is the one i have bought, but not got far into yet. I held off on buying a text for a long time because they can be incredibly expensive, and don't fit easily in my budget.

Irtapil (talk) 06:20, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I see all sorts of issues: "Queensland," for example, is not a word that has much of a history of usage in Urdu, so conventions are unlikely to be sourced properly. Even if you find it mechanically in a dictionary, the dictionary itself might not have enough of a corpus of usage. It is much better to use words or loanwords that are commonly used in Urdu. Another word is Portsmouth. It's British English is pronounced "Portsməth," and not "Portsmaauth," which seems to be the rendering in Urdu here. The sources being used here are nonstandard. Two being used over and over again in the tables are: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+062A and https://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=0642 One of them leads repeatedly to dead links. The Oxford Urdu English dictionary is being employed again and again. Bottom line: this might be veering too close to original research.

For the record, I have never edited this page other than the two times I made a revert recently. My main concern is that there are already too many issues in the Urdu-related pages, many of which are shared with Hindi. We don't want more issues in the form of unvetted material on this page. That is why it is not a good idea to prepare vast amounts of text elsewhere (be it in a sandbox or another WP page) and then copy it here (in one fell swoop). It puts too much burden on those who are attempting to monitor the Hindi-Urdu related pages. The way forward, as I see it, is to first present and gain consensus on some reasonable and accessible sources; only then can text, preferably in small amounts—no greater in length than a sub-section at a time—be presented, which other editors can test for accuracy with respect to the sources. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:39, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: This comment is quite confusing feedback "Bottom line: this might be veering too close to original research." that seems like almost the exact opposite of your initial "copied from somewhere" objection. Irtapil (talk) 06:27, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Re Queensland, the version you rolled back was a bit of a work in progress. I apologise again for leaving it like that. My intention was to only keep examples that i could verify the spelling of. I made a shortlist from Urdu wikipedia, i was then going to go back and look them up properly in outside sources. I probably should have kept the list of potential elsewhere, or commented it out, until i had done that checking and refining step.

The lack of usage in Urdu was sort of the point though, the article is about the alphabet, not the language as a whole, the section that mentioned Queensland was about Urdu spellings of foreign names and words which have come into the Urdu language fairly recently from languages that use very different writing systems.

Possibly i needed to explain that point better in the text accompanying the table? or were you just skimming?

I was confused for literally days about the relationship between English "T" and the similar letters in Urdu. It's explained pretty poorly in most educational resources for English speakers. When i finally untangled the issue, i wrote it up so the next person who googles it can have an easier time than i did. So i do want to make sure my point is clear.

Did the version of the article that you disliked have too many examples in general? I probably did get a bit carried away. Then i hit the rather massive obstacle that the dictionary i was using http://ur.oxforddictionaries.com/ went off line very suddenly. The dictionary was not so relevant for the foreign place names, but for some of the other sections it was a rather big problem. It is bizarrely difficult to find a good quality dictionary of Urdu for English speakers, the printed dictionaries published by Oxford Dictionaries all only work in the opposite direction (i.e. definitions of English words in Urdu, but no definitions of Urdu words in English). I can find a lot of poor quality dictionaries of Urdu words, e.g. about a century out of date, or illegible scans, or one which didn't even include the number three, but i am really struggling to find good quality dictionaries of Urdu words for English speakers. I'm hoping one of the things you linked above was a good dictionary, but i've not looked properly yet.

(i'll respond to your other points later.)

Irtapil (talk) 21:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm busy for the rest of the day and will reply to your other questions some other time, but in my understanding, "Queensland" would be spelled کوئینز لینڈ not کوئنزلینڈ ; the latter would be pronounced kwinsland. The hamza has its own "seat." In the case of short vowels, you can sometimes put a zabar, zer or pesh for clarification, but the long vowels such as chotee ye, in this case, would require a separate be-series connector with the chotee ye diacritics (two dots) beneath. For a good dictionary of Urdu English, the classic is Platt's available free on-line at this DSAL site at the University of Chicago. The site also has Prof Naim's Introductory Urdu, which I have linked above. The good thing about these links is that they are reliable and available for anyone to view. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:48, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: p.s. My confusion when i was first learning, and thus the bit i was trying to explain with those examples, was about T and D, i just realised Queensland seems like a bizarre example when i only mentioned "T".

Queensland is definitely one word, unless there's some convention Urdu spelling convention about splitting things up? The first vowel is an "ee" not "i", it's pronounced exactly as if you were talking about the land belonging to a female monarch "Queen's land", but spelled as one word "Queensland". But it's not very important, since there are plenty of more suitable examples i could use.

Vowels baffle me in all languages. In German i they are easiest, but after about 25 years i'm still baffled by ö and ü; in English i tend to just insert vowels at random until the red squiggle underneath goes away (why on earth does Underneath have an A in it). Hence the table of vowels in my version still is still looking mostly the way it was six months ago.

English language dictionaries of English i can find heaps of, it's an Urdu dictionary in English i'm not managing to find.

Irtapil (talk) 22:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

oh! you mean "i" like at the end of "Hindi"? but i never see it used like that except at the ends of words... i would also like to know how एफ ایک becomes "ek" … but that's another story… Irtapil (talk) 22:16, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

No I meant i as in Hind. If it were Quinsland, you would spell it the way you did. That too would require a hamza. But as it is Queensland, you will need to spell it the way I did. The one word or two is not an issue as D is a non-connector in Urdu. (There are some conventions, but it is for Urdu words. For example, all "آباد/aabaad" (literally, "settled") words in the names of towns are written separately, not in connected form. So Farukhabad, (literally "settled by Farukh," which is an Urdu word, is written as فرخ آباد, not فر خا باد. As for the "English" dictionary, the error was mine, which now stands corrected. It is an Urdu to English dictionary. It is old, but a workhorse of the Urdu scholarship. The late Pakistani Urdu poet Fahmida Riaz confessed to using it over and over again. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:33, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think i have ever heard the word "Hind" said aloud, and if i did it was probably said by an Australian who said it wrong. Do you mean like the first "i" in Hindi and and Hindu? or (struggling for other examples) fish, chip (neither said by a New Zealander), and brick? I thought the non-omitted vowels ی و ا were always long vowels ... i thought i was mixed up with Arabic, but come to think of it ي as a vowel in ليبيا is an "i", but there seems to be a bit of a bias towards using non-diacritic vowels in foreign words and names.

If you are confident about کوئنزلینڈ maybe fix it in Urdu Wikipedia, where i found that spelling. It's weird, i thought you meant the Hamza was missing from what i had, but it's missing Yē. That looks really weird, and i don't know how i missed that, i guess i just presumed they knew better than i did.

Irtapil (talk) 00:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: I agree with Fowler&fowler about the first impression. The tables are too massive, and the reader gets lost in a stream of information where necessary explanations are drowned by the tables (e.g. in "Letter forms"). I have not yet looked very closely at every aspect of your additions, but there is apparently much excessive technical detail. We should always keep the front-end (our readers) in mind, and what people expect to find here. Maybe some details can be split out to a separate page (maybe trans-wiki to Wiktionary).

And please don't bear a grudge on Fowler². You're enganged now in a constructive discussion, and that's good. Kwami and I have done similar things (deleting large portions of material which obviously are the result of s.o. else's hard work), and it certainly happened also to each of us (kwami, Fowler² and me). The material is retrievable from the history, the article is here to stay, so nothing is gone. It's much worse if something goes to WP:Articles for Deletion, because then, the complete hist is indeed gone. Our motives are: what will a reader see and read when he opens a page at this very time. And yes, I think the reader should not see a massive, quite impenetrable construction site, so the revert was not objectionable. –Austronesier (talk) 08:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Why can't people who find tables difficult to interpret just scroll past them? I find long passages of text pretty difficult to absorb information from, but I'm happy to leave it there for the people who do find them interesting or informative. I just scroll past the verbose bits till i get to tables or graphs or diagrams.

Though i fully admit the versions of the tables that were there were a bit messy, with lots of gaps, and poorly labelled columns, etc. I'll streamline them elsewhere and add them when they are intelligible. But even when i built them up gradually in situ (over several months and hundreds of edits) people think I copied them from "somewhere", so if they suddenly appear neat and fully formed won't they will end up deleted as suspected plagiarism? I'm not really sure what the right approach is on this? if i draft things in situ then it's messy for readers, but if i create neat polished content and add it in big chunks it gets removed almost automatically, just for being too big a change. I made attempts to discuss things about this article, but i got no responses. e.g. i asked above about whether to delete a somewhat biased section that was a bit low on references and nobody responded.

Irtapil (talk) 10:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: Visual layout preferences are not always based on cognitive impairment ("people who find tables difficult to interpret"). The Manual of Style (MOS:TABLE) of Wikipedia puts it nicely:

• Prose is preferred in articles as prose allows the presentation of detail and clarification of context, in a way that a table may not. Prose flows, like one person speaking to another, and is best suited to articles, because their purpose is to explain.

Tables can summarize, illustrate, and certain things like letter shapes are naturally best presented in a table. But they should not visually dominate. Long passges of text can (and should) be broken down into digestable paragraphs. Tables should also contribute to the flow. Less is More. That's my two cents (aka response) about it. –Austronesier (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: When I'm looking for info in Wikipedia rather than writing it, I'm always looking for quick reference tables, infoboxes, maps, phylogenetic trees, etc.

Possibly I'm foolish to admit this, since for some reason many people seem to think reading a lot, reading quickly, and spelling correctly are a key indicators of intelligence or some other vague virtue. "He didn't read the book, he just looked at the pictures" is a cliché about a stupid lazy person?

I used to waste ages reading every word of genetics papers, but eventually i realised that successful scientist didn't read every word, they read the abstract and looked at the figures, and only went to the text for specific details (e.g. the exact quantities of chemicals to use if they wanted to replicate the experiment).

I suppose it's ironic for someone who struggles a bit with languages to find them so interesting, but i think that's kind of why i find them so interesting.

That's not quite what i meant. "Long passges of text can (and should) be broken down into digestable paragraphs." Obviously, when people don't paragraph properly that it's even harder, e.g. this paper took me an entire week to read for journal club. But info that's broken up into bite-sized table-cell-sized pieces is even easier for me to sense of.

Irtapil (talk) 11:37, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

tracking changes between versions

@Fowler&fowler: Re "Obviously nothing is lost on Wikipedia, as Austronesier has wisely observed; removing some POV text in the warning" on your edit summarising the notice that originally said:

"The edit you are trying to make might already be fixed in the version that is under review, and if you edit this version your edits might be lost if the version from April 2020 is restored."

Yes, i know the data is all there, i copied it into my sandbox and i've been working on it this week. I thought i linked that above? or did that post not save properly?

That's not what i meant by "your edits might be lost if the version from April 2020 is restored", but obviously i didn't communicate it very well? I wasn't meaning computer glitch kind of lost, i meant lost in the process of trying to integrate changes into the revised version if it forks. Can you think of a better way to say that?

My prof. and i were working on different version of the same paper once and when we realised the mix up it took about a week to integrate our contributions, and that's just two people. Or does Wikipedia have better tools for that than two biologist trying to muddle their way through with MS Word's "track changes" and "compare documents" functions?

I've used the view changes function, but it doesn't seem to work very well if sections have been moved and then changed, sometimes it doesn't recognise them as the same section so it doesn't show changes in detail.

Irtapil (talk) 11:48, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: This template (Template:Under construction) might help. @Fowler&fowler: I think it is a good idea if Irtapil adds it section-wise. They can cleanup the tables in their user-space, and we all can discuss at same time about the overall structure of the article, including what might be split out into subpages for in-depth presentation. Both of you have a valid view point. Fowler&fowler as native user of the script, and Irtapil as a student who wants to share what he has come across in his process of mastering Urdu. For native users, the Urdu abjad is not just a tool of writing Urdu, but also a link to its literary heritage and its historical bond to Persian literature, and of course also a part of Muslim identity. Non-native learners will experience the same, but at same time will give weight to technical details which native user will consider secondary, or leave aspects unmentioned which native users consider important for a full presentation of the Urdu script. Both viewpoints are important. –Austronesier (talk) 12:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: thanks for the template, i knew there must be one, but I'd only seen it on German wiki and i couldn't use that one (at least i presume i couldn't?). Irtapil (talk) 06:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: though it doesn't seem to fit our use case? If you know how to use it, please add it to the page with the correct variables? Irtapil (talk) 07:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Also, i had been adding it section-wise, for months, and nobody seemed to have any objections until now. About twenty editors saw it and made only minor changes.

I really regret leaving it untidy, I've got into a really stressful mess now, i don't know if I've got the energy to fight for everything i contribute not being deleted.

F&F's delete-by-default system seems like it would lead to stagnation. F&F seems to have recently made massive reversions on a few articles, saying they need discussion, but not even bothered actually starting a discussion about it on the talk page. I didn't look at them closely, but the only justification given seemed to be that the content was new. This process seems destructive.

My interpretation of the guidelines would be that reverting "bold" changes should only be for cases where they are harmful, e.g. replacing better quality content with worse content, copyright violations, severe bias, etc. If they're just low quality additions of new content (that don't remove better content) they should be left in place for subsequent editors to improve.

I did leave it a mess, maybe it was kinda unreadable? Would more polished contributions be left in place, rather than deleted automatically pending an exhausting debate?

Irtapil (talk) 06:43, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: I meant to add the template section-wise. –Austronesier (talk) 09:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: sorry, i misinterpreted, i thought you meant to replace the notice at the top.

◢	please see the talk page before editing	◣
	The version currently displayed below is from December 2019. Please view the dispute on the talk page.

Irtapil (talk) 09:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I'm flattered, but I'm not a native user of the script, only sensitive to its heritage.  :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:46, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: but this article isn't even about the history. The tangent about that was deleted from my version ages ago, see above. Irtapil (talk) 05:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Ok, I was mistaken here, but you'd certainly take the viewpoint (not POV in the pooh-poohed sense here in WP) of the role I erroneously ascribed to you, I presume. –Austronesier (talk) 14:59, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Yes, I do. Also, Urdu having become a minority language in India—in my view—requires us to note the pressures brought to bear on it by India's Hindi/Hindu-dominated majoritarian culture, whether by being redefined (e.g. "the language of Bollywood songs is really Urdu") or by its dissemination being controlled (e.g. "we cannot really fund Urdu instruction in state-supported schools, even in the former Urdu heartland"). I would very likely take that POV with respect to all minority languages in India (and elsewhere); it's just that I don't know them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:47, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: that's a story that needs to be told on wiki, but on a different page. I would be keen to read it, but i don't think it exists. Irtapil (talk) 06:09, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: re "including what might be split out into subpages for in-depth presentation". I think the only bit warranting that was the history section (below). But that had absolutely zero references so it doesn't seem worth starting a new page to move it to?

<!-- The section previously called "History", had two contradictory very biased paragraphs, neither of which had any references. I moved the more neutral stuff to other sections, and renamed the biased leftovers "Distinction from Hindi". -->

There are conflicting points of view about the division between Hindi and Urdu. (Main article: Hindi Urdu controversy.) Some people hold the view that the distinction is old and intrinsic to the languages. The Urdu language emerged as a distinct register of Hindustani well before the Partition of India. It is distinguished most by its extensive Persian influences. This stands to reason: Persian was the official language of the Mughal government and the most prominent lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent for several centuries before the rise of the Maratha Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. Others claim that the difference is recent, and artificial, and more related to extrinsic cultural factors than it is too the language(s) themselves. The two languages are often collectively referred to as " Hindustani", but generally only by outsiders, and term is regarded by some sources as outdated. Urdu and Hindi, an official federal language of India, are different registers of the same language, and thus they are mutually intelligible and can use each other's script to write the other's language. Usage of script generally signifies the user's faith: Muslims generally use the Urdu (Perso-Arabic) script, while Hindus use the Devanagari script . In addition to Pakistan, the Urdu script is official in five states of India with a substantial percentage of Hindustani-speaking Muslims: Bihar, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.

@Austronesier: The detail about the writing system i think all fits best here. A brief summary of the writing system would belong in either Urdu or Hindustani orthography.

Irtapil (talk) 07:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: p.s. re "Non-native learners will experience the same, but at same time will give weight to technical details which native user will consider secondary", wouldn't the version aimed at fluent speakers of Urdu belong in Urdu wikipedia? Their perspective and insights are relevant, but the audience is English speakers, so it should be details useful or relevant to English speakers, even if a native speaker of Urdu thinks they are trivial or boring? I know my Urdu speaking friends found my fixation on the nuance of ٹ immensely dull, but other non native speakers learning the language would find a description of that helpful.

i found this page and found it was missing a lot of things i would like to know about the language, so i researched and found those things elsewhere and brought them back.

i was hoping native speakers or more advanced learners would come along and correct any misconceptions of mine, and in some cases it seems they did, a few times when i returned to the page i found some details had been clarified. But everything being rejected at once, especially including the helpful improvements other editors had made to my contributions, was incredibly frustrating and depressing.

Irtapil (talk) 07:25, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

updated for clarity Irtapil (talk) 09:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I think native or native-equivalent Urdu speakers can contribute with what they think is relevant for presenting their language/script/literature to non-native speakers. So the idea was still about an English-speaking audiance, to which I (L2) also belong. I'd love to see exactly that inside viewpoint too.

As for all the nuances, after all, WP is not primarily intended as a full manual. You corretcly said that readers can scroll over detailed tables, but if they are uninitiated, the wouldn't even find the "landing points" for where to continue reading if they are interested in a first overview. So I still think the best approach is to present a concise overview with bite-size tables here, and to split out the details and the large tables into a subpage, which we can always refer to with a "Main article:" or "See also:" hatnote.

The history section still needs to be re-written and trimmed, since Urdu writing emerged centuries before the 19th century when the terms "Urdu" and "Hindustani" were artificially dissociated. A certain ahistorical POV (mostly held in India) tends to distinguish "Urdu" and "Hindustani" retroactively before 1800, although these were synonyms for the same language at every level of speech then (casual communication or highly refined poetry). –Austronesier (talk) 10:06, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I also think this would be good: "I think native or native-equivalent Urdu speakers can contribute with what they think is relevant for presenting their language/script/literature to non-native speakers. So the idea was still about an English-speaking audiance, to which I (L2) also belong. I'd love to see exactly that inside viewpoint too." That's what i was referring to, but what i was referring to isn't very important, so just disregard. Irtapil (talk) 06:03, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

help tracking changes

@Fowler&fowler and Austronesier: you have both said nothing is ever truly lost on wikipedia, so I'm hoping you can help with this.

At some point i lost the full details for two named references <ref name="unicode ISO 8859-6"/> & <ref name="Unicode Extended Arabic"/> can you help me find it? i have most of the info in the notes stored locally on my PC, the one thing i am missing is the access dates.

Is there a way to search the history for when these two first appeared?

Normally i might just fudge it by checking it was still available and putting today's date. For future reference, is that an ok thing to do? But it doesn't work this time, because they are currently not available. As far as i have heard the unicode consortium suffered a catastrophic server failure right when a global pandemic started, so many of their resources are still offline.

Irtapil (talk) 08:31, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: It is easy to retrieve the last version of your work, but this rather is tedious. I have clicked around in the history, but could not find a version where these references were defined. Maybe you have copied them from a different page without the defining full citation? –Austronesier (talk) 12:06, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: No, not from another page i have a file of notes on my machine with other details, just not the date i added it to the ref list here. Normally i'd just estimate, but since the unicode technical side when off line a bit spectacularly getting that wrong would look bad? Irtapil (talk) 05:59, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

referencing question

@Fowler&fowler and Austronesier: What access date do i out for a resources that i used multiple times? I'm trying to consolidate the references in my draft so it's less cluttered, at least one set of references lists dozens of specific pages for the same resource, so i figured it might be good to just combine those into one named reference?

• In particular, one of the resources i was using is no longer available ur.oxforddictionaries.com (I have / will summarise the examples lists, but there are still a few cases where i used it that i'm likely to keep.)
• I had linked individual pages that each went to the specific entry in that dictionary, but since those are unavailable that's a bit pointless mow. (I checked internet archive's wayback machine, and the only thing there is pretty much none of it there from that site.)
• So i was going to just combine all of those into one reference for the dictionary as a whole, but which access date do i include, the first or the last?

Irtapil (talk) 09:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: Technically, the last date will do, since I assume the content of the other citations wasn't changed in the meantime. But since the object of citations is verifiability, you should cite a source that still exists. It's a pity that nothing of it got archived. If the erstwhile online content is still available in print, then the print version is the valid citation, even if it is not as easily accessible as the online resource used to be. –Austronesier (talk) 12:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: unfortunately not in print, their print dictionaries are all just Urdu to English. I think there are plans to resurrect it as paid service, but that might take a very long time? Lots of bits others added have no reference at all, so updating seems low urgency? but a large number of references that now don't go anywhere is maybe higher priority. Irtapil (talk) 05:53, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Irtapil: You cannot use Wikipedia to learn Urdu. That is apparently what you are doing. I have listed the standard sources of Urdu pedagogy in English. But you are not using them. You are copying material from tables at unremarkable, unvetted, websites, stuff from the Urdu Wikipedia. Seriously, this is bordering on disruption, if it is not already full-blown disruption. I have no idea what you are doing. Sadly, these are seldom visited pages; otherwise, you would have been taken to the (metaphorical) woodshed a long time ago. I suggest that you self-correct, and lay off editing this page. Work on some small topics, develop stubs, learn how to edit, learn how to wikify, ... learn all the things that we all learned by reading the guidelines and instructions that Wikipedia provides most abundantly. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:00, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I have been reading the guidelines and instructions, one of the first sections on my user profile is my list of links to them.

Irtapil (talk) 05:44, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

name in Urdu

Urdu alphabet اردو‌ حروف‌تہجی Urdu harūf tahajī اردو‌تہجی Urdu tahajī
Script type	Abjad

Hi @Heyday to you: Why did you remove the Urdu term for the alphabet from the infobox in your edit? link to edit Thank you for your contribution, but was the name you removed incorrect or poorly formatted? Irtapil (talk) 10:23, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Is this version an improvement? Irtapil (talk) 10:35, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

It is ت‍ﮩ‍جى tahajjī It is an Arabic word. The other word is huruf (pronounced huroof, with the u as in put). It is usually written as hurūf e tahajjī or hurūfi tahajjī, i.e. the letters of the alphabet. Please do not add undigested information on Wikipedia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Thanks, i think? I'm a bit confused by your message.

You say "Please do not add undigested information on Wikipedia", but you also seem to be saying the three word name i restored {{uninastaliq|اردو‌ حروف‌تہجی from a more recent version is more accurate than the two word name اردو تہجی that was in the version you rolled back to?

Is "do not add undigested information" aimed at user:Heyday to you? But they didn't add anything, they removed the short name اردو تہجی from the version you rolled back to.

I don't think i added either name, i would have included a reference of where i got it from, or at least a <!--url in a comment--> if i got it from somewhere like wiktionary. If i added it to that box, i would have copied it from the introduction.

I might have added a transliteration for the missing word, possibly i skipped a reference in that if i found it somewhere on a different wikipedia page or site.

Are you saying the transliteration is missing a letter between the words, "hurūf e tahajjī" or hurūfi tahajjī rather than harūf tahajī? This seems like a plausible error i could have made, if i did it early on i possibly didn't know how to consult anyone else for a second opinion. (I vaguely recall trying to ask people about that and nobody responding, but i could be imagining that.)

But the current version still says harūf tahajī without the vowel in between, if the problem is one missing letter, why didn't you just edit it to add the missing letter?

Irtapil (talk) 22:55, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there a way to search the edit history? to see when the longer name appeared and when the transliteration appeared? i'm curious to know if i am remembering right. But also there might have been a reference that removed for some reason. And there's some other things i want to check. Irtapil (talk) 23:01, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Retroflex letters

I added the edit by @Theo.phonchana: to the draft i am working on. Irtapil (talk) 12:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

(There's currently a template error in that section, but i'll have that fixed in a couple of hours.) Irtapil (talk) 12:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Theo.phonchana: Fixed now, i just needed to remove some duplicate sections i had a few versions of. Irtapil (talk) 21:04, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

updates

• I've made several small changes to this page over the past day or two. None of them seem worth starting a thread about. All are relatively minor and i can't see them being very controversial. See the edit history if you are interested.
• Many of them were restoring contributions from other editors from the last few months, between my version and the restored version. I mentioned the editor in the edit comment for these.

Irtapil (talk) 05:28, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

initial and middle forms of Bari Ye

Is it accurate for the table to be showing these as initial and medial forms of Bari Ye? Most sources i've seen describe the situation as bari ye being only used at the ends of words? Irtapil (talk) 04:45, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Letter's name	Final Form	Middle Form	Initial Form	Isolated Form
چھوٹی يے Choṭī ye	ـی	ـیـ	یـ	ی
بڑی يے Baṛī ye	ـے			ے

Irtapil (talk) 04:45, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Before the rollback that section looked like this. Irtapil (talk) 04:50, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Ye and Bari ye

Ye has a variant called baṛī ye ("greater ye") for which the regular Perso-Arabic ye (ی) is called choṭī ye ("lesser ye"), which is used, as a consonant/semivowel, for "y" (/j/) and, as a vowel, for long "i" (/iː/), long "e" (/eː/) and the monophthongized diphthong "ai" (/ɛː/).

Baṛī ye (ے) is however used to render the word-final long "e" and "ai" especially to distinguish prepositions and other single syllable words. Baṛī ye is never used as a consonant.

Letter's name	Nastaliq				Naskh
	Final Form	Middle Form	Initial Form	Isolated Form	Final Form	Middle Form	Initial Form	Isolated Form
بڑی يے Baṛī yē	‍ے	[none]		ے	‍ے	[none]		ے
چھوٹی يے   Chotī yē	‍ی	‍ی‍	ی‍	ی	‍ی	‍ی‍	ی‍	ی
يَاء Arabic Yāʾ	‍ي	‍ي‍	ي‍	ي	‍ي	‍ي‍	ي‍	ي

Which is more accurate? Irtapil (talk) 04:50, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

2 letters missing

The article states that the Urdu alphabet has up to 41 letters but the alphabet table lists only 39 letters. This means that 2 letters are missing. Where did the 2 letters go?Stunts1990 (talk) 15:15, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out Stunts1990 I'll have a look.

The one which is often counted but not listed is One is tah mahbutta ـة an Arabic letter that's only used in loan words and sometimes replaced by gol hey ـہ like in the full name for Pakistan.

Also sometimes either Alif or Hamza don't get counted, but I thought they were both there?

Irtapil (talk) 12:51, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

the reference for that statement doesn't seem to support 41? so I changed it to 40.

Maybe 41 is counting آ Alef Maddah?

Irtapil (talk) 13:06, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I've been working on a table of additional letters, including tah mahbutta, i might add that soon.

Irtapil (talk) 13:06, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

adding glossary

Restoring an improved version of a table from an old version, now as an appendix at the end. I'll add an improved version in a minute, but restoring original first to keep history. Irtapil (talk) 10:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Nav temps

Wikipedia:Navigation templates are meant to faciliate "navigation" between articles, a {{Officially used writing systems in India}} side-nav temp was created and looks relevant but is being removed with a reason of biasness, which is not apparent to me, I will be restoring the template and will add {{Languages of Pakistan}} and {{Writing systems worldwide}} to address these concerns (though these do not directly link here, I was unable to find a counterpart for Pakistan). Gotitbro (talk) 23:42, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't look "relevant" at all, and I find it curious that it was not "apparent" to you that the entire navigation template is specifically for the state of India, not even "Indian subcontinent" or any other synonyms which has its own semantic problems because of anachronism.

The usages of the script outside of Urdu are also all Pakistani languages.

The fact this script exists in the two states - despite being taboo in India - and is already clarified in the article that it is used in those two states, means not adding nation-based templates especially considering how two will obstruct it.

The template was added by user Haoreima over the last month alone - who also bizzarely added it to the Perso-Arabic page - before which these pages did not include them. WajrahcrHwah (talk) 03:53, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion here either way but the removals do reflect WP:IDONTLIKEIT. You are free to create other nav temps or propose the one created for deletion (WP:TfD), no real reason to remove the ones already created otherwise. Gotitbro (talk) 07:45, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

esak sait 103.121.178.168 (talk) 11:27, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Urdu

BTW my religon is islam so i talk urdu i cant tell the truth میرا نام سارا which means my name is saira — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.137.24.180 (talk) 17:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)