H.G: How do you look at the future of Urdu as a language?
S.A: Any language that stops helping you earn your livelihood is doomed. Any language that stops catering to your economic and intellectual needs is destined to recede. And we all know that Urdu is not responding to these needs. Naturally, it is declining. Our affluent classes have almost totally shunned Urdu for they don’t need it at any turn of their life. Our children do not need any Urdu book for their studies. My child cannot speak proper Urdu for it doesn’t help him grow in life. While in India we know that Urdu faces even a tougher situation.
I think we have also hurt our language by mixing excessive Persian and Arabic in it. The way Indians have hurt it by Sansikratizing it. I think they have to accept certain Persian words that are now part of Urdu. While we have to accept certain Hindi words that are close to the grain of Urdu. In fact, the Urdu language shall embrace words from English and local languages.
The most important thing to protect our language is to translate massively in Urdu. And it is such a gigantic task that cannot be accomplished without the government’s support. Organizations like Muqtadra are translating things but not in Urdu. When they translate loud speaker as Aala-e-Mukabar-us-Saut, they are translating the word in Persian and not Urdu.
H.G: Are you saying that Urdu cannot survive as a language for long?
S.A: Yes, I am afraid. But there is one way that we can save Urdu. Dev Nagri script can save Urdu. If today we start writing Urdu in Dev Nagri script, it will overnight become the language of one billion people. I think our insistence on the present Persian script will not be a forward-looking approach.
Interestingly, Dev Nagri, unlike Urdu, is an extremely scientific script. It includes zair, zabar, paish within the basic script. So you can never pronounce a word wrong. While in Urdu without Ayrab a word can be read in many ways. For one, the word diya can mean lamp or give or mercy if there are no airab. There are other script problems as well. For instance, we write the word Khwahish with letter wao while it is not pronounced. The same is the case with the word Khud. And so on.
The good thing with urdu is ability to adopt words from other languages. what is the need to create a word when the language itself is a mixture of other languages and has an uncanny ability to absorb words from another language into itself.
The biggest advantage to French, English and Spanish and other European languages is that they all share the Roman script. China did this couple of years back, so all Chinese dialects and languages share the same script. This was not done in India, so every language and state has a different script. There was a move couple of years back to have some languages like Sindhi, Urdu and Gujarati, Punjabi to have Devnagari script.
Sindhis in India have adopted the Devnagari script (Hindi, Marathi), so it's becoming popular other wise it was almost on it's deathbed.
Adopt Devanaagri Script for Urdu
Adopt Zee culture in place of Islamic culture
Adopt Sunday as holiday coz of Western culture
Adopt Hindu dress to mix up with hindi culture...
and so on...
If we have to adopt all these bull shits then what was the purpose of the creation of Pakistan!!!!!
Nastaliq is the best ever script for Urdu language and it is!!!!!
it will help urdu in india if it is written in more than one script. maybe in pakistan it does not matter. learning urdu does not help to get job or like, unlike learning english. so only a few interested guys end up learning. script is a big hurdle in that.
the same opinion was also raised by dr. rahi massom raja of putting it in devnagri. there are languages which are written in more than one script, konkani for example. marathi was written in two scripts only hundred years ago. punjabi is written in two scripts.
even today ghalib or meer or zafar in devanagri sell much more than their urdu version.
[This message has been edited by ZZ (edited June 13, 2000).]
The risk of sanskritization is just as real as that of persianisation. Examples?
Tie= kant langot
station= agnirath viramasthan
watch (ghari) = samy soochak yantra
lord have mercy on us!!
On the other hand, there already exists in the devnagari script a solid body of urdu literature, which flourishes in some parts of India. Urdu is mother tongue to a sizeable hindu population and is a living language in India, appreciated and studied. Studying Urdu enables Indians to add another dimension to their knowledge of Hindi.
Neither Hindi nor Urdu is a pure language: their wealth and beauty comes from the myriad of influences from other cultures.
I remember many of my elders lamenting the passing of the language they knew as "hindustani", both easily understood and unlinked to any religion or region. Maybe it is time to reinstate it.
Devnagari cannot distinguish between many similar urdu letters, for instance kaaf and qaaf, haa and he, gaaf and ghain. New letters have been introduced for the "z" sounds but there is more than just one in Urdu. Urdu has the "ch" and "P" sounds thanks to persian (they do not exist in arabic). No one language is 100% capable of accomodating the needs of the other - but they do have a lot in common.
Let's try and encourage both languages - they enrich each other! And why not learn both scripts? It helps brain development to learn different ways of thinking!
It is said that nearly half of the world's language would die off in couple of years because of English.. and that includes most Indian languages.
That is inevitable and if you watch Zee TV or indian movies you will see the blinding truth of this statement. In Indian movies it is quite usual for the heroine to be called Pinky or Twinkle (don't laugh) and the hero to be called Sunny, Bobby or Raabert.
it is common knowledge that as Indian youngsters are bombarded with american culture they are turning to baseball caps cheap jeans and naff hairstyles.
Commonplace phrases include:
"Oh yaar, you are too cool I am thinking"
" I am feeling so thirsty so I will be buying a coca cola and then I will be drinking it. You know baby it is most certainly the real thing. A thousand apologies if you are not agreeing with me but that is my humble opinion, Sanjay."
Well I know that urdu speaking in India. All Muslims will claim that they speak urdu. In my area, what the speak is a wierd mixture of hindi and marathi. in fact they speak better marathi than when they speak this mixture. 'lekin hum to urdu me hich bolega'
urdu has become a language of ghazals and mushairas in India. no longer a language spoken in streets or bazars.
devnagri will help in india. already there are magazines where urdu writers write, sell much more than urdu one.
in pakistan, perhaps, it does not matter. maybe writing in roman script could be an innovation, that could help urdu in pakista, if people are really interested in learning english and not urdu.