The origins of Urdu?

[khoji]

I have read very interesting theories about how Urdu came into being. Most prevalent one says that Urdu is a “lashkari/army camp” language which was created when Hindi, Persian and Turkish mixed with each other.
I find it rather hard to believe. Languages take hundreds of years to be made. It can’t be that we let some people with different languages co-mingle and suddenly a new language is formed.

There must be another explanation, more sensible than the above simplistic idealistic story. I am wondering what it could be.

[Pakistan_Zindabad_2]

Re: The origins of Urdu?

It sounds plausible to me.

Urdu (Urdu: اردو) is a register of the Hindustani language identified with South Asian Muslims. It is the national language, lingua franca, and one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English). It is also largely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an official language of five states. Based on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, Urdu developed under local, Persian, Arabic, and Turkic influence over the course of almost 900 years. It began to take shape in what is now Uttar Pradesh, India during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1527), and continued to develop under the Mughal Empire (1526–1858). Modern Urdu is mutually intelligible with the younger register of Hindustani, which is often simply called “Hindi”. The combined population of Hindi and Urdu speakers is the fourth largest in the world.

The original language of the Mughals was Chagatai, a Turkic language, but after their arrival in South Asia, they came to adopt Persian. Gradually, the need to communicate with local inhabitants led to a composition of Sanskrit-derived languages, written in the Perso-Arabic script and with literary conventions and specialised vocabulary being retained from Persian, Arabic and Turkic; the new standard was eventually given its own name of Urdu.

Urdu arose in the contact situation which developed from the invasions of the Indian subcontinent by Persian and Turkic dynasties from the 11th century onwards, first as Sultan Mahmud of the Ghaznavid empire conquered Punjab in the early 11th century, then when the Ghurids invaded northern India in the 12th century, and most decisively with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.

The official language of the Ghurids, Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature, was Persian, while the language of religion was Arabic. Most of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic as their mother tongue. The Mughals were also Chagatai, but later adopted Persian. Muzaffar Alam asserts that Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. However, the armies, merchants, preachers, Sufis, and later the court, also incorporated the local people and the medieval Hindu literary language, Braj Bhasha. This new contact language soon incorporated other dialects, such as Haryanvi, Panjabi, and in the 17th century Khariboli, the dialect of the new capital at Delhi. By 1800, Khariboli had become dominant.

The language went by several names over the years: Hindawi or Hindī, “[language] of India”; Dehlavi “of Delhi”; Hindustani, “of Hindustan”; and Zaban-e-Urdu, “the language of the [army] camp”, or perhaps “of the market”, from which came the current name of Urdu around the year 1800.

Urdu

[khoji]

Re: The origins of Urdu?

The bold part is I think you are focusing on:
"Based on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, Urdu developed under local, Persian, Arabic, and Turkic influence over the course of almost 900 years. "

All the influence Urdu has had of all other languages is primarily in picking up their words. The grammar was hardly effected. And this is why I say that it is hard to see how could Persian and Turkish created any new language.