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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 29 18 May 2009 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm trying to better understand the relationship between these languages and how Urdu and Hindi evolved out of Persian and Sanskrit-based native Indian languages. My main question: Is Urdu basically Persian with some Indian influences, or is it basically an Indian language heavily influenced by Persian? Should Urdu properly be classified as an Indo-Iranian ("Iranian") language (along with Persian, Baluchi, Pashto, etc.) or should it be considered an Indo-Aryan ("Indian") language (along with Sanskrit, Pali, Sinhala and other Indo-European languages of India)?
So far I understand that Hindi and Urdu are (still) essentially the same language, at least at the vernacular or spoken level (everyday conversational language, as opposed to the written languages, especially when it comes to "higher" or more specialized vocabulary). These both evolved out of what used to be called Hindustani, which was somehow a mixture of Persian (with its many Arabic and Turkic loanwords) and the native Sanskrit-derived dialect of the Delhi region of northern India, known as Kariboli. This mixture came about because India was conquered by successive waves of invaders from Central Asia - Mongol and Turkic Muslims, mainly, who had already adopted Persian as their language (because Persians used to rule Central Asia?). Once they conquered most of what we now know as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, they made their capital at Delhi, and became the ruling class for nearly 1,000 years. Hence, Persian was the official language of India until the British conquered India and made English the official language. Here's where my confusion begins. Supposedly Urdu developed out of this bi-lingual environment and gradually became more popular among the ruling class than Persian, as well as becoming the most widespread language across most of northern India (and Pakistan). How did this come about? Did the Persian-speaking elite A) gradually absorb more and more vocabulary from the native Indians around them, thus modifying their Persian? Or B), did they learn the local Indian dialect and gradually use it more than Persian, but at the same time introducing many words from Persian (including Turkic and Arabic loanwords) into the Kariboli language? It seems to me that if Urdu evolved under scenario A, it should still be basically an Indo-Iranian language, whereas if it evolved under scenario B, it should be classified as an Indo-Aryan language. Wikipedia has an article on "Indo-European Languages" that classifies Urdu as Indo-Aryan as opposed to Indo-Iranian. So you might think that's the end of the story. But I'm not so sure, because others apparently classify Urdu as Indo-Iranian, and the whole issue is highly politicized, which means that either one or both sides is basically lying. I don't care about political correctness and I have no skin in this game - I just want to know the truth, because I find the truth more interesting than dogma and mythology. After the breakup of British India along Muslim and Hindu lines (Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India), these two governments adopted Hindustani as an official language alongside English. But for religio-nationalistic reasons, they called the language by different names, and began to reform their official written standards to make them different from each other. Many Indian Hindus, finally free of their Muslim overlords after a thousand years, understandably wanted a more authentically Indian official language. But rather than resurrecting Sanskrit the way the Israelis resurrected Hebrew, they decided to simply call Hindustani by a new, less Arab-sounding name: "Hindi", and use the Devanagari script of Sanskrit to write it, instead of the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq script used to write Urdu. They also began to replace many Persian, Arabic and Turkic vocabulary with Sanskrit-derived words. Apparently, they also now claim that Hindi was derived from Sanskrit and had always been a separate language from Urdu. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government kept the Perso-Arabic script and began to replace Indian vocabulary with Persian and Arabic words. It seems to me that vocabulary is one thing, but what really places a language in one family or another is it's structure or grammar. As an example, it's said that most of the vocabulary in Korean is actually Chinese, yet Korean is not classified as a Chinese language, because it retains a very different grammatical structure from Chinese languages (as well as plenty of native Korean vocabulary). So here is my question: is the structure of Hindustani/Urdu/Hindi closer to Sanskrit or Persian? Also, which standardized language (Hindi or Urdu) has changed more from the Hindustani of 60 years ago? My apologies for such a long post and any info I've gotten wrong. I hope to hear any corrections or clarification of anything I've discussed here. I really hope someone else finds this topic interesting! Edited by pmiller on 18 May 2009 at 8:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 29 18 May 2009 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Follow-up question: would you rather learn Urdu or Hindi, and why?
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| stephen_g Groupie Canada Joined 6331 days ago 44 posts - 84 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Italian | Message 3 of 29 18 May 2009 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Urdu and Hindi are, as you said, practically the exact same apart from the script used and choice of vocabulary. They're both Indo-Aryan, descending directly from Sanskrit and NOT Old Persian. Urdu and Hindi are both Indo-Iranian in that the Indo-Iranian language family is simply a grouping together of Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani language families.
With respect to the language which has changed most over the last sixty years, well, that's a tough one. Both have, to an extent, purged themselves of some vocabulary for the sake of purity. That being said, I'd guess that Urdu is closer. With respect to nouns and adjectives, the common vocabulary shared between the languages often favors the Persian and Arabic loanwords apart from their Sanskrit counterparts. Bollywood makes extensive use of Urdu vocabulary in songs as opposed to that which derives from Sanskrit, as the former is said to be more beautiful. Many song writers in Bollywood's early days were also speakers of Urdu and were familiar with the Persian literary tradition. For this reason, with respect to mutual intelligibility, the Perso-Arabic side wins out against the Sanskritized one. The discrepancy is not a large one, however. I am of the opinion that if one goes through the trouble of learning Hindi or Urdu, he or she should invest another few hundred hours in mastering the counterpart. Learning a new script and acquiring new vocabulary is really quite easy when you essentially have already mastered the structure of the language you're studying. It's the cultural dimension which takes a bit longer to become familiar with... Urdu is the heir of Mughal high culture in the subcontinent. Traditional poetry is very important to Urdu speakers, as is modern poetry. You'd probably have to be culturally informed to understand the themes discussed within (revolving around Islam, often the Sufi strain). If you were to learn Hindi, it would be helpful to become familiar with some basic Hindu philosophy. "Dharma", for example, cannot be translated directly into English. I personally have begun with Hindi as opposed to Urdu. I made this choice because I am a Religious Studies major at school with a background in Sanskrit and a focus on Hinduism and Sikhism. I don't really treat the two as being separate, however... You can't learn one without dealing with the other. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 29 18 May 2009 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the reply. Since you're also familiar with Sanskrit, do you find that the structure of Hindi and Sanskrit correspond pretty closely?
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| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 29 18 May 2009 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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And does anyone know how to get rid of the Gooogle ad that attaches to all my posts now? (I didn't put it there).
(Update) Wow... never mind - just as soon as I posted the above, the ads disappeared! Extremely weird. (2nd Update) Jesus Christ! After I posted the update above, the ad reappeared in some of my posts, but not others. All in the space of a minute or two. Can anyone explain what's going on? Are the moderators having fun with me? :) Edited by pmiller on 18 May 2009 at 7:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5811 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 6 of 29 18 May 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I have a very limited knowledge of Sanskrit, but it seems very different from Hindi, which is much more influenced by Dravidian grammatical structures and Persian/Arabic loanwords 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 29 18 May 2009 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wait - Hindi is much more influenced by Dravidian grammatical structure? This would be strange, since Dravidian languages are found in the south of India, whereas Hindi developed in northern India, where the languages are all (supposedly) Sanskrit-derived.
But maybe we're getting somewhere... if the structure of Hindi is very different from Sanskrit, perhaps it's actually more like Persian? Can anyone confirm or deny? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5708 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 8 of 29 18 May 2009 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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In answer to your second question, I plan on learning Hindi AND Persian, so I guess I should learn Urdu too, huh :)? Anyway, I was planning on learning Hindi because I figured it would be more useful in more places in India since most people/ places speak some form of that.
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