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Why are Hindi and Urdu lumped together? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| naomi94 Newbie United States thepolyglotexperienc Joined 4662 days ago 17 posts - 15 votes Studies: Swedish, French | Message 1 of 6 04 March 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged |
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What are the similarities and differences between Hindi and Urdu?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7159 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 04 March 2013 at 9:37pm | IP Logged |
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As to the thread's opening question, a starting point for combining Hindi and Urdu (sometimes labelled and treated as Hindustani) is that both derive from one dialect (Khariboli) that's been used natively in part of northern India (including Delhi) before our modern concepts of "Hindi" and "Urdu" came about.
As to comparison between the two on linguistic grounds (strip out religious, political or general cultural traits of the speech communities which are often out of place when comparing morphology, phonetics, syntax, orthography), see the following: The poisonous potency of script: Hindu and Urdu The Relationship between Hindi and Urdu If you enter "hindi", "urdu", "similarity" and "difference" in Google, you'll also get lots of results linked to comparisons made informally on blogs or forums involving the two but I'd be wary of them since they're often done by non-specialists who are native speakers of either variety and have an annoying tendency to be tinged with political or cultural considerations thus diverting the reader from making his/her own analysis on linguistic characteristics. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7224 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 6 05 March 2013 at 12:01am | IP Logged |
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I posted a response, but I saw two exact threads and deleted the other post. Wikipedia has some information. Hindustani language Hindi-Urdu 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 6 05 March 2013 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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In case you mean this forum, that's to give people the option to list their languages whichever way they feel comfortable with. It's the same with Croatian/Serbian/Serbo-Croatian. Someone who's lived in both countries might feel the need to list two languages, while for someone else being forced to list the languages separately might feel like unnecessary bragging (especially if they understand both varieties but speak only one).
edit: wait, you can only list them separately? I clearly remember seeing the option Hindi/Urdu before. Edited by Serpent on 05 March 2013 at 3:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4671 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 5 of 6 06 March 2013 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
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The L(ow) register of Hindi and Urdu is the same. That's why Bollywood movies (in Urduized Hindi are easy for Pakistanis to understand).
But the H(igh) register (the one used in newspapers, on newscasts, in textbooks, laws) is not. H register of Urdu borrows extensively from Persian and Arabic, while H register of Hindi is full of Sanskrit (re)borrowings. You would never find words like DILL (heart), ISHQ (passion), SHUKRIYA (thanks) or KITAB (book) in formal/standard Hindi. While some languages like Bengali fought against diglossia and proclaimed the spoken standard as a new literary standard, in Hindi it was made the opposite, the standard language was re-Sanskritized in order to distinguish itself from the Pakistani usage. Therefore, Hindi is more and more like a diglossic language (not very diglossic like Tamil, but much more diglossic than English, Spanish or modern Bengali). The official communication between India and Pakistan is always done in English, never in Hindustani (Hindi or Urdu). Only 8% of Pakistanis have Urdu as their 1st language. Only 20% of Indians are native speakers of Hindi (and Urdu). (Compare with Bangladesh: 99% of Bangladeshis have Bengali as their 1st language). Edited by Medulin on 06 March 2013 at 6:48pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 6 14 March 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged |
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I have a funny story which relates to this. When I taught in India I had a student who
was a bit of a Hindi purist, meaning he believed in the Sanskritized version of Hindi, and that all "foreign words" should be removed. The problem is, there are many common words in Hindi with a Persian origin, which don't have a commonly used Sanskrit equivalent. So one day I asked him how you would say बाज़ार baazaar (meaning market), and after a moment's though he answered: मारकेट (maarket). I had a good laugh at that one! In fact, there is a Sanskrit based word for market in Hindi: हाठ. But it is rather uncommon, and I have only seen it used in poetry and in the name of a somewhat pretentious market. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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