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*'''Scholarly usage for the lingua franca is now Hindi-Urdu, sometimes simply Hindi, if about India:''' ], Sanskritist, and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and South Asian Studies at the ], in his signed article, in ''Encyclopaedia Britannic'' says: <blockquote> '''Modern Indo-Aryan stage''' Before independence, under British rule (entrenched from the 18th century), there were princely states within dialect areas; under Mughal rule (16th–18th centuries), Persian was the language which was used by the court and by courts of justice and this practice continued in the latter function for a time under the British. {{tq|Though Hindi–Urdu may have been a lingua franca, the great dialectal diversity of earlier times continued. ... Moreover, the attempt to establish a single national language other than English continues. This search has its origin in national and Hindu movements of the 19th century down to the time of Mahatma Gandhi, who promoted the use of a simplified Hindi–Urdu, called Hindustani.}} ... When the time came, however, Hindi could not be declared the sole national language; English remains a co-official language. {{tq|Though Hindi can claim to be the lingua franca of a large population in North India, other languages such as Bengali have long and great literary traditions}} | *'''Scholarly usage for the lingua franca is now Hindi-Urdu, sometimes simply Hindi, if about India:''' ], Sanskritist, and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and South Asian Studies at the ], in his signed article, in ''Encyclopaedia Britannic'' says: <blockquote> '''Modern Indo-Aryan stage''' Before independence, under British rule (entrenched from the 18th century), there were princely states within dialect areas; under Mughal rule (16th–18th centuries), Persian was the language which was used by the court and by courts of justice and this practice continued in the latter function for a time under the British. {{tq|Though Hindi–Urdu may have been a lingua franca, the great dialectal diversity of earlier times continued. ... Moreover, the attempt to establish a single national language other than English continues. This search has its origin in national and Hindu movements of the 19th century down to the time of Mahatma Gandhi, who promoted the use of a simplified Hindi–Urdu, called Hindustani.}} ... When the time came, however, Hindi could not be declared the sole national language; English remains a co-official language. {{tq|Though Hindi can claim to be the lingua franca of a large population in North India, other languages such as Bengali have long and great literary traditions}} | ||
{{reflist-talk}} | {{reflist-talk}} | ||
====Sources are being misused to minimize the Muslim contribution==== | |||
*'''Example 1:''' The first sentence, "Hindustani ... historically known as Hindi, Hindavi, Urdu, Dehlavi, and Rekhta, is the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan. is being cited to a book on human geography by a mother-son geographers, Lydia Mihelič Pulsipher; Alex Pulsipher; Holly M. Hapke (2005), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-7167-1904-5}} with a quote:" By the time of British colonialism, Hindustani was the lingua franca of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan. | |||
**The citation in the article does not give the page number, but it is 324. It must have required sleight-of-hand in the barrel as the full quotes in the book, {{citation|last1=Pulsipher|first1=Lydia Mihelic|last2=Pulsipher|first2=Alex|last3=Hapke|first3=Holly M.|title=World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WfNaSNNAppQC&pg=PA314|year=2005|publisher=W. H. Freeman|isbn=978-0-7167-1904-5|page=396}}, about Hindustani, which are on pages 314 and 324, are rather different: <blockquote> One legacy of the Mughals is the more than 420 million Muslims now living in South Asia. The Mughals left a unique heritage of architecture, art, literature, and linguistics that includes the Taj Mahal, the fortress at Agra, miniature painting, and the tradition of lyric poetry. {{tq|The Mughals also helped to produce the Hindustani language, which became the lingua franca (the language of trade) of the northern Indian subcontinent. Hindustani is still used by more than 400 million people (page 314)}} ... {{tq|By the time of British colonization, Hindustani—an amalgam of Persian and Sanskrit-based northern Indian languages—was the lingua franca of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan.}} The Muslims wrote Hindustani in a form of Arabic script and called it Urdu, whereas the Hindus and other groups wrote it in a script derived from Sanskrit and called it Hindi. ... {{tq|Hindi, because of its origins in Hindustani and the popularity of Hindi-language films, is understood by most Pakistanis and by about 50 percent of India’s population. (p 324)}}</blockquote> | |||
*'''Example 2''': "It is an ], deriving its base primarily from the ] dialect of ], also known as ''Khariboli''." This sentence is cited to: {{cite book |title=Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World |date=2010 |publisher=Elsevier |isbn=978-0-08-087775-4 |page=497}} with quote = Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khaṛi Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardization of Urdu and Hindi. | |||
====Cherry-picking of sources==== | |||
⚫ | ::The full quote is: <blockquote> Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khari Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardization of Urdu and Hindi. The linguistic relationship among Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi highlights the theoretical and empirical problems of linguistic analysis and description. It also reveals the politics of language conflict and identity in the complex sociopolitical and multilingual situation of India. {{tq|Hindustani as a colloquial speech developed over almost seven centuries from 1100 to 1800. The Muslims conquered northern India from the 10th to the 13th centuries and settled down in the country, bringing with them their Persian language and culture. This mixing of cultures provided the contact situation for the emergence of Hindustani as a lingua franca.}} </blockquote> | ||
* '''Example 3''': Hindustani is a ], with two ] ], ] and ]. | |||
⚫ | |||
**This is cited to a book on Hindutva by an English professor: {{cite book|title=The Rhetoric of Hindutva|last1=Basu|first1=Manisha|date=2017|publisher=]|isbn=978-1-107-14987-8}} with quote: "Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals. | |||
**a book on Hindi Christian literature: {{cite book|title=Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India|last1=Peter-Dass|first1=Rakesh|date=2019|publisher=]|isbn=978-1-00-070224-8}} with quote, "Two forms of the same language, Nagarai Hindi and Persianized Hindi (Urdu) had identical grammar, shared common words and roots, and employed different scripts." | |||
**another book on geography: {{Citation|author1=Robert E. Nunley|title=The Cultural Landscape an Introduction to Human Geography|url=https://books.google.com/?id=7wQAOGMJOqIC|year=1999|publisher=Prentice Hall|isbn=978-0-13-080180-7|author2=Severin M. Roberts|author3=George W. Wubrick|author4=Daniel L. Roy}} with quote, "Hindustani is the basis for both languages ..." | |||
***The reader had no opportunity to consider the major source: {{citation|editor=Michael Clyne|title=Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ieMgAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1|year=2012|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|isbn=978-3-11-088814-0|pages=1–}} (Google Scholar ), whose article: {{citation|last=Dua|first=Hans R.|editor=Michael G. Clyne|title=Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wawGFWNuHiwC&pg=PA381|year=1992|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|isbn=978-3-11-012855-0|pages=381–400|chapter=Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language}} begins with: <blockquote> The emergence and development of Hindi-Urdu as pluricentric national varieties spans over almost nine hundred years. The protagonists of both Hindi and Urdu have expressed a wide range of views and theories, sometimes confusing and contradictory, about their origin and development. However, there seems to be agreement on the basic premises regarding the origin, directions of development and the emergence of Hindi-Urdu as pluricentric varieties. For a clear understanding of the course of development, the entire period of almost nine hundred years can be considered in terms of the following stages: (i) Formative period (ii) Emergence of different bases (iii) Consolidation period (iv) Polarization and identity formation {{tq|The formative period may be considered to begin roughly from 1100 AD with the invasion of Muslims and their settlement in India. It marks the beginning of a variety for communication between the rulers and the local population. The early form of Hindi-Urdu had a wide dialect base which, though derived basically from the Western Apabhrarhsa, included Braj-Bhasha, Harayani or Bangru, “vernacular Hindustani” and even sometimes Panjabi and Rajasthani, besides the Perso-Arabic element as a result of interaction between the Muslim and Hindu cultures. It is | |||
therefore not surprising that the origin of Urdu has been traced to Braj-Bhasha, Harayani or even Panjabi (See Zaidi 1989 for a summary of various views on the origin of Urdu). However, it must be pointed out that it was the “vernacular Hindustani” or Khari Boli which was present as one of the elements in the early formative periods and which gradually | |||
became stronger with the growth of Hindi-Urdu so that by 1800 it could be clearly stated that its basic source was Khari Boli.}}</blockquote> | |||
*'''Example 4''': "The language's first written poetry, in the form of ], can be traced to as early as 769 AD." This has been cited to a phrasebook published by Lonely Planet Travel Books. {{citation|last1=Delacy|first1=Richard|last2=Ahmed|first2=Shahara|title=Hindi, Urdu & Bengali|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6AtTYgEACAAJ&pg=PA11|year=2011|publisher=Lonely Planet Travel Books|isbn=978-1-74220-306-5|page=11-12}} | |||
*Encyclopaedia Britannica's article on begins with: <blockquote> Hindustani language, lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan. Two variants of Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi, are official languages in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century CE in and around the Indian cities of Delhi and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony. In the 19th century its use was widely promoted by the British, who initiated an effort at standardization. Hindustani is widely recognized as India’s most common lingua franca, but its status as a vernacular renders it difficult to measure precisely its number of speakers."</blockquote> | |||
**But the fuller quote on pages 11 and 12 says:<blockquote> Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. This means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets (and watch the same Bollywood films) have no problems understanding each other. ... Considered as one, these tongues constitute the second most spoken language in the world, sometimes called Hindustani. ... Both Hindi and Urdu developed from Classical Sanskrit, which appeared in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan and northwest India) at about the start of the Common Era. The first old Hindi (or Apabhransha) poetry was written in 769 AD, and by the European Middle Ages, it became known as 'Hindvi'. {{tq|Muslim Turks invaded the Punjab in 1027 and took control of Delhi in 1193. They paved the way for the Islamic Mughal Empire, which ruled northern India from the 16th century until it was defeated by the British Raj in the mid-19th century. It was at this time that the language of this book began to take form, a mixture of Hindvi grammar with Arabic, Persian and Turkish vocabulary. The Muslim speakers of Hindvi began to write in Arabic script, creating Urdu, while the Hindu population incorporated the new words but continued to write in Devanagari script."}} | |||
Please do not edit the section above as it will keep changing. Please respond here if you need to. This is ''not'' the RFC though. ]] 11:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC) Updated ]] 05:39, 23 February 2020 (UTC) | |||
===Responses=== | |||
Please do not edit the section above as it will keep changing. Please respond here if you need to. This is ''not'' the RFC though. ]] 11:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC) | |||
== Linguistic definition of Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) == | == Linguistic definition of Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) == |
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Lashkari Zaban title
It is written near the picture, that it is an in the Nastaʿlīq script written sample. It's Arabic script (typographic Naskh), but not Nastaʿlīq at all. 83.149.240.100 (talk) 08:57, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
I came here to say the exact same thing. I'll change that. I'm not sure "Naskh" is correct either, so for now it can be "Perso-Arabic in a modern font". If someone has a better name please update it, but it's not Nastaʿlīq, that's the one that makes the words go diagonal. Irtapil (talk) 12:59, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
- I would scrap the image altogether: I'm not sure it's needed, and it's got a watermark. – Uanfala (talk) 13:06, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Indic Script
@Fowler&fowler: Regarding recent edits of yours, including this. According to WP:INDICSCRIPT, "Exceptions are articles on the script itself, articles on a language that uses the script, and articles on texts originally written in a particular script...
" Since this is a language article, we should be keeping the scripts as per the guideline, isn't it? - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 18:09, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fylindfotberserk: My interpretation of that is that examples can be given, but that the naming of the page name should continue to be in English; otherwise, the same problems will arise. Here for example, we have a mixed language that arose in response to the Muslim conquest of North India. There were efforts to standardize it by the British in the 19th century when it was identified with what today is Urdu, but essentially it referred to a spoken language. Here is David Lelyveld in his seminal article, "Colonial knowledge and the fate of Hindustani:"
The official languages of British India were English and Persian from 1773 until 1837, and English and Hindustani, meaning Urdu, from 1837 until the Company's dissolution in 1858. How then are some editors, citing obscure sources, putting Devanagari first for a spoken language, or for a language whose script was Perso-Arabic? These are the kinds of issues that arise if you allow Indic-scripts. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:45, 8 December 2019 (UTC)"The earlier grammars and dictionaries made it possible for the British government to replace Persian with vernacular languages at the lower levels of judicial and revenue administration in 1837, that is, to standardize and index terminology for official use and provide for its translation to the language of the ultimate ruling authority, English. For such purposes, Hindustani was equated with Urdu, as opposed to any geographically defined dialect of Hindi and was given official status through large parts of north India. Written in the Persian script with a largely Persian and, via Persian, an Arabic vocabulary, Urdu stood at the shortest distance from the previous situation and was easily attainable by the same personnel. In the wake of this official transformation, the British government began to make its first significant efforts on behalf of vernacular education. The earliest controversies over Hindi versus Urdu apparently took place among the British because some officials were anxious to uproot the Mughal gentry by replacing Urdu with a still unformulated standard of Hindi."
- @Fylindfotberserk: While I'm at it, let me make a general observation about the POV behind using "Hindustani" or "Hindi-Urdu" today, i.e. for a living language, not a historical one. It is usually one of claiming that Hindi and Urdu are the same languages and consequently Urdu is spoken in India. The fact that Muslims in the former Urdu heartland in India still write Urdu for their mother tongue in the decadal census often takes away from the fact that in the same Urdu heartland, Urdu is no longer taught in government schools, and therefore, many Muslims, whose grandparents could write Urdu, are unable to write the Urdu script, unless they can afford private schools. In India, therefore, it is often said that Hindustani is alive as a cover-up for the slow decline of Urdu as a spoken and written language. That is not just obvious in comparison with Pakistan, but also with the level of Urdu use in speech and writing in Northern India before 1947 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:48, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: I won't have any problem if you keep only the "Perso-Arabic" script. But then again, it is probably better not to have any script in the lead and infobox in this scenario. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 18:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fylindfotberserk: OK, I'll take a stab at it. Will cite to Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and David Lelyveld. Let's see how long it lasts. :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:23, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: Nice. Thanks for taking care of those original researches. I typically enforce WP:NOR in articles, but chose not to delve in this one. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 08:31, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fylindfotberserk: OK, I'll take a stab at it. Will cite to Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and David Lelyveld. Let's see how long it lasts. :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:23, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: I won't have any problem if you keep only the "Perso-Arabic" script. But then again, it is probably better not to have any script in the lead and infobox in this scenario. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 18:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Fylindfotberserk: While I'm at it, let me make a general observation about the POV behind using "Hindustani" or "Hindi-Urdu" today, i.e. for a living language, not a historical one. It is usually one of claiming that Hindi and Urdu are the same languages and consequently Urdu is spoken in India. The fact that Muslims in the former Urdu heartland in India still write Urdu for their mother tongue in the decadal census often takes away from the fact that in the same Urdu heartland, Urdu is no longer taught in government schools, and therefore, many Muslims, whose grandparents could write Urdu, are unable to write the Urdu script, unless they can afford private schools. In India, therefore, it is often said that Hindustani is alive as a cover-up for the slow decline of Urdu as a spoken and written language. That is not just obvious in comparison with Pakistan, but also with the level of Urdu use in speech and writing in Northern India before 1947 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:48, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
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A "mixed" language?
This is hilarious! All modern languages spoken in a civilization, including English, are 'mixed' languages as they all have loanwords, lexical borrowings etc., though each to a different degree. There is an absolute dearth of sources mentioning Hindustani as a 'mixed' language, anywhere. The sources cited too mention 'mixed speech' in a altogether different context: "All these labels denote a mixed speech spoken around areas of Delhi, North India, which gained currency during the twelfth and thirteen centuries as a contact language between Arabs, Afghans, Persian, Turks, and native residents. Hindi and Urdu have a common form known as Hindustani." .
The opening statement must be : "Hindustani is a central Indo-Aryan Language spoken in India..<insert your content>" - Sattvic7 (talk) 18:31, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
- Hidustani does not exist now; it did once upon a time. In modern parlance, in India, it is incorrectly used for the broken Urdu that the average North Indian Hindi speaker is able to manage in speech, but, of course, not in writing. In British times from 1837 (under Company rule) to 1947 (the end of the Raj) is was written in the Perso-Arabic script, and broadly identified with Urdu, see David Llelyveld's article cited. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:49, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: You didn't answer my original query i.e the use of 'mixed language' in the opening sentence. I have no doubt over it being a historical language. As suggested before, the article can begin with saying "Hindustani refers to a <historical> Central Indo-Aryan language..." rather than mixed. Edit: I went through Britannica once more but couldn't find any line that say "mixed language'. In-fact, the term "mixed" nowhere to be found in the entire article. I humbly request you to not revert the edits with wrong explanations.—Sattvic7 (talk) 04:33, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- Responding to the ping from the following section with an apology that this is not my area of competence and that I don't have the time to dig in here. However, can I note two things? g) the direct characterisation of Hindustani as a "mixed language" has to go: the word might be used rather liberally by some of the less than perfectly rigorous publications on Indo-Aryan languages, but the term generally carries a much stronger claim, which is definitely not in evidence here: Michif is a mixed language, Hindustani is not; h) Do we have any sources at all for Hindustani not being Central Indo-Aryan? – Uanfala (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Uanfala: Exactly, there's no source mentioning Hindustani as mixed language, I cross checked multiple times with cited sources in the line (Britannica, David, Strazny) but none mention it as particularly being a mixed language. Now, loanwords and lexical borrowing are extremely common in most languages around the world, including English French etc. If we assume that Hindustani is mixed, like Michif combines Cree and Meltis French, it would mean that Persian and Arabic were combined with Hindavi to form a new language called "Hindustani" (which is absolutely funny claim!). Taking loanword, some rarely used lexical borrowings don't make a mixed language. Persian and other languages did have a "influence" though on Hindustani - Sattvic7 (talk) 17:56, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
I reverted to the last good version of the article, from before Fowler&fowler changed it to claim that the national language of India and Pakistan does not exist. Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu are standardized forms of the same language, often called Hindi-Urdu but for a decade now on WP called Hindustani. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Disputable definition of Hindustani: A language of "Muslim Conquerors"?
The present scholarship, doesn't agree with the Oxford's definition and identification of Hindustani with conquerors. Both S R Faruqi and Alok Rai are critical of such whimsical identification of Hindustani:
The OED, Second Edition, identifies Hindustani as 'the language of Muslims coquerors of Hindustan, being a form of Hindi with a large...called Urdu' S.R. Faruqi, op.cit., is rightly critical of this identification with the 'Muslim conquerors'– after all, they came from different places, and used different languages – but the association of Hindustani with urbanity and contiguity to feudal power structure is less easily dispelled.
— Rai, Alok. “The Persistence of Hindustani.” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3/4, 2002, p 77.
I suggest, let us agree to include a much more neutral definition. Also see Talk:Hindustani language#A "mixed" language? where I have questioned the term 'mixed' which is very ambiguous, as all civilizational languages can be regarded as mixed.—— Sattvic7 (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- India International Center Quarterly the pseudo journal of the retired intellectuals in India with governmental connections, or retired government officials with intellectual pretensions, is peer-reviewed? Like I have already said, the Indians have an ax to grind. Urdu is dead or dying there, so the claim that Hindustani is a living language in India, using the subterfuge that Hindi speakers are pro forma Hindustani speakers, is given furtherance as a form of denial. Per WP:BRD, please discuss this here first instead of edit-warring, unless you are looking to be blocked. Please note that discretionary sanctions are in place for this article. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:36, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- Okay! I too want no edit wars! Now let us address the issue, which is what matters by the way. The journal is listed on JSTOR which makes it reliable. Now, assuming you cared to read the quote, S.R Faruqi and Alok Rai both are reputable names in their respective domains and both have raised the objection on such an identification of Hindustani! And that's what matters the most. Further, it was not merely Persian or other foreign languages that influenced Hindustani but the neighboring vernaculars such as Braj Bhasha and Awadhi too had an influence in the development of Hindustani. So the Persian predominance wasn't the only factor influencing Hindustani. Now coming to less important part: first, I don't give a damn about what you think about Indians. Secondly, it's merely a play on nomenclature, as Masica(1993, pg 30) says:
Linguistic nomenclature in the Indo-Aryan field, on the other hand, still constitutes a boulder-strewn path over which one must pick, one's way carefully. Nomenclature complicates the Hindi-Urdu situation, as we have seen.
- Okay! I too want no edit wars! Now let us address the issue, which is what matters by the way. The journal is listed on JSTOR which makes it reliable. Now, assuming you cared to read the quote, S.R Faruqi and Alok Rai both are reputable names in their respective domains and both have raised the objection on such an identification of Hindustani! And that's what matters the most. Further, it was not merely Persian or other foreign languages that influenced Hindustani but the neighboring vernaculars such as Braj Bhasha and Awadhi too had an influence in the development of Hindustani. So the Persian predominance wasn't the only factor influencing Hindustani. Now coming to less important part: first, I don't give a damn about what you think about Indians. Secondly, it's merely a play on nomenclature, as Masica(1993, pg 30) says:
- Sattvic7 (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- This is a broad-field topic. As such, broad sources are appropriate for it. As for those sources, I do have a few, including a copy of the above-mentioned book by Masica. I also have Cardano's edited Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003. It is inappropriate to give Hindustani the labels of a normative language variety (Central Indo-Aryan). The lead of the article is pretty precise: a) Hindustani had its origins as facilitating, or contact speech in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab in the wake of the Muslim conquest beginning in the 13th century, b) employing the Perso-Arabic script, it became a language of literature in the 16th century, c) it was standardized by the British (as Urdu) starting in the 18th, d) an attempt was made by Indian nationalists (most notably Gandhi) to promote a simplified version of its lexicon for a proposed national language of Independent India, however, e) two normative varieties Hindi and Urdu had arisen by then and eventually became the national/official languages of India and Pakistan. f) It is used loosely for the common syntactical and lexical denominator of vernaculars of the upper Ganges-Jumna doab. It is most emphatically not a Central Indo-Aryan Language. (As for Mr Rai: he is a retired English professor, who has written a book on the linguistic nationalism associated with the promotion of Modern Standard Hindi. Unlike Masica or Cardano, he is not a comparative linguist. The same with Faruqi, he is a retired civil servant who is dashing about being a man for all seasons in popular venues (of speech and writing) on Urdu in India, and has even published a novel in English. He has a Master's in English. I wasn't too far off the mark in my description of the India International Center publications.) I'm happy to cite chapter and verse from Masica, Cardano, Lelyveld, and other broad-field books and references when I have some more time. On second reading, the lead may need to be tweaked, but not in the fashion you are suggesting. I will propose the changes here. (I have rewritten only the lead, not the highly POV sections that follow, which will need to be removed in their entirety. My informal thesis, mentioned above, though not relevant to the lead, speaks to the POV at the root of these additions: that in incarnation f) Hindustani is being conflated with a normative variety, and being used defensively in India to deny the attrition of the Urdu-literate population (i.e. those who can employ its common vocabulary (for kinship, weather, landscape, etc.) and write in the Perso-Arabic script.) Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:30, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- My take
- a) is false. In Delhi itself, Persian was the court language and Hindustani (Hindavi) was the common man's language. It was mostly a vernacular language. It absorbed small amounts of Persian, as you would expect, just as it absorbs small amounts of English today. This is nothing like a so-called 'contact language'.
- b) The employment of the Perso-Arabic script happened in Deccan, not in Delhi. After Aurangzeb's Deccan campaigns (i.e., towards the end of the Mughal empire), this practice made its way back to Delhi. This is probably where the zaban-e-Ordu term comes from. The Deccan campaigns last decades, and many soldiers spent half their lives in camps, along with families and kids, and these kids grew up learning the Hindavi written in Perso-Arabic script. So, this a rather late development in the history of the language.
- c) Standardisation by the British as Urdu might be true, but by then Urdu became heavily Persianised in the late stage Mughal courts (post-Aurangzeb), and it wasn't going to turn back from its Persian turn. So the British language had no takers really, except what the British could enforce by fiat. With their departure, their language died its natural death.
- d) It is true that Gandhi made an enormous effort to promote Hindustani, but by this time both Hindi and Urdu were going their own way. Hindustani would have brought north Indian Hindus and Muslims together, but it would not have served the cultural needs of India or helped Indian integration. Sanskrit words are understood all over India by Hindus. Persian words are not.
- e-f) No contest. But the whole slant of the lead is wrong because it conflates the British standard language with the historical language. The historical language is very much alive as part of modern Hindi. The idea that the historical language is more Urdu than Hindi is just a hallucination.
- Pinging Uanfala and Anupam to validate what I just said. I can dig up sources too, but not at this time because there are more pressing issues at the moment. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:35, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: (i) Here's the thing: I am in no way trying to undermine the entire Intro/lead section. I think, the opening, which as mentioned above by me, has some serious issues that many authors have brought under question (Alok Rai & S R Faruqi being just two examples). Now, isn't it contradictory that the same article (correctly) mentions Hindustani as a Central Indo-Aryan language (see in the Infobox of article under 'language family') while here you are arguing how it is emphatically not so!? There are innumerable sources and it is undisputed census among linguists to classify Hindustani as a Central Indo-Aryan language. I can't imagine why you may have problem with it! (ii) Secondly, I don't share the same bias as you seem to have for the journal or authors that you have questioned (FYI, Alok Rai's "Hindi Nationalism" has been cited over 200+ times). The fact that I am citing through JSTOR should be enough to settle any reservation; I must say your reservation is unfounded and shocking! Further, I have skimmed through both Cardona and Masica's published works and it would be extremely helpful if you too refer to the works. I'll just quote what both authors have to say about Hindustani.
Further complicating the discourse concerning the relations among various styles or registers of Hindi/Urdu (or Hindi and Urdu) is the use of the term ‘Hindustani’ in any of a number of separate senses. Frequently the term has been used as a synonym for Urdu (C. R. King 1994:198). In addition, the term has been used with regard to stylistically neutral speech variety of H/U, shorn of either the strongly Persian or Arabic linguistic correlates of literary Urdu or heavily Sanskritized features of śuddh ‘pure’ Hindi. This was the sense of the term used by Gandhi and Nehru with regard to a national language for independent India. To advocates of a view that sees Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani as stylistic variants of a common language, matters of script and literary history are of less importance than the shared grammatical, lexical features of the vernacular languages of the upper Gangetic valley, not to mention the unifying aspects of shared cultural traditions
— Cardona, The Indo-Aryan Languages, page 279 Meanwhile, although for the British administration and many others the terms Urdu and Hindustani were essentially equivalent, Urdu in the eyes of some of its protagonists took on a special connotation of stylistic refinement and could not refer to "plain" Khari Bali/Colloquial Hindustani
.
— Masica, The Indo-Aryan Languages, page 30- Further, I'd also like to suggest Amrit Rai's (who has been cited by Masica in his work, in case you have any reservation) "A House Divided" and Alok Rai's "The Persistence of Hindustani" beside going through Masica and Cardona. I hope to see the tweaking soon! Kind Regards,- Sattvic7 (talk) 17:33, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- My take
- This is a broad-field topic. As such, broad sources are appropriate for it. As for those sources, I do have a few, including a copy of the above-mentioned book by Masica. I also have Cardano's edited Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003. It is inappropriate to give Hindustani the labels of a normative language variety (Central Indo-Aryan). The lead of the article is pretty precise: a) Hindustani had its origins as facilitating, or contact speech in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab in the wake of the Muslim conquest beginning in the 13th century, b) employing the Perso-Arabic script, it became a language of literature in the 16th century, c) it was standardized by the British (as Urdu) starting in the 18th, d) an attempt was made by Indian nationalists (most notably Gandhi) to promote a simplified version of its lexicon for a proposed national language of Independent India, however, e) two normative varieties Hindi and Urdu had arisen by then and eventually became the national/official languages of India and Pakistan. f) It is used loosely for the common syntactical and lexical denominator of vernaculars of the upper Ganges-Jumna doab. It is most emphatically not a Central Indo-Aryan Language. (As for Mr Rai: he is a retired English professor, who has written a book on the linguistic nationalism associated with the promotion of Modern Standard Hindi. Unlike Masica or Cardano, he is not a comparative linguist. The same with Faruqi, he is a retired civil servant who is dashing about being a man for all seasons in popular venues (of speech and writing) on Urdu in India, and has even published a novel in English. He has a Master's in English. I wasn't too far off the mark in my description of the India International Center publications.) I'm happy to cite chapter and verse from Masica, Cardano, Lelyveld, and other broad-field books and references when I have some more time. On second reading, the lead may need to be tweaked, but not in the fashion you are suggesting. I will propose the changes here. (I have rewritten only the lead, not the highly POV sections that follow, which will need to be removed in their entirety. My informal thesis, mentioned above, though not relevant to the lead, speaks to the POV at the root of these additions: that in incarnation f) Hindustani is being conflated with a normative variety, and being used defensively in India to deny the attrition of the Urdu-literate population (i.e. those who can employ its common vocabulary (for kinship, weather, landscape, etc.) and write in the Perso-Arabic script.) Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:30, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- Sattvic7 (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
@Kautilya3:@Sattvic7: You are both making the same error. You think that Hindustani refers to a language. The point of this page is that Hindustani is not one language, but a term that has been applied to different speech/language formations. The lead needs to be tweaked as I have said. It needs to be emphasized that (1) it is a historical term, (Masica says in Section 2.4 ("Nomenclature"), page 30, "The once ubiquitous Hindustani (now seldom used)" See Colin Masica (Google Scholar Citation Index 1,122) (the beginning of its usage dating to period 1700–1750) (2) The term "Hindustani" was applied to speech whose posited provenance and place of general origin itself evolved during the period 1700 to 1850, but by 1850 it had come to mean (3) the language that had evolved many centuries earlier as a result of Muslim contact, and in 1850 was identified with Urdu. The sources from the mid-19th century say that. e.g. all the dictionaries such as Platts, say that. The British standardization is pretty well-known. Standardization does not refer to greater literary use, greater nuances in speech, but rather to the appearance of grammars and dictionaries that described the rules associated with the language. I have already referred to it above, and will quote again from David Lelyveld's article:
"The earlier grammars and dictionaries made it possible for the British government to replace Persian with vernacular languages at the lower levels of judicial and revenue administration in 1837, that is, to standardize and index terminology for official use and provide for its translation to the language of the ultimate ruling authority, English. For such purposes, Hindustani was equated with Urdu, as opposed to any geographically defined dialect of Hindi and was given official status through large parts of north India. Written in the Persian script with a largely Persian and, via Persian, an Arabic vocabulary, Urdu stood at the shortest distance from the previous situation and was easily attainable by the same personnel. In the wake of this official transformation, the British government began to make its first significant efforts on behalf of vernacular education. The earliest controversies over Hindi versus Urdu apparently took place among the British because some officials were anxious to uproot the Mughal gentry by replacing Urdu with a still unformulated standard of Hindi." (""Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani, David Lelyveld, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 665-682) Google scholar citation index 58
There is no reason to quote Alok Rai's "Persistance of Hindustani" Google Scholar Citation Index 7; it is not DUE. The main thing is that you are all conflating Hindustani with the common base of grammar, and to a lesser extent lexicon. That the language that was called Hindustani and Hindi had similar regions of origin does not make them the same. If you want to describe Hindi's origins then do so on the Hindi page. It does not help to create content forks for Hindi and Urdu in this page. This is essentially a kind of historical dab page, which leans more toward Urdu, not because Urdu and Hindustani had the same origin and Hindi did not, but because at the high point of the term's use, Hindustani was identified with Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:50, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS See Platts: "ب ब be (p. 116) H ب be; ब ba ; The second letter of the Urdū or Hindūstānī (and of the Persian and Arabic) alphabet, and the twenty-third consonant of the Nāgarī alphabet," Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:55, 8 January 2020 (UTC) PPS I am not using a primary source; I'm saying Lelyveld and others refer to this notion of Hindustani, during the heyday of the use of the term "Hindustani." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:02, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- As far as names go, Tariq Rahman's book, page 22, gives the following chronology:
- Hindvi/Hindui (13-19th centuries)
- Dakkani/Dakhni (15-18th centuries)
- Hindustani (18-20th centuries)
- Urdu (18th century)
- Rahman himself treats "Hindvi" and "Hindi" as the same word (hence his book title "Hindi to Urdu"). I avoid that because it confuses things. But the word "Hindi" has been around to mean "Indians" or "Indian", inclusively, since the 14th century. Whether it was also used for the language, I can't say. Amir Khusro wrote, way back in the 13th century,
Delhi and in its environs/it is Hind(v)i since ancient times/which is used ordinarily for all kinds of conversation
- So, Hindvi was the language of Delhi (which it was even before there was any "Muslim contact") and then got exported to all over India with the expansion of the Delhi Sultanate. But it flourished as a literary language only in Deccan. This literary language got reimported to Delhi and got "Muslimised", acquiring the name Urdu (Chapter 5). So, the first three rows of the above list are basically the same language. (Urdu is the only one that is different.) Modern Standard Hindi is an evolution of that language. People say some Persian words were purged. I don't know. For those of us that get our Hindi from Bollywood, it doesn't make any difference.
- Regarding the identification of Hindustani and Urdu, Masica actually says:
although for the British administration and many others the terms Urdu and Hindustani were essentially equivalent, Urdu in the eyes of some of its protagonists took on a special connotation of stylistic refinement and could not refer to "plain" Khari Bali/Colloquial Hindustani. (p.30)
- So, you might be right that Urdu is dying in India (though I doubt it), but "Hindustani" is perfectly alive. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- As far as names go, Tariq Rahman's book, page 22, gives the following chronology:
References
- Hindustani, B2 noun, Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 8 December 2019 Quote: "The language of the Muslim conquerors of Hindustan, being a form of Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic, Persian, and other foreign elements; also called Urdū, i.e. zabān-i-urdū language of the camp, sc. of the Mogul conquerors."
- "Indo-European: Composite". new.multitree.org. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
- "Indo-European: Ethnologue 2009". new.multitree.org. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
Some sources and quotes
- Das Gupta, Jyotirindra (1970), Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India, University of California Press, pp. 52–, ISBN 978-0-520-01590-6
The emergence of Hindi is usually traced from the Apabhramsa works appearing between the eighth and twelfth centuries A.D. (p.51)
About the twelfth century A.D. Muslim settlers in North India tried to adopt this Hindi for some of their commercial and social communications. (p.51)
Conscious attempts to write literature in Persianized Delhi Hindustani—"the speech of the exalted Court"—led to the emergence of Rekhta, which may be said to be the earliest form of the present-day Urdu-Hindustani poetical speech. (p.51)
- Dua, Hans R. (2012), "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language", in Michael Clyne (ed.), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-088814-0
The formative period may be considered to begin roughly from 1100 AD with the invasion of Muslims and their settlement in India. It marks the beginning of a variety for communication between the rulers and the local population. The early form of Hindi-Urdu had a wide dialect base which, though derived basically from the Western Apabhramsa, included Braj-Bhasha, Harayani or Bangru, "vernacular Hindustani" and even sometimes Panjabi and Rajasthani, besides the Perso-Arabic element as a result of interaction between the Muslim and Hindu cultures. (p.382)
During the formative period the most commonly used names were Hindi, or Hindawi or Dehlvi. The other name, Zabān-e-Urdū or "The language of the Camp" arose as late as the end of 17th century. (p.382)
The emergent language Hindawi had travelled in the south with the Muslim and common people who settled there in the early fourteenth century due to historical and political reasons. (p.383)
In the emergence of the different bases of Hindi-Urdu, three facts seem to have played a major role. First, the Dakani literature was written in Perso-Arabic scripto and thus it "fixed the orientation of the language' (Chatterji 1960: 207). ... Second, some conscious efforts were made by such stalwarts as Khan Arzu, Shah Hatim and Mazhar Janejanan who laid out principles for weeding out the Braj Bhasha or indigenous Hindi words and incorporating Arabic and Persian words during the middle of eighteenth century (Khan 1958: 211, Jain 1973: 184). Finally, by the end of eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, prose began to be written in the emergent Khari Bol≠i. The Hindu writers who turned their attention to this variety, wrote prose using Devanagari characters and inclined towards Sanskrit vocabulary, while the Muslim writers wrote in Perso-Arabic script and depended more on the words of Perso-Arabic origin. (p.383-384)
1. Persian was replaced by Urdu written in the Perso-Arabic script as an official and court language along with English in the British-ruled provinces in north India. While this helped in the transition from Muslim to British rule, it gave rise to what is popularly known as Hindi movement. (p.384-385)
2. .. in the last quarter of the nineteenth century Hindi poetry made its advent in the Sanskritized Khari Boli and thus both in poetry and prose Hindi began to take lead over Urdu. This further reinforced the Hindi-Urdu divergence. (p.385)
3. ... the end of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the development of Hindu and Muslim revivalism and communal antagonism partly because of Hindi and Urdu controversy and partly as a response to meet the challenge of the Western culture. (p.385)
- Shaheen, Shagufta; Shahid, Sajjad (2017), "The Unique Literary Traditions of Dakhni", in Kousar.J. Azam (ed.), Languages and Literary Cultures in Hyderabad, Taylor & Francis, pp. 60–, ISBN 978-1-351-39399-7
The two, till-then distinct spheres of development of the Urdu language in the Deccan and Delhi, were brought together by the visit of the Dakhni poet Wali (1665/7-1707/8) to Delhi in 1700. It is said that his spiritual mentor ... advised Wali to introduce Persian traditions of stylistics and imagery into his creations.... a short time later his divan (collected poetical works) in the new style took north India by storm. It convinced Delhi poets that Urdu could rival and surpass Persian (as used in India—Sabak-é-Hindi) in almost all aspects of literary expression. (pt.82-83)
Unfortunately, the decision of Wali to give up the Dakhni tradition proved disastrous for Urdu... Even though a loss of patronage for Dakhni was undoubtedly the reason for Wali seeking an audience for his work at Delhi, his meek surrender does make him the prime agent of an unwelcome change. (pt.83)
The remission of Dakhni poetic traditions and an increasing reliance on Persian in post-Wali Urdu poetry alienated a large section of society from the language. (pt.83)
So, here we see the Urdu scholars themselves noticing that the elitism of the Muslim scholars alienated their language from the masses. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- What the heck is your problem. You can't read or write the Perso-Arabic script. None of you can. Here is C. M. Naim writing in the Britannica, "Urdu literature began to develop in the 16th century, in and around the courts of the Quṭb Shāhī and ʿĀdil Shāhī, kings of Golconda and Bījāpur in the Deccan (central India). In the later part of the 17th century, Aurangābād became the centre of Urdu literary activities. There was much movement of the literati and the elite between Delhi and Aurangābād, and it needed only the genius of Walī Aurangābādí, in the early 18th century, to bridge the linguistic gap between Delhi and the Deccan and to persuade the poets of Delhi to take writing in Urdu seriously. In the 18th century, with the migration of poets from Delhi, Lucknow became another important centre of Urdu poetry, though Delhi never lost its prominence." Why are you guys wasting my time with nonsense. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I believe that the understanding of the history of the languages has progressed further since C. M. Naim. In the current understanding, as documented by Tariq Rahman, the use of the label "Urdu" should be limited to post-Wali language of Delhi. Wali has introduced major innovations in the language that changed its character, to the extent of alienating the language from the commonfolk. Naim's historicisation is now out of date. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- What the heck is your problem. You can't read or write the Perso-Arabic script. None of you can. Here is C. M. Naim writing in the Britannica, "Urdu literature began to develop in the 16th century, in and around the courts of the Quṭb Shāhī and ʿĀdil Shāhī, kings of Golconda and Bījāpur in the Deccan (central India). In the later part of the 17th century, Aurangābād became the centre of Urdu literary activities. There was much movement of the literati and the elite between Delhi and Aurangābād, and it needed only the genius of Walī Aurangābādí, in the early 18th century, to bridge the linguistic gap between Delhi and the Deccan and to persuade the poets of Delhi to take writing in Urdu seriously. In the 18th century, with the migration of poets from Delhi, Lucknow became another important centre of Urdu poetry, though Delhi never lost its prominence." Why are you guys wasting my time with nonsense. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
More sources and quotes
- Robinson, Francis (2007), Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces' Muslims, 1860-1923, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-04826-2
, Muslims were a danger to security and their strong position in government service had to be reduced as far as was politically expedient. (p.42-43)
declared that 'no person shall be appointed, except in a purely English offce, to any ministerial appointment henceforward unless he can read and write both the Nagri and Persian characters fluently'. No more effective method could have been devised of purging government offces of 'natives bred up in the old ways' and in preventing their future appointment. Moreover, because Muslims did not come across the Nagri script in the normal course of their education, and would not read it for pleasure, the resolution threatened them more than any other vested interest in government service. (p.43-44)
shows that, between 1886—7 and 1913, the position of Muslims, and to a lesser extent Kayasths and Rajputs, deteriorated, while that of Brahmins, Banias and other Hindus improved. It also shows that from the Mutiny to 1913 Muslims lost their dominant position and Hindus gained a much larger share of appointments. ... it does suggest that by and large reforms in the bureaucracy were putting pressure on the traditional government service groups, a pressure which under Macdonnell was concentrated almost entirely on the Muslims. (p.44-45)
- John Hutchinson; Anthony D. Smith, eds. (2000), "Ethnic identity among Muslims of South Asia", Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 978-0-415-20112-4
In the nineteenth century in north India, before the extension of the British system of government schools, Urdu was not used in its written form as a medium of instruction in traditional Islamic schools, where Muslim children were taught Persian and Arabic, the traditional languages of Islam and Muslim culture. It was only when the Muslim elites of north India and the British decided that Muslims were backward in education in relation to Hindus and should be encouraged to attend government schools that it was felt necessary to offer Urdu in the Persian-Arabic script as an inducement to Muslims to attend the schools.(p.890)
It is well known that ordinary Muslims and Hindus alike spoke the same language in the United Provinces in the nineteenth century, namely Hindustani, whether called by that name or whether called Hindi, Urdu, or one of the regional dialects such as Braj or Awadhi. (p.890-891)
When the Urdu-speaking elite divided politically on the question of script, however, that the division was communicated and transmitted to the mass of the people. As more and more government schools were set up, it became a critical question, therefore, for Urdu and Hindi spokesmen to insist that Hindus had the right to be taught through the medium of Hindi in Devanagari script and that Muslims had the right to be taught through the medium of Urdu in Persian script because their languages and cultures were inseparable. (p.890-891)
-- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
topic of article
This article is about the national language of India and Pakistan, commonly known as 'Hindi-Urdu'. It is not about the word 'Hindustani'. If this is not the proper location for the language article, we can discuss moving it, though it's been here for 15 years and ties into several other articles on the topic that use the same name, which is pretty good evidence for consensus.
There has been some confusion on this article as to what a 'language' is. Hindi and Urdu are not languages, they are competing standardized registers of a language, much the way that Serbian and Croatian, or ÷Malaysian and Indonesian, (or RP and GA) are standardized forms of their languages. Colloquial usage has it that all of these terms refer to 'languages', but we go by linguistic usage on linguistic articles. Colloquial usage also has it that the akshara are 'alphabets', but that doesn't mean we should say here that MSH is written with fifty 'alphabets'. For any WP article, the distinction between the topic of the article and the title used for it need to be kept in mind. The topic has primacy. — kwami (talk) 23:48, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- I rewrote the article a month ago, on December 8. You have reverted it on January 8, and are claiming BRD, when there is a perfectly polite discussion going on in the section above. There is no national language of India and Pakistan. Please self-revert and advance the kind of sources everyone else is. I have cited the lead to the best references, including to Colin P. Masica's Indo Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press. @RegentsPark: @Vanamonde93:, @Doug Weller:. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:56, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
The fact that I didn't notice your edits until now is not an argument that they're valid. I'm not very active any more. You can't just delete one of the major languages of the world because you don't believe it exists. You're operating on a political POV, whereas this is a language article and so needs to follow a linguistic POV. There has been plenty of discussion in the past on this topic, based not just on Masica but on other RS's, and consensus has been established for over a decade that Hindi and Urdu are a single language. You're welcome to continue your polite discussion. Also, if you wish to make Urdu script primary, as it has historical if not numerical primacy, I have no problem with that. But claiming that the national language of India and Pakistan is extinct or doesn't exist is a bit much, and claiming that language is defined by orthography or religion shows a lack of understanding of what language is. — kwami (talk) 00:03, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- You have to join the discussion and self-revert. ::Why is it that in the chapter on "Urdu" in Cardona and Jain's, Indo Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003, Ruth Laila Schmidt makes no mention of Hindi-Urdu, nor of Hindustani except in reference to the British standardization? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:13, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Anyone can see the high-quality broad-field sources being used in my version with the random cherry-picking of narrow-field sources in yours. Why is it that neither India nor Pakistan make any official menton of Hindustani is it truly is the national language of both. See the quote from Cardona and Jain. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- You have to join the discussion and self-revert. ::Why is it that in the chapter on "Urdu" in Cardona and Jain's, Indo Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003, Ruth Laila Schmidt makes no mention of Hindi-Urdu, nor of Hindustani except in reference to the British standardization? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:13, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Again, you're confusing politics with linguistics. Different sources may use different names for the same thing. This was all decided over a decade ago. This article is about the "Hindi–Urdu" / "Hindi and Urdu" language summarized in §2.3 of Masica. You're welcome to bring it up for a new discussion, but no, I don't "have to" self-revert -- you're the one making the new claim, so you're the one that needs to convince the rest of us. — kwami (talk) 00:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I support the revert. Fowler&fowler, I think you need to read more sources and understand what is going on, and stop trusting Britannica and OED blindly. They are embarrassingly wrong. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: I have used Colin P. Masica's The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge, 1993; I have used the two articles on Hindi and Urdu in Cardona and Jain's (edited) Indo Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003; David Lelyveld's seminal piece on "Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani" As for Britannica, here is the beginning of one article on Urdu:
Would you like to judge again that the piece is embarrassingly wrong? Do you know who has written it? It is C. M. Naim, who wrote that for Britannica in 1979. Faruqi's 1999 piece on Early Urdu Literature is based on Naim's Britannica piece, though it pursues it further. Given that Britannica was published by the University of Chicago for decades, it is unlikely that its articles on Urdu would not have have been vetted by both Colin Masica and C M Naim, but also by other scholars of Indo-Aryan languages such as Edward Dimock, Ralph Nicholas. Naim's student and Columbia University Urdu professor Frances Pritchett, as well as the late Muhammad Umar Memon at Wisconsin. Please don't knock Britannica. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:51, 9 January 2020 (UTC)Earlier varieties of Urdu, variously known as Gujari, Hindawi, and Dakhani, show more affinity with eastern Punjabi and Haryani than with Khari Boli, which provides the grammatical structure of standard modern Urdu. The reasons for putting together the literary products of these dialects, forming a continuous tradition with those in Urdu, are as follows: first, they share a common milieu, consisting of Ṣūfī and Muslim court culture, increasingly dominated by the life and values of the urban elite; second, they display wholesale acceptance of Perso-Arabic literary traditions, including genres, metres, and rhetoric; third, they show an increasing acceptance of Perso-Arabic grammatical devices and vocabulary; and fourth, they tend to prefer Perso-Arabic forms over indigenous forms for learned usage.
- Can any of you read and write the Perso Arabic script? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:33, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- What does that have to do with anything? Languages have histories. Standardizations have histories. So what? You can make all the irrelevant comments you like, but that only suggests that you have nothing relevant to say. — kwami (talk) 04:54, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I'm saying that you guys are clueless about the languages; without even middle school knowledge of the Perso Arabic script, only cherry-picking sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:04, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: The fact that younger Croats can't read Serbian Cyrillic doesn't suddenly make Croatian a language separate from Serbian (yes, I know that Serbs use both alphabets - but when they write in Cyrillic it makes the written variant unintelligible to younger Croats). Let's not confuse science with politics. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:37, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- What does that have to do with anything? Languages have histories. Standardizations have histories. So what? You can make all the irrelevant comments you like, but that only suggests that you have nothing relevant to say. — kwami (talk) 04:54, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Can any of you read and write the Perso Arabic script? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:33, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: I have used Colin P. Masica's The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge, 1993; I have used the two articles on Hindi and Urdu in Cardona and Jain's (edited) Indo Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003; David Lelyveld's seminal piece on "Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani" As for Britannica, here is the beginning of one article on Urdu:
- In response to the ping by User:Kautilya3 to offer my thoughts here, I agree with both User:Kwamikagami and User:Kautilya3 that this article is about Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu in the linguistic sense of the term, not antiquated political theories. Hindustani, the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent, has two standardized registers, Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. It is very much alive today as the common speech of the people, as well as in Bollywood movies and songs. The text Bollywood: Gods, Glamour, and Gossip, authored Kush Varia and published by Columbia University Press, states: "Bollywood films largely use Hindustani..." I have added sources to the lede to reflect this. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 04:35, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- If the language is the same (a) can I give you a poem of Mir on his cat, and you can explain it to me? Assuming you won't be able to read the old Perso-Arabic script, can I give you the Romanized English version. The languages are the same. You should have no problem. Right? (b) I'll give you a Romanized Urdu version of a Shahar Ashob of Nazir Akbarabadi on the famine of my Misplaced Pages article Agra famine of 1837–38. Which one of you will explain it to me? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:41, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- So, if a non-native English speaker can't explain a Shakespearean sonnet, that means they don't speak English in England? Come on, be serious. The fact that native 'Hindi' and 'Urdu' speakers can't tell their languages apart demonstrates that they are the same language, and we have plenty of RS's to back that up. — kwami (talk) 04:48, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- No no. This is not a sonnet of Shakespeare. Urdu literate people, even those who have studied up to middle school are able to read these poems. So wide is the gap. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:02, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- No-one here has claimed that the literary standards are the same. They're obviously quite different. That's why we have separate articles for Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi, just as we have separate articles for Serbian and Croatian (though those aren't nearly as distinct). — kwami (talk) 05:18, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- No no. This is not a sonnet of Shakespeare. Urdu literate people, even those who have studied up to middle school are able to read these poems. So wide is the gap. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:02, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- So, if a non-native English speaker can't explain a Shakespearean sonnet, that means they don't speak English in England? Come on, be serious. The fact that native 'Hindi' and 'Urdu' speakers can't tell their languages apart demonstrates that they are the same language, and we have plenty of RS's to back that up. — kwami (talk) 04:48, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- If the language is the same (a) can I give you a poem of Mir on his cat, and you can explain it to me? Assuming you won't be able to read the old Perso-Arabic script, can I give you the Romanized English version. The languages are the same. You should have no problem. Right? (b) I'll give you a Romanized Urdu version of a Shahar Ashob of Nazir Akbarabadi on the famine of my Misplaced Pages article Agra famine of 1837–38. Which one of you will explain it to me? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:41, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
This video does a good job of explaining Hindustani and its registers. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 04:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- The comments are interesting. — kwami (talk) 05:18, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- User:Kwamikagami and User:Kautilya3, I have added many references from academic sources to buttress the content in the lede. I note that it was recently reverted by User:Fowler&fowler. Could you kindly review these? I do not wish to edit war. Thanks, Anupam 05:25, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- No worriies. Please go ahead and create a nonsensical article on a language whose script you cannot read. Congratulations. Ño wonder the Pakistanis stay away from this kind of nonsense. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I though we'd cite Masica and Cardona but I don't see that happening yet! - Sattvic7 (talk) 09:10, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- User:Kwamikagami and User:Kautilya3, I have added many references from academic sources to buttress the content in the lede. I note that it was recently reverted by User:Fowler&fowler. Could you kindly review these? I do not wish to edit war. Thanks, Anupam 05:25, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I add two quotes from Shapiro's "Hindi" chapter in Cardona & Jain (2003), since is it addresses many aspects of the Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani question relevant to this discussion, and repeat a third one already quoted by Sattvic7 above (but attributed to the editor Cardona).
- "For some, Hindi and Urdu are two stylistic poles of a single language, Hindi-Urdu." (p.278)
- "Countering this view is a opinion, which has gained an increasing number of adherents after the partition of India and Pakistan, that Hindi and Urdu, as bearers of distinct literary and cultural traditions, should be considered fully separate languages." (p.278-279)
- "Further complicating the discourse concerning the relations among various styles or registers of Hindi/Urdu (or Hindi and Urdu) is the use of the term ‘Hindustani’ in any of a number of separate senses. Frequently the term has been used as a synonym for Urdu (C. R. King 1994:198). In addition, the term has been used with regard to stylistically neutral speech variety of H/U, shorn of either the strongly Persian or Arabic linguistic correlates of literary Urdu or heavily Sanskritized features of śuddh ‘pure’ Hindi. This was the sense of the term used by Gandhi and Nehru with regard to a national language for independent India. To advocates of a view that sees Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani as stylistic variants of a common language, matters of script and literary history are of less importance than the shared grammatical, lexical features of the vernacular languages of the upper Gangetic valley, not to mention the unifying aspects of shared cultural traditions."(p.279)
The quotes 1 and 2 define the two POVs about the term "language". The first is the strictly linguistic POV (called "Sense A" by Masica 1993; Masica describes some pitfalls of this definition, but these are not relevant for our discussion). Based on this POV, the language is called Hindu-Urdu (or Hindi/Urdu), a term also employed by Masica (1993). The second is the sociocultural POV (called "Sense B" by Masica 1993; essentially equalling the Weinreich definition). The current article structure of WP gives room for both POVs in several cases (Serbo-Croatian vs. Serbian/Croatian/etc.; Malay vs. Indonesian/Malaysian etc.), with appropriate discussion of context in the respective articles.
The third quote describes the ambiguity of the term "Hindustani", including its use as a synonym for Hindu-Urdu. The latter is also mentioned by Masica (1993), but it is clearly not his term of choice ("the once ubiquitous Hindustani (now seldom used)" p.30).
So even the sources cited by Fowler&fowler do treat "Hindi-Urdu" or "Hindustani" as a language – with all due qualifications – in the way it has been described in the long-standing version (or let's better say, the long-standing range of versions) of this article. Whether "Hindustani" is the best choice as title for this article is IMO open to debate, but we should start a new debate only when we're done with this discussion.
Narrower definitions of "Hindustani" are definitely worth a mention in this article; maybe even notable enough for a standalone (but not a POV-fork). But the fallacy starts when an editor cherry-picks one definition of "Hindustani" in complete disregard of the topic of this article ("Hindustani" in the widest sense), and completely reworks it to make it fit to this single one out of serveral possible understandings of this ambiguous term. This overruns the collective of all editors who have contributed to shape this article, and looks like an attempt to own this article. The editor's numerous challenges like "Can any of you read and write the Perso Arabic script", and the qualification of disagreeing views as "nonsense" unfortunately fits into this picture. –Austronesier (talk) 11:11, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I too share the view that "Hindustani' has been used in multiple senses which means a lot of confusion for people, instead of "cherry-picking one definition we must allow several understandings of the same to exist" through proper discussion ! I had already edited the lead section and quoted Masica ("Hindustani" under Appendix I, pp. 430)) before Austronesier's comment. I I am quoting Masica here:
- "Hindustani - term referring to common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India, much in vogue during Independence movement as expression of national unity; after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it their mother tongue (the majority of HINDI speakers and many URDU speakers had done so in previous censuses); trend continued in subsequent censuses: only 11,053 returned it in 1971...mostly from S India" (p. 430)
This is the widest accepted definition that Masica and other scholars hold. Further in addition to your citations of "Hindi" under Cardona. I'd like to quote from "Urdu" under Cardona's
"In the early 1800s, the British chose the Khari-Bolī lingua franca, which they called Hindustani, as their medium for administration, and sponsored the composition of Hindustani prose texts in both the Persian and Dēvanāgarī scripts." (p. 318)
So clearly, "Hindustani" was a term employed by British and was hardly popular with the masses. I'd also like to add another quote:
- "Hindustani officially disappeared after 1947; neither Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India, which enumerates the languages of India, nor the official documents of Pakistan make even a cursory mention of it (G. C. Narang, personal communication). Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora." (p. 319) which basically means after the independence the term 'Hindustani' ceased to be used, and was replaced by "Hindi" and "Urdu" in India and Pakistan respectively, not that "Hindustani" ceased to exist but it just that people stopped using that term. - Sattvic7 (talk) 13:23, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Sattvic7: Context counts when a term is ambiguous, so I highly welcome your addition that goes "In modern context, Hindustani refers to...". I was in the middle of writing my earlier comment when you added it. Hopefully, this phrasing will last through future c/e- and bolder edits.
- Btw, I am relatively new here (since 2017), so I have only now made myself familiar with the page move history of this article, since kwami mentioned it. Cf. Talk:Hindustani language/Archive 2. I have striked out my remark about a page title discussion, not really being eager to (re-)open Pandora's box. –Austronesier (talk) 15:11, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
POV template
All the citations above are included in the last version that I wrote. In the first footnotes there, it is clear from both Masica and Cardona/Jain's Indo Aryan Lanugages that the name Hindustani is not used any more. It is an obsolete name. It is archaic. It is only informally used for the common syntactic and lexical base of the Indo-Aryan vernaculars of the Upper Ganges Valley. All the quotes that you are repeating here for the ad nauseam are already there in that version. If you want to creat a new page on Hindi Urdu (which is not piped to Hindustani) be my guest. But the term Hindustani is not used for a living language. I will be putting POV templates on the page. Please do not remove it. I know what I'm doing. And I will purue other forms of dispute resolution on Misplaced Pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:42, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I have already discussed this in Talk:Hindustani language#topic of article and quoted "Urdu" in Cardona and Jain eds.(2003) which I am quoting again here for you:
Hindustani officially disappeared after 1947; neither Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India, which enumerates the languages of India, nor the official documents of Pakistan make even a cursory mention of it (G. C. Narang, personal communication). Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora." (p. 319) which basically means after the independence the term 'Hindustani' ceased to be used, and was replaced by "Hindi" and "Urdu" in India and Pakistan respectively, not that "Hindustani" ceased to exist but it just that people stopped using that term.
— page 319.
- As stated clearly in the quote, Hindustani has disappeared "officially" but "unofficially" is a fully functional language. Period!- Sattvic7 (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- A vernacular link language is already mentioned in my version, with that same quote. Do you seriously think I have not read that page? Hindustani is not the name of a living language. Why do you think Cardona and Jain's book have two separate chapters on Hindi and Urdu but none on Hindustani? Where does Ruth Laila Schmidt's article mention Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu except in the historical vernacular context? If you want to give the historical evolution of Hindi and Urdu, do so in the Hindi and Urdu pages. Just as all the books do. Please do not create content forks here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Please also note the blatant POV-promotion by Hindi-POV promoters in this content forking: Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. For all the protestations of it being the mutually intelligible common vernacular of Hindi and Urdu there is nothing there in the Urdu script. Zero. Zilch. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: Please do not connect things which are not connected, just in order to make it appear like a kind of conspiracy by "Hindi-POV promoters". Hindustani grammar was subject to a recent partisan POV-stunt, and I just have fixed it. –Austronesier (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I note that the version of the Hindustani phonology article that User:Fowler&fowler linked is a very old revision, dating back to 18 October 2007. The current revision is up to date with both Devanagari and Nastaleeq. User:Fowler&fowler's claim, therefore, is not substantiated. Anupam 16:52, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: Please do not connect things which are not connected, just in order to make it appear like a kind of conspiracy by "Hindi-POV promoters". Hindustani grammar was subject to a recent partisan POV-stunt, and I just have fixed it. –Austronesier (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Please also note the blatant POV-promotion by Hindi-POV promoters in this content forking: Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. For all the protestations of it being the mutually intelligible common vernacular of Hindi and Urdu there is nothing there in the Urdu script. Zero. Zilch. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- A vernacular link language is already mentioned in my version, with that same quote. Do you seriously think I have not read that page? Hindustani is not the name of a living language. Why do you think Cardona and Jain's book have two separate chapters on Hindi and Urdu but none on Hindustani? Where does Ruth Laila Schmidt's article mention Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu except in the historical vernacular context? If you want to give the historical evolution of Hindi and Urdu, do so in the Hindi and Urdu pages. Just as all the books do. Please do not create content forks here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: You have on several occasions (e.g. ) implied with your comments that the other editors in this discussion lack the appropriate competence in the subject of this article. In this context, can you please explain the following two related statements which you have made earlier in the discussion:
- "It is inappropriate to give Hindustani the labels of a normative language variety (Central Indo-Aryan)"
- "It is most emphatically not a Central Indo-Aryan Language."
More spefically I ask: 1. What has the genealogical classification of a language ("Central Indo-Aryan") to do with a "label of a normative language variety"? 2. Can you a provide source which classifies Hindustani anything other than "Central Indo-Aryan"? Thank you. –Austronesier (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler::I understand your concern regarding Hindi-POV promoters, it can indeed be discussed here and I will definitely support a neutral POV provided it is backed by reliable sources. As for your claim that Hindustani is "dead" or "not a living language", it stands as a fallacy. Hindustani exists as a fully functioning living language except with a different nomenclature. If you think otherwise, I am absolutely sorry for you! - Sattvic7 (talk) 16:45, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: I made that remark in reply to Sattvic who was claiming Awadhi language also to be in the list of vernaculars that had contributed to Hindustani. (I have since then become aware of the extent of WP:OR, WP:SYNTHESIS, and POV-promotion in all the Hindustani-related pages, all created and maintained by the same people.) I was suggesting that nowhere in a broad-field modern source will you find the characterization "Hindustani is a Central Indo Aryan Language." Masica discusses only Old- Middle- and New Indo-Aryan. Cardona's article on Indo-Aryan languages in Britannica makes no mention of it. "North Central Indo Aryan" is found in two pages of Cardona and Jain's edited book, mostly in Michael Shapiro's chapter on Hindi. I am suggesting that Central Indo-Aryan languages is a bogus OR page, all created by the same people, all based on Grierson's Western Hindi (which Hindustani was) and Eastern Hindi (which Hindustani was not, but Awadhi is). Who do you think uploaded Grierson's linguistic map from the Imperial Gazetteer of India in December 2019? It was me. See the map in last version that I wrote (or see it File:Prevailing Languages Imperial Gazetteer of India 1909.jpg here and notice that Hindustani is at the upper end of Western Hindi and Awadhi at the northern end of Eastern Hindi. Seriously, Austronesier, what sort of silly quiz are you attempting to waste my time with? (Please also read Masica's chapter by chapter review of Cardona and Jain, and of Michael Shapiro in particular.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I will be taking a couple of days off from this Keystone Cops discussion and will go through all the bogus Hindustani-related articles on WP. eg Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. During this time please do not remove the POV template as it obviously applies to a much wider OR and SYNTHESIS on Misplaced Pages than just this article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: Dear, you only seem to be diverting attention, someone with a even basic knowledge of linguistics and language can point out that that you have zero knowledge on this topic!- Sattvic7 (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages does not care about what zero or nonzero knowledge, only the sources. You better find yours. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC) PS At the very least, I will be recommending that all the "Hindustani" related pages except this one be moved to Hindi-Urdu-this-or-that, and that Hindi-Urdu not be piped to this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:04, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I will be taking a couple of days off from this Keystone Cops discussion and will go through all the bogus Hindustani-related articles on WP. eg Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. During this time please do not remove the POV template as it obviously applies to a much wider OR and SYNTHESIS on Misplaced Pages than just this article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: I made that remark in reply to Sattvic who was claiming Awadhi language also to be in the list of vernaculars that had contributed to Hindustani. (I have since then become aware of the extent of WP:OR, WP:SYNTHESIS, and POV-promotion in all the Hindustani-related pages, all created and maintained by the same people.) I was suggesting that nowhere in a broad-field modern source will you find the characterization "Hindustani is a Central Indo Aryan Language." Masica discusses only Old- Middle- and New Indo-Aryan. Cardona's article on Indo-Aryan languages in Britannica makes no mention of it. "North Central Indo Aryan" is found in two pages of Cardona and Jain's edited book, mostly in Michael Shapiro's chapter on Hindi. I am suggesting that Central Indo-Aryan languages is a bogus OR page, all created by the same people, all based on Grierson's Western Hindi (which Hindustani was) and Eastern Hindi (which Hindustani was not, but Awadhi is). Who do you think uploaded Grierson's linguistic map from the Imperial Gazetteer of India in December 2019? It was me. See the map in last version that I wrote (or see it File:Prevailing Languages Imperial Gazetteer of India 1909.jpg here and notice that Hindustani is at the upper end of Western Hindi and Awadhi at the northern end of Eastern Hindi. Seriously, Austronesier, what sort of silly quiz are you attempting to waste my time with? (Please also read Masica's chapter by chapter review of Cardona and Jain, and of Michael Shapiro in particular.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Really? I have made my arguments all backed by citations (with quotes). It is, my friend, you with your wishful theories beating about the bush. Here are the citations that I earlier provided to show you that Hindustani is "Central Indo-Aryan" and I also cited Cardona(2003) to prove that Hindustani is not dead language. But I should've know that I was beating a dead horse. In my opinion, the template should be removed as soon as possible, we all are just wasting our time. This discussion is gonna go nowhere from here. - Sattvic7 (talk) 18:16, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: You are very quick in making bold accusation about POV-pushing and OR, but at the same time fail to fully check the very sources you cite. As for the Central branch of Indo-Aryan, please see for yourself in Masica's book (p. 454ff.) –Austronesier (talk) 18:28, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I've just looked at the later sections, which in all honesty I had not earlier. They are chock full of original research (such as the writing system section) and errors (such as in nastaaliq scripts) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I have added two more tags. If the interlocutors here are such geniuses, please tell me what might be the matter with the sample texts in Urdu in the Writing Systems sections. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: Nick Masica, whom I have known for many years, whose gifted copy of The Indo-Aryan languages I am privileged to possess, can read and write Urdu at a tolerably high level of functioning. My interlocutors here and the authors of this page, however, are entirely innocent of the writing system of Urdu, which was the same as that of Hindustani when it was the official langauge of India under British rule. Please don't waste my time further by looking up a mention in an appendix that lists New Indo-Aryan languages is the classification systems of at least six linguists, most of which have Grierson's Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, same as in my map. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I've just looked at the later sections, which in all honesty I had not earlier. They are chock full of original research (such as the writing system section) and errors (such as in nastaaliq scripts) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: You had "wasted your time" before to contest that "Hindustani" is a "Central Indo-Aryan" languages, and also to falsely claim that the concept of "Central Indo-Aryan" is OR and bogus. So you should also waste your time to verify or falsify it via the very valuable overview given by Masica (1991), which mentions the "Central" branch/subgroup of Indo-Aryan as part of mainstream scholarship starting from Grierson up to the time the book was written.
It is ridiculous to dismiss academic research cited in a reliable source as "original research". Of course it is, just as any non-plagiatory reseach is.So when kwami created the page Central Indo-Aryan languages, he did not so based on some purported Hindi-POV, but based on what can be found in many reliable sources. Glottolog lists the same grouping as Indo-Aryan "Central zone". Don't belittle academic research just because it does not match with your monolithic POV. –Austronesier (talk) 21:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: You had "wasted your time" before to contest that "Hindustani" is a "Central Indo-Aryan" languages, and also to falsely claim that the concept of "Central Indo-Aryan" is OR and bogus. So you should also waste your time to verify or falsify it via the very valuable overview given by Masica (1991), which mentions the "Central" branch/subgroup of Indo-Aryan as part of mainstream scholarship starting from Grierson up to the time the book was written.
References
- "Indo-European: Composite". new.multitree.org. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
- "Indo-European: Ethnologue 2009". new.multitree.org. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
Here is a nice quote from a text in a tertiary source. It starts:
Hindustani language, lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan. Two variants of Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi, are official languages in Pakistan and India, respectively.
This is not really a far cry from the current version of the lede, which – among other things – is so vehemently contested by a single editor. Less elaborate maybe, but the "template" is the same: lemma is "Hindustani", a living language, with two standardized variants called "Hindi" and "Urdu". The same text ends as follows:
More than 100 million individuals, including more than 50 million people in India, speak Urdu; many of these individuals may actually use Hindustani for ordinary communication. Approximately 550 million people speak Hindi, and sizable portions of this group, especially those who live in cities, are known to use Hindustani rather than Sanskritized Hindi in ordinary speech. Thus, while Hindustani may not survive as a literary language, it continues to thrive as a vernacular.
These quotes are from Encyclopædia Britannica, entry "Hindustani language". @Kautilya3: See, we actually can trust Britannica; less trustworthy, however, is Britannica + cherry picking. –Austronesier (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
- I am in agreement with User:Austronesier that the article currently reflects what reliable sources state with respect to the Hindustani language. Anupam 17:47, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
- Yes, I have read the EB article in full after Fowler persuaded me about it, and I think it is mostly ok. The only problem I have with it is that it overstates the "Muslim hegemony" a bit. It is hard to see how the "Muslimness" mattered; the "foreignness", may be. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:31, 10 January 2020
- I am in agreement with User:Austronesier that the article currently reflects what reliable sources state with respect to the Hindustani language. Anupam 17:47, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
Proposal
Note:Please do not comment in this section; do so only in the subsection below.
Thesis: There is no living "Hindustani language."
The reason why I am here
I became interested in the page Hindustani language over a month ago when I began to think about polishing and updating a page Company rule in India for eventual submission as a Featured Article Candidate. I could see right away that the Hindustani language page had been subject to major OR, Synthesis, and POV promotion. Hindustani is a historical term. It was applied to a language, which was mostly identified with Urdu, during both Company rule in India and British Raj days. Although the term "Hindustani," had been used before occasionally, it began to see wider and more systematic use after the Anglo-Maratha wars when the Company acquired the Ceded and Conquered Provinces (the old United Provinces minus Oudh/Awadh). Lord Wellesley proposed that all Company civil servants should have basic tools of communication with the new and very large populations whose responsibility of governance now rested on their shoulders. Knowledgable people at the Company thought that a simplified version of the Urdu language of the Mughals would be that language. At Fort William College in Calcutta, a basic course in this simple language was created and Company officials were thereafter required to take the course and pass an exam. The term "Hindustani," was typically not applied to Urdu poetry (say, of Mir Taqi Mir, which was highly Persianized) but more for the proposed language of legal documents (wills, land sales, etc). It remained so until the British left. I have several such documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, Urdu Prose, and later Hindi itself, both prose and poetry, in the form now defined, arose at Fort William College. In the first half of the 20th century, Gandhi and some other Indian nationalists—worrying about an eventual successor state to the British Raj, its languages of administration, and some way of accommodating Hindi—proposed that an even more simple version of the Hindustani that could either continue to be written in Perso-Arabic or in the rapidly but newly standardized Hindi in Devanagari. With that conviction, Gandhi began to learn the Perso-Arabic script (and by the early 1930s was writing simple letters in it) and also started the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha, an organization for promoting Hindi in South India (see the history of the page.) In the end, however, it was not Hindustani, but Hindi that became the official language of India, and the subject of major promotion by the state. That was it. Very rapidly the term "Hindustani" disappeared. (See David Lelyveld's brilliant article: Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 665-682 (18 pages), JSTOR url.) Neither the governments of India nor Pakistan has made even a cursory reference to Hindustani after 1947. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:55, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
Dictionaries, grammars, and usage manuals
- Evidence:Living languages have grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals. There has not been a single Hindustani dictionary or grammar or usage manual published since 1947. Contrast the post-1947 period with 1796 to 1947 below. Note also, in most references below "Hindustani" is identified with something more akin to Urdu than Hindi:
- A Grammar, of the Hindoostanee Language, Or Part Third of Volume First, of a ... by John Borthwick Gilchrist Publication date 1796
- Hindoostanee philology; comprising a dictionary, English and Hindoostanee; with a grammatical introduction by Gilchrist, John Borthwick, 1759-1841 (Please examine the entries for the Hindustani words for "advantageous" through "adventurous". Most Indians who are Hindi speakers will not know the Hindustani equivalent, because what was common knowledge in 1800 is not any more.)
- Grammar of the Hindustani Language. London, Cox & Baylis 1813 by John Shakespear, Publication date 1813
- John Shakespear, Dictionary of Hindustanee and English, 1834
- A grammar of the Hindústání language in the oriental and Roman character by Forbes, Duncan, 1798-1868 Publication date 1855
- Duncan Forbes, Hindustani English Dictionary, 1866
- The syntax and idioms of Hindustani : or, progressive exercises in translation, with notes and directions and vocabularies by Kempson, Simon Matthews Edwin, 1831-1894 Publication date 1890
- A grammar of the Urdu or Hindustani language by Dowson, John, 1820-1881 Publication date 1908
- The modern Hindustani scholar; or, The Pucca Munshi by Pahwa, Thakardass,Publication date 1919
- Even The Hindustani Dictionary by J T Platts, Publication date 1881 which has the Devanagari script for Hindi words has a lexicographic order of Arabic/Persian/Urdu. In other words, a Hindi speaker today will not know how to use the dictionary, as they would need to have working knowledge of how this ordering works not only at the beginning of a word, but for every successive letter of a word. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:49, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
Since @Kautilya3: had mentioned Tariq Rahman, what Hindustani was is eloquently summed up in the conclusion of Tariq Rahman's article, "British Learning of Hindustani":
Hindustani was the name the British gave to Urdu in India. They imagined it as an India-wide language; a lingua franca which it probably was not before their arrival. They spread it all over the country by using it in the army, to talk to servants and subordinates. They also spread it wide by using it in the courts of law, the lower levels of administration and teaching it formally in schools all over north India. Moreover, they wrote primers, phrase books, dictionaries and grammars in it thus making it the most commonly known Indian language in their Indian empire. ... The second aspect of the British understanding of Hindustani is that they equated with Urdu and favoured the Perso-Arabic script for writing it. They did not favour the highly Persianized variety of it but, on the whole, their Hindustani was closer to easy, or commonly spoken, Urdu than it was to either the vernaculars of the Hindi belt or Sanskritized Hindi. This particular understanding was felt to favour Muslims, as Urdu was associated with Muslims, by Hindu nationalists who later opted for Hindi instead of Hindustani despite the widespread intelligibility of the latter.
Also pinging @RegentsPark: @Sattvic7: @Uanfala: @Anupam: @Kwamikagami: @Austronesier: @Saqib:, @Mar4d: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- You said, "Living languages have grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals". That is not in general true. Again, you don't know what a "language" is, so none of your arguments count for anything, no matter how many sources you have. According to your logic, English is not a language, because the dictionaries, usage manuals etc. are all for RP, GA etc. — kwami (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Proposal
There is no broad-field source, neither Colin P. Masica, in his book, The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press, 1993, nor George Cardona in his long Britannica article on Indo-Aryan Languages nor the articles on Hindi and Urdu respectively by Michael Shapiro and Ruth Laila Schmidt in Jain/Cardona edited Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003, has anything on "Hindustani grammar," or "Hindustani phonology." Masica says in his glossary at the end of the book, p 430:
‘Hindustani’ - term referring to common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India, much in vogue during Independence movement as expression of national unity; after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it their mother tongue (the majority of HINDI speakers and many URDU speakers had done so in previous censuses); trend continued in subsequent censuses: only 11,053 returned it in 1971, mostly from S India; .
- In Google Scholar, the number of sources that use "Hindi-Urdu," but DO NOT use "Hindustani" are: 13,000
- The number of sources that use "Hindi-Urdu" AND "Hindustani" are: 2,270
- The number of sources that use "Hindustani language," are 893
I have a very simple proposal.
- Proposal Move the pages (and remove the redirects at the target pages):
- Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar; (Note the references used in Hindustani grammar: they are all either to Hindi or Urdu, but none to Hindustani.) The Hindustani grammar books written during the British period (see above) abound in Urdu; Indians who speak the Hindi of Bollywood songs and conflating it with Hindustani will not understand them. So full they are of Urdu.)
- 1. Hindustani phonology to Hindi-Urdu phonology
- 2. Hindustani orthography to Hindi-Urdu orthography (Please note the difference between the Misplaced Pages page Hindustani orthography, which is a rudimentary list of the writing systems of Hindi, Urdu, Romanized Hindi-Urdu, and Hind-Urdu for Braille. Contrast that with orthography described in a typical book on Hindustani (Hindustani manual by Phillott, D. C. (Douglas Craven), 1860-1930. Publication date 1918) published during the Raj: see the introduction to the orthography here and the more detailed in Appendix D and E here.)
- 3. Hindustani etymology to Hindi-Urdu etymology
- 4. Hindustani people to Speakers of Hindi-Urdu
- 5. Hindustani kinship terms to Hindi-Urdu kinship terms
- 6. Move sections 2 to 12 of this article to Hindi-Urdu (remove the redirect there); leave the lead in some version of this edit of mine, in which footnotes 7 and 8 from the two most important broad-field sources for Indo-Aryan languages, state clearly that the term is seldom used these days. I am happy to discuss the fine details of the phrasing of the lead, but the clear statement of the term "Hindustani" being a historical term has to be upfront and center in the lead. The history section can be rewritten later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:22, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
- In a new version of the proposal, 6. would be changed to an alternate version 6a in which,
- Hindustani language would be a dab page with two entries:
- a) Hindi-Urdu (undirected now to Hindustani language) and
- b) Hindustani language in British India (see discussion below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Comments on the Proposal
- Hi Fowler, the 2011 edition of Tariq Rahman's book is available on researchgate. Quoting from his first chapter:
At present the names of this ancient language are Urdu and Hindi. However, the term ‘Hindustani’—used mostly by the British for this language—is still used for the spoken language of the popular, urban culture of North India and Pakistan. George Grierson, the pioneer of the modern scientific study of the languages of South Asia, defines these terms as follows:... These definitions, coming from the British period, are as valid today as they were in the early twentieth century. However, the term Hindustani is not used much in either India or Pakistan. That was the middle ground which has been lost, and what has replaced it are the names for the opposite ends of the continuum: Hindi and Urdu....
- So, the ancient spoken language (Hindustani) is still used. And, in fact, it is the only language used for speaking. The "middle ground" that has been lost is only in the nomenclature.
- The Grierson quote says:
Hindōstānī is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also the lingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Dēvanāgarī characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name ‘Urdu’ can then be confined to that special variety of Hindōstānī in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, ‘Hindi’ can be confined to the form of Hindōstānī in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only be written in the Dēvanāgarī character.
- This validates your point that the scripts are important in order to bridge the divide. But apparently, both the scripts are needed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:26, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Reading through the history of the British involvement in the 19th century (Ch. 8 of Tariq Rahman's book), it is also clear how the British made political-cultural mistakes. They took Hindustani, which the North Indians had been speaking for ages, writing it in Devanagari, and started identifying it with Urdu, which was no more than 100 years old. Francis Robinson's figures also make clear how this disadvantaged the Hindus (see the Table V on page 45). In 1857, Muslims made up 64% of all the judicial and executive service officials in U.P, despite making up only 15% of the population. By 1913, due to Macdonnell's insistence that the officials had to know both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts, things got inverted. Hindus now made up 60% of the same class of posts. The U.P. Hindus would have obviously felt that their language and their culture was being misappropriated and used in turn to subjugate them. Thus, the British created the divide, where none had existed before. This is hardly anything to glorify. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:15, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: The main thrust of my argument is that in the scholarly publications Hindi-Urdu is preferred to Hindustani by a very large margin to describe the common mutually understood grammatical and phonological base of the two languages which had its origins as a dialect of Western Hindi spoken in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab. (See above.) In any kind of naming on Misplaced Pages that is of paramount importance. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: Please also note the number of courses or programs in Universities which use Hindi-Urdu but not Hindustani in their description; there are no courses or programs on Hindustani. If it were a living language, don't you think it would be reflected in pedagogy? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:30, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS In other words, here on Misplaced Pages, move the stuff related to a living language to Hindi-Urdu-stuff. Leave Hindustani as a historical page about the language in the British period, the socio-political, pedagogic aspects (detailed above), warts and all. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:39, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- PPS You can read about this also in David Lelyveld's seminal article, "Colonial knowledge and the fate of Hindustani," that got the ball rolling in this field:
"The earlier grammars and dictionaries made it possible for the British government to replace Persian with vernacular languages at the lower levels of judicial and revenue administration in 1837, that is, to standardize and index terminology for official use and provide for its translation to the language of the ultimate ruling authority, English. For such purposes, Hindustani was equated with Urdu, as opposed to any geographically defined dialect of Hindi and was given official status through large parts of north India. Written in the Persian script with a largely Persian and, via Persian, an Arabic vocabulary, Urdu stood at the shortest distance from the previous situation and was easily attainable by the same personnel. In the wake of this official transformation, the British government began to make its first significant efforts on behalf of vernacular education. The earliest controversies over Hindi versus Urdu apparently took place among the British because some officials were anxious to uproot the Mughal gentry by replacing Urdu with a still unformulated standard of Hindi."
- PPS You can read about this also in David Lelyveld's seminal article, "Colonial knowledge and the fate of Hindustani," that got the ball rolling in this field:
- PS In other words, here on Misplaced Pages, move the stuff related to a living language to Hindi-Urdu-stuff. Leave Hindustani as a historical page about the language in the British period, the socio-political, pedagogic aspects (detailed above), warts and all. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:39, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: Please also note the number of courses or programs in Universities which use Hindi-Urdu but not Hindustani in their description; there are no courses or programs on Hindustani. If it were a living language, don't you think it would be reflected in pedagogy? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:30, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: The main thrust of my argument is that in the scholarly publications Hindi-Urdu is preferred to Hindustani by a very large margin to describe the common mutually understood grammatical and phonological base of the two languages which had its origins as a dialect of Western Hindi spoken in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab. (See above.) In any kind of naming on Misplaced Pages that is of paramount importance. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- I will leave aside the six page-move proposals because I don't have a strong opinion on those, and they will anyway depend on what happens to this page. Your proposal seems to be to split this into two pages, one on Hindustani, which will mainly cover the British time standard, and another on Hindu-Urdu, which will deal with the common substrate language. I would regard that as WP:POVFORKing. Multiple sources, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, say that these two are the same. You can rightly argue that the British standardisation of Hindustani should be covered in more detail on this page. You are also welcome to state that the British viewed their Hindustani as simplified Urdu. But the sources say that it was the common vernacular of North India. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:38, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kautilya3: No, they won't depend on what happens to this page because no paper or book has been written on Hindustani grammar that is not from the British period, or the mention of "Hindustani grammar" in it is to something in the British period. The publications that mention "Hindustani grammar" but do not reference "Hindi grammar" or "Urdu grammer" number 125 Those that either mention "Hindi grammar" or "Urdu grammar" but do not mention "Hindustani" number 1,330. That is a 10 to 1 ratio. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Samples of OR, Synthesis
Please do not comment in this section; please do so in the section below.
Samples of OR etc |
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We have a page on Misplaced Pages Central Indo-Aryan languages. It is being referenced on this page to demonstrate that both Hindi and Urdu, Hindi-Urdu, and Hindustani are "Central Indo-Aryan Language." Here is how this page has been written:
Subject to subsequent revision, the following is the proposed list of eleven volumes for the Linguistic Survey of India.
|
Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:39, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
References
- Cite error: The named reference
books.google.co.uk
was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - Lelyveld, David (1993). "Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 35 (4): 665–682. doi:10.1017/S0010417500018661. JSTOR 179178.
- Coward, Harold (2003). Indian Critiques of Gandhi. SUNY Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-7914-5910-2.
Response to proposal (vote)
- Oppose. Fowler, again, you do not appear to know what a "language" is (as evidenced by your wildly irrelevant objections above), so none of these proposals or claims really make any sense. Your real argument, if I have correctly parsed it under all the irrelevant clutter, is that you don't approve of the name. That is not a POV or OR issue, but a matter of COMMONNAME, and you could propose it as such. Note however that the same language would be the topic of the article even if it were moved to "Hindi-Urdu". That is, you won't be able to censor the discussion just because the name of the article has changed -- it will still be about the common national language of India and Pakistan, whether we call it "Hindustani", "Hindi-Urdu", "Urdu-Hindi" or something else. Also, I might object to your Hindi-centric bias in calling the language "Hindi-Urdu" rather than the more historically correct "Urdu-Hindi". — kwami (talk) 19:23, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: Whether or not OR, SYNTHESIS, or POV-promotion will be done on the moved pages with Hindi-Urdu labels has no interest for me. But the term "Hindustani" cannot be used for the present-day use of Hindi-Urdu, which is mostly the constituents of the two languages that have a common base of grammar and phonology and are mutually comprehensible. No one has used Hindustani with that meaning since 1947, or the references are to books of the British period, or the references are so sparse as to be outliers. The Google scholar and other citations make it abundantly clear. Don't you think it is odd that Misplaced Pages has a page on "Hindustani grammar" which makes no reference to a book on "Hindustani grammar," only to Hindi grammars? No university in India, Pakistan, or the West, teaches a course on Hindustani-anything, only on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi, or Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:56, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- As for my bias, would you like to take me on real-time in understanding of Urdu, for example, its poetry? Would you like to read the poetry of contemporary poets of any literary merit, which after 1947 have all been from Pakistan, and among which are Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Munir Niazi, Nasir Kazmi, Ahmad Faraz, Iftikhar Arif, the great women poets Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Kishwar Naheed, Fehmida Riaz, Sara Shagufta, Parveen Shakir, the younger ones Ali Akbar Natiq or Harris Khalique? (Pinging @Saqib and Mar4d:) I have largely written the India page and also the History of Pakistan. No one has accused me of an anti-Urdu bias? 21:05, 11 January 2020 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:19, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: Whatever the merits of fowler's proposal, accusing him of Hindi-centric bias is not fair (and, given fowler's history, rather ironic). --regentspark (comment) 23:47, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- It was meant to be ironic, given that he's accused anyone using the term 'Hindustani' of Hindi bias. I didn't think he'd take it as an actual accusation, merely a comment that his preferred term could be as easily accused of bias as his dispreferred term. — kwami (talk) 02:37, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: Whatever the merits of fowler's proposal, accusing him of Hindi-centric bias is not fair (and, given fowler's history, rather ironic). --regentspark (comment) 23:47, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- As for my bias, would you like to take me on real-time in understanding of Urdu, for example, its poetry? Would you like to read the poetry of contemporary poets of any literary merit, which after 1947 have all been from Pakistan, and among which are Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Munir Niazi, Nasir Kazmi, Ahmad Faraz, Iftikhar Arif, the great women poets Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Kishwar Naheed, Fehmida Riaz, Sara Shagufta, Parveen Shakir, the younger ones Ali Akbar Natiq or Harris Khalique? (Pinging @Saqib and Mar4d:) I have largely written the India page and also the History of Pakistan. No one has accused me of an anti-Urdu bias? 21:05, 11 January 2020 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:19, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: Whether or not OR, SYNTHESIS, or POV-promotion will be done on the moved pages with Hindi-Urdu labels has no interest for me. But the term "Hindustani" cannot be used for the present-day use of Hindi-Urdu, which is mostly the constituents of the two languages that have a common base of grammar and phonology and are mutually comprehensible. No one has used Hindustani with that meaning since 1947, or the references are to books of the British period, or the references are so sparse as to be outliers. The Google scholar and other citations make it abundantly clear. Don't you think it is odd that Misplaced Pages has a page on "Hindustani grammar" which makes no reference to a book on "Hindustani grammar," only to Hindi grammars? No university in India, Pakistan, or the West, teaches a course on Hindustani-anything, only on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi, or Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:56, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose. My vote is about the package in toto, especially the sanctions on the redirects Hindustani XXX. This is a clear attempt to create a content fork to escape consensus, and to own the lemma "Hindustani" for a particular (and partially almost scientophobic) POV. I would agree to these page moves if a) the redirects Hindustani XXX remain untouched; b) "Hindustani" will remain as a common alternative name of "Hindi-Urdu" in the opening sentence (probably qualified as "obsolescent" – I know many will disagree with me here); c) the narrow concept of "Hindustani" as a past literary language remains part of the article, with due explanation that this is only one of two or more scholarly usages of the term "Hindustani". As an alternative to c), we could consider to turn "Hindustani language" into a dab, which points to "Hindi-Urdu" and to a new article "Literary Hindustani language" (or any other apt title), which latter should remain under constant community vetting by the participants of this discussion against unscientific POVs, such as Hindustani being a "mixed language", or not being a member of the Central (or Midland, depending on terminology) group of Indo-Aryan etc. –Austronesier (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: In the British period, Hindustani was not a literary language, but the second language after English that the British employed in governing India (the language of land records, of affidavits, ...). As such, it was taught in government schools in large areas of northern India and Pakistan until 1947. As David Lelyveld says in my quote above. The predecessors of the British, the Mughals had used Persian as the language of administration. Hindustani/Urdu had inherited most of the legal words from Persian, so changing from Persian to Urdu, in order to govern at the local level made sense for the British. Because of this, Hindustani became the lingua-franca of a large part of India. I would absolutely agree to (a). I would agree to (b) with the qualification that the second page in the dab woudl be Hindustani language in British India be added. I don't mind a dab page either. It could have Hindi-Urdu and Hindustani language in British India. (The use of British India is accurate as it would apply both to Company rule in India and the British Raj). The main point is that the term "Hindustani language" is not used for a living anything. No book, no article, is written today on Hindustani-anything unless it is a reference to the British Raj period. As I've already stated, no course is offered anywhere (in India, Pakistan, or the West) on the Hindustani language, Hindustani grammar, Hindustani orthography, only courses on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi/Urdu, Hindi or Urdu, which I have listed above. Just think about it. If a student wants to know something about Urdu grammar, they will be referenced on the Urdu page to Hindustani grammar. But that is a page that uses only Hindi sources! At least, when it will be moved to Hindi-Urdu grammar, a student will be less perplexed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:16, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- The fact that you would still say The main point is that term "Hindustani language" is not used for a living anything, after that claim has been debunked by others here, shows that you either are not listening or cannot grasp facts that contradict your personal Truth.
- I'd expect Hindutva editors to object to the word "Hindustani" for having an Urdu bias more than the other way around.
- As for readers being confused by the word "Hindustani" (has anyone ever complained that they don't know why they're here?), I just came across Schwitter (2002) Easy Hindi For The Tourist, where it says, "The contents of Phrase Book are printed in the colloquial form of the Hindustani language, the language of the masses of India, as spoken and understood almost in every part of the country." Similarly, from Bhatia & Koul (2005) Colloquial Urdu, "so similar are the spoken varieties of both languages that some refer to them as a single language, Hindustani. ... colloquial Urdu/Hindi generally considered as the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent."
- "Hindustani language" is indeed not a particularly common phrase, as it's normally phrased simply as "Hindustani". (For the same reason, "Hindi-Urdu language" is not a particularly common phrase either.) But it's hardly likely to cause confusion. E.g. Costanzo (2013) World Cinema through Global Genres says, "The movies from this part of the world are sometimes known as 'Hindi cinema' because most are made in Hindi, the Sanskrit-based version of the Hindustani language used in northwest India, although some expressions creep in from Urdu, the Persian-based version of Hindustani favored in Pakistan." Or, "Hindustani is that language which is generally used by people in North India for their daily conversation and social intercourse; and is the common base of Hindi and Urdu language." (Fatihpuri 2001 History of Pakistan movement and language controversy)
- I'm purposefully quoting non-linguistic sources here to demonstrate that the word "Hindustani" isn't confined just to linguistic usage. — kwami (talk) 03:36, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: A couple of days ago you were all making fun of me for quoting from Britannica. You were quoting me long passages from recondite linguistics journals. Well, let's stick to just that. Let us search in Linguistics or Language journals. The reason that I had used "Hindustani language" is that "Hindustani" can be applied to many things: to Hindustani classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, Pidgin Hindustani (spoken in Fiji), none of which are referenced in this article. If you are attempting to make the case that the term "Hindustani" is used for a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia independent of its use during the British Raj or the 19th century, or in classical music, or to the languages of the Caribbean or Fiji, then you have to do a binary search which rules out those variables. But that can be done. We can also restrict our search to sources in Linguistics and Language. In the last 20 years, i.e. since the year 2000, the Google Scholar search for: "Hindustani" -"Hindi-Urdu" -"Urdu-Hindi" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 65 references. A similar search for: "Hindi-Urdu" OR "Urdu-Hindi" -"Hindustani" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 747 references That is an 11 to 1 ratio in favor of "Hindi-Urdu" or "Urdu-Hindi" (over "Hindustani") for describing a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:18, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- The problem wasn't you referencing the EB, but taking it as an arbitrating authority. You claimed multiple times that "Hindustani" was not used to refer to the modern language, even after you'd been proved wrong. I proved you wrong yet again, and you decided my sources weren't valid so you wouldn't have to acknowledge my argument any more than you did the previous ones. Sorry, proofs aren't invalid just because you don't like them.
- If we're going to exclude "Hindi-Urdu" from the "Hindustani" search, then we should exclude "Hindi" and "Urdu" from the "Hindi-Urdu" search. That leave us with 0 hits. That's silly, of course (can I be sarcastic without you taking it literally?), but so is your search. The problem with it is that sources will often mention both terms, so excluding one of them will exclude many sources that use the term we're supposedly searching for. Raw numbers like these also don't tell us how a term is used, and says nothing about how current it is. If you use Ngram, you get entirely different results, though I'm not going to argue we should follow Ngram either. I suspect the problem isn't really the name we give the article, but all the spurious, unscientific stuff that you're pushing along with it. If it were really just an issue of 'Hindustani' vs 'Hindi-Urdu', then the argument would center on common usage, bias and such issues, not on repeatedly denying basic facts that can be verified in almost any RS. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: Why would you take out "Hindi" and "Urdu" from "Hindu-Urdu?" Any search for "Hindi" OR "Urdu" will also show up "Hindi-Urdu" My search results show that all things being equal the term "Hindi-Urdu" is preferred in modern journal articles in Linguistics to the term "Hindustani" by a ratio of 11 to 1. If you want to include "Hindi" and "Urdu" (which in a binary search will be the set union, i.e. "Hindi" OR "Urdu," then you have to search for: "Hindi" OR "Urdu" "Hindustani" -"Hindi-Urdu" vs. "Hindi" OR "Urdu" "Hindi-Urdu" -"Hindustani" Those results are even more skewed. There are 747 journal articles that use "Hindi-Urdu" AND "Hindi" OR "Urdu" minus the usual variables (classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, etc) There are 33 journal articles that use "Hindustani" AND "Hindi" OR "Urdu" minus the usual variables (classical music, Caribbean Hindustani etc. That as I had expected is even more skewed: a ratio of 23 to 1. There is absolutely no contest that in modern scholarly sources the term for the living language/vernacular/substrate, the mutually comprehensible component of the modern standards Hindi and Urdu, is "Hindi-Urdu," not "Hindustani." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC) PS You can see that in the sources used in the article Hindustani grammar. They are all to Hindi or Urdu. The only sources to "Hindustani" are in the following sections, both to the Raj-era books. Look I am aware that you guys have worked hard on the various Hindustani-related articles. I have no interest in changing the content of those articles, only the name. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:57, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami: A couple of days ago you were all making fun of me for quoting from Britannica. You were quoting me long passages from recondite linguistics journals. Well, let's stick to just that. Let us search in Linguistics or Language journals. The reason that I had used "Hindustani language" is that "Hindustani" can be applied to many things: to Hindustani classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, Pidgin Hindustani (spoken in Fiji), none of which are referenced in this article. If you are attempting to make the case that the term "Hindustani" is used for a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia independent of its use during the British Raj or the 19th century, or in classical music, or to the languages of the Caribbean or Fiji, then you have to do a binary search which rules out those variables. But that can be done. We can also restrict our search to sources in Linguistics and Language. In the last 20 years, i.e. since the year 2000, the Google Scholar search for: "Hindustani" -"Hindi-Urdu" -"Urdu-Hindi" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 65 references. A similar search for: "Hindi-Urdu" OR "Urdu-Hindi" -"Hindustani" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 747 references That is an 11 to 1 ratio in favor of "Hindi-Urdu" or "Urdu-Hindi" (over "Hindustani") for describing a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:18, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: In the British period, Hindustani was not a literary language, but the second language after English that the British employed in governing India (the language of land records, of affidavits, ...). As such, it was taught in government schools in large areas of northern India and Pakistan until 1947. As David Lelyveld says in my quote above. The predecessors of the British, the Mughals had used Persian as the language of administration. Hindustani/Urdu had inherited most of the legal words from Persian, so changing from Persian to Urdu, in order to govern at the local level made sense for the British. Because of this, Hindustani became the lingua-franca of a large part of India. I would absolutely agree to (a). I would agree to (b) with the qualification that the second page in the dab woudl be Hindustani language in British India be added. I don't mind a dab page either. It could have Hindi-Urdu and Hindustani language in British India. (The use of British India is accurate as it would apply both to Company rule in India and the British Raj). The main point is that the term "Hindustani language" is not used for a living anything. No book, no article, is written today on Hindustani-anything unless it is a reference to the British Raj period. As I've already stated, no course is offered anywhere (in India, Pakistan, or the West) on the Hindustani language, Hindustani grammar, Hindustani orthography, only courses on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi/Urdu, Hindi or Urdu, which I have listed above. Just think about it. If a student wants to know something about Urdu grammar, they will be referenced on the Urdu page to Hindustani grammar. But that is a page that uses only Hindi sources! At least, when it will be moved to Hindi-Urdu grammar, a student will be less perplexed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:16, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose: Firstly, the arguments given for the proposal are typically appeal to ignorance. As for the 6(a) point, I think that Hindustani language in British India can be easily subsumed under Hindustani language#History (which currently is full of off-topic content on Mughals and Persian). As for the insist by Fowler&fowler that we should be leaving some version of Fowler&fowler's on lead of this WP, the major problems in doing so has been discussed already in our prior discussions which I am again summarizing here:
- What Hindustani is not:
- 1. Hindustani is not a mixed language (see: Talk: Hindustani language#A "mixed" language?).
- 2. Hindustani is not a historical/dead language. It can only be regarded as an historical term under British Raj. (see: Schmidt, "Urdu" where it is mentioned "Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora").
- 3. Hindustani is not the language of Muslim conquerors. (see: Talk:Hindustani language#Disputable definition of Hindustani: A language of "Muslim Conquerors"? where I have already pointed out prominent writers being critical of the OED definition. Muslims from Central Asia came around 12th-13th century and described the native language spoken as Hindu-i, Hindavi, Dehalvi, while the popular literary languages of that era were Braj & Awadhi. Hindustani is almost never used to describe the language until British popularized the term. By this time, Urdu and Hindi, as separate literary traditions, had already started to diverge but Brtish rightly recognized the common base of both language and thus clubbed them as Hindustani which was allowed to be written in both Perso-Arabic and Devanagari. During independence movement, Hindustani had come to mean a neutral language that was as Cardona in E.Britannica describes "This search has its origin in national and Hindu movements of the 19th century down to the time of Mahatma Gandhi, who promoted the use of a simplified Hindi–Urdu, called Hindustani." After independence, Hindustani was reported as mother tongue as late as 1971 as per Masica (Appendix I) ).
- What Hindustani is:
- 4. In modern context, Hindustani is the colloquial base of Hindi and Urdu. Thus, it is de-Sanskritized Hindi and de-Persianized Urdu. (see: Masica (Appendix I))
- 5. Under Birtish Raj, Hindustani could be identified to mean both Hindi(that used Devanagari) & Urdu(that used Perso-Arabic) (see under "Urdu" by Schmidt in Cardona&Jain eds.(2003): "In the early 1800s, the British chose the Khari-Bolī lingua franca, which they called Hindustani, as their medium for administration, and sponsored the composition of Hindustani prose texts in both the Persian and Dēvanāgarī scripts.") Hindustani was written in Devanagari as well as Persian script.
- 6.Unofficially, a fully functioning language that serves as lingua franca since the times of British Raj.
- 7. A Central Indo-Aryan language/Western Hindi language. (This is not disputable at all!) - Sattvic7 (talk) 06:55, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Sattvic7: The modern scholarly sources (by an overwhelming margin) prefer "Hindi-Urdu" to "Hindustani" for the colloquial base of Hindi and Urdu, for the "Central Indo-Aryan language" of your characterization. All the courses offered in universities in the US, Britain, and India prefer "Hindi-Urdu" to "Hindustani" by an even bigger margin. The proposal now is simply what is displayed at the bottom of the proposal section, or in my reply to Gotitbro below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:25, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- Wouldn't comment on the renaming of the ancillary articles but the initial suggestion that the languages shouldn't be considered as one based on the reading ability of scripts or understanding high literary traditions in a register appear spurious as evidenced by this proposal itself. Gotitbro (talk) 11:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Gotitbro: A lot of things were said initially. I apologize for my intemperate language. It has taken me time to clarify the issues. The proposal now is simply:
- Hindustani language would be a dab page with two entries:
- a) Hindi-Urdu (undirected now to Hindustani language) and
- b) Hindustani language in British India
- The other Hindustani-related articles would be moved to Hindi-Urdu-related articles. The evidence for the usage is overwhelming. In some ways, it is similar to "Indology" and "South Asian Studies." 70 years ago, the former was preferred; now it is the latter. All university departments are called "Department of South Asian Studies," not "Department of Indology." It is similar to "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia." Increasingly, the latter is the preferred term, except in Geophysics. In other words, these articles on Misplaced Pages are using obsolete terms. There are no courses taught anywhere on "Hindustani." But there are dozens taught on "Hindi-Urdu" in the universities in the US, Britian and India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- I would not object if all the Hindustani sub-articles were moved to Hindi-Urdu sub-articles (if there is consensus to do so), but if that occurred, this article would also have to be moved to Hindi-Urdu for consistency. I do object to a dab page because the primary topic is Hindi-Urdu/Hindustani. An overwhelming majority of sources today refer to the language as such, e.g. Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 18:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
- The other Hindustani-related articles would be moved to Hindi-Urdu-related articles. The evidence for the usage is overwhelming. In some ways, it is similar to "Indology" and "South Asian Studies." 70 years ago, the former was preferred; now it is the latter. All university departments are called "Department of South Asian Studies," not "Department of Indology." It is similar to "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia." Increasingly, the latter is the preferred term, except in Geophysics. In other words, these articles on Misplaced Pages are using obsolete terms. There are no courses taught anywhere on "Hindustani." But there are dozens taught on "Hindi-Urdu" in the universities in the US, Britian and India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose this as well. As others have noted, the language is the primary topic of Hindustani, not the music or the food. Making this page a dab would just be POV-pushing, and whatever the time period, it's the same language. The standard may have changed, but that's an issue for the history section, and can be split off from their if the section gets too long. If we make this a dab, then Hindi and Urdu would need to be dabs as well, as Urdu is just as ambiguous, and Hindi even more so. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Are the tags still needed?
Do the tags at the top of the page still serve any purpose? Besides silly (and repeatedly debunked) claims like this language is dead or doesn't exist, they all seem to center around the name of the article, which is another matter, or about the accuracy of the map, which is not a problem with the entire article. Besides the name, there seems to be an issue with Fowler not understanding the difference between MSH and the Hindi belt, so he doesn't understand why Hindustani (the basis of MSH) would cover a smaller area of the map than the Hindi Belt, which under some definitions includes Rajasthani and Bihari, which are "Hindi" but not Hindustani. But regardless, that's not an issue with the entire article. — kwami (talk) 20:02, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
- Remove the tags immediately and unconditionally. Virtually all issues are based on erroneous assumptions which were clarified with citations from reliable sources in the ensuing discussion. What remains, is the contestation that "Hindustani" is not the appropriate label form the language covered in this article and its size-splits ("Hindustani grammar", "Hindustani phonology" etc.), and should be moved to "Hindi-Urdu". I suggest a clean start with a new page move discussion, provided that the tags disappear, and that all participants agree that any disruptive behavior—including insults which have flavored the previous discussion—immediately go to WP:ANI. –Austronesier (talk) 20:23, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
- Fogstar: maybe, Hindustani can a old version of Urdu, but it belongs to Western Hindi.
A New Proposal
I made an error. I began to think that this page was "Hindustani" and not "Hindustani language". My new proposal considers both.
For the "Hindustani language," the title of this page, the modern (i.e. 21st century) usage is overwhelmingly a reference to the 19th-century or early-20th-century language of the Colonial British Raj or the version proposed by Gandhi, Nehru, and some Indian nationalists before 1947:
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 513 references to "Hindustani language".
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 75 references for "Hindustani language" that do not refer to the Colonial British Raj or to Gandhi and Indian Nationalism of pre-1947 era
- Finally in Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 513 references to "Hindustani language"
- And, in Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 138 references to "Hindustani language" and "Hindi-Urdu"
For "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (not necessarily with "language"):
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 11,900 references to "Hindi-Urdu"]
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 10,200 references to "Hindi-Urdu" that do not refer to "Hindustani"
- Therefore, as is to be expected, there are 1,700 references to both "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (the context of this page)
Among journals in Linguistics:
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Linguistics, there are: 526 references to "Hindi-Urdu"
- In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Linguistics, there are: 486 references to "Hindi-Urdu" that do not refer to "Hindustani".
- Therefore, as is to be expected: In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Lingustics, there are 40 references to both "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (This the context of this page.)
My new proposal, based on the statistics above displaying ratios of between 7 to one and 13 to one, is:
It is proposed that
- 1. Hindustani language be either (i) restricted in content entirely to the period from 1800 to 1947, or (ii) be redirected to a page Hindustani language (1800–1947); with the following "For" template up top: For the Central Indo-Aryan language with standard registers Hindi and Urdu, see Hindi-Urdu.
- The date 1800 is a reference to the founding of Fort William College in 1800, which led and the first British efforts at standardizing the "Hindustani language," based on the work of John Borthwick Gilchrist's A Grammar, of the Hindoostanee Language, Or Part Third of Volume First, of a ... 1796
- 2. Hindi-Urdu, no longer be redirected to Hindustani language, be instead about the Central Indo-Aryan Language whose standard registers are Hindi and Urdu.
- The following pages be moved:
- 3. Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar
- 4. Hindustani phonology to Hindi-Urdu phonology
- 5. Hindustani orthography to Hindi-Urdu orthography (Please note the difference between the Misplaced Pages page Hindustani orthography, which is a rudimentary list of the writing systems of Hindi, Urdu, Romanized Hindi-Urdu, and Hind-Urdu for Braille, and the orthography described in a typical book on Hindustani (Hindustani manual by Phillott, D. C. (Douglas Craven), 1860-1930. Publication date 1918) published during the Raj: see the introduction to the orthography here and the more detailed in Appendix D and E here.)
- 6. Hindustani etymology to Hindi-Urdu etymology
- 7. Hindustani people to Speakers of Hindi-Urdu
- 8. Hindustani kinship terms to Hindi-Urdu kinship terms
I will soon be writing an RfC, and advertising in the Wikiprojects: India, Pakistan, Linguistics, British Empire, and History Until the RfC comes to some conclusion, I recommend that the tags currently in the article remain. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:44, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS. The current trend in voting is of little meaning, as the two editors who have been pinged are the creators of all these pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:50, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
- I believe that some confusion will be avoided if Hindustani grammar and the other subsidiary articles are renamed to have titles with "Hindi–Urdu". However, I really don't see the case for splitting the main article as proposed. The Hindustani before 1947 is not a different entity from the Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu after 1947. Anything special that can be said about its role during the Raj can trivially fit into the "History" section of the general article. – Uanfala (talk) 00:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- I have now renumbered the proposal points. The main point is that today "Hindustani language" is used for nothing (statistically) other than the language in the Raj. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- PPS It is also of paramount importance that editors from WikiProject Pakistan (who are Urdu-literate) take part in the RfC, and the editors at WikiProject British Empire as well. Otherwise, there is a real danger that a POV about the use of "Hindustani languahge" currently prevalent in India, and linked to the drastic reduction of Urdu-literacy there, will prevail on this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- I have now renumbered the proposal points. The main point is that today "Hindustani language" is used for nothing (statistically) other than the language in the Raj. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- Partially agree. (N.B. The "current trend of voting" should not be discounted as "of little meaning" just because it reflects a differing opinion.)
- -Agree to points 2-8. Extend to History of Hindustani → History of Hindi-Urdu. The current section Hindustani language#History should be then merged in History of Hindi-Urdu; currently the content is badly forked.
- -Oppose point 1. The concept Hindustani language (1800–1947) can be covered in History of Hindi-Urdu. The move from Hindustani language to Hindi-Urdu shall suffice.
- To distinguish between "Hindustani" and "Hindustani language" in the current context is spurious. The fact that Hindustani has no official status does not deprive it of its status as a language. To deny a lect the designation "language" only because it has no official status is an obsolete, elitist and discriminatory POV, which was pointedly characterized by Max Weinreich's bonmot "A language is a dialect with an army and navy".
- Numerous modern sources still refer to the vernacular spoken by hundreds of millions of speakers as Hindustani, first of all the Encyclopædia Britannica in the article "Hindustani", but also many other sources listed in the discussion above. Another broad tertiary 21th century source not yet cited here is H. Dua's chapter "Hindustani" in the Concise Encyclopaedia of Languages of the World, which fully covers the complexity of the term "Hindustani". Both Ethnologue and Glottolog use "Hindustani" as an umbrella term that includes Hindi and Urdu. EB, Elsevier, Ethnologue, Glottolog can hardly be accused of being agents of a "POV currently prevalent in India".
- What Fowler&fowler's quantitative listing correctly shows: the usage of the term "Hindustani" is declining, being increasingly replaced by "Hindu-Urdu". Masica (1991), quoted several times before, speaks of "(Standard) Hindi-Urdu". Further examples for the modern use of "Hindi-Urdu" each in a broad tertiary source and in a linguistic specialist source are the chapter "Hindu-Urdu" in The World's Major Languages (Comrie 2009) and the book Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia; in the latter, the author refers to the contemporary language as "Hindi-Urdu" when citing examples from that language.
- Apart from in its declining currency in scholarly usage, the term "Hindustani" is fact not recognized by many non-specialists as a possible synonym for contemporary "Hindi-Urdu". Further, only a very small fraction of native speakers of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani self-identify as speakers of "Hindustani". A page move (without POV-forking) will definitely be to the benefit of our readers. What may be counted as anecdotal evidence: in 1980, Ralph Russell (long-time head of the Urdu deparment at SOAS) published course material entitled A New Course in Hindustani for Learners in Britain, but soon renamed it A New Course in Urdu and Spoken Hindi for Learners in Britain for newer editions since 1986. I can only speculate about the motive at the moment, but most likely, potential students were more attracted to a course that mentions the well-known variants Urdu and Hindi, rather than the less known "Hindustani". –Austronesier (talk) 12:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- That is a very good example of the late Ralph Russell's book title! It is supported less directly by all the scholars and educationsts of Urdu, who have to my knowledge never offered a course on Hindustani: Gopi Chand Narang (at the University of Delhi); the late Masud Husain Khan (at the Aligharh Muslim University and Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi); C. M. Naim (at the University of Chicago), the late Muhammad Umar Memon (at Wisconsin), Frances Pritchett (at Columbia), the late Annemarie Schimmel (at Harvard), Ruth Laila Schmidt (at the University of Oslo, and author of Essential Urdu Grammar, Routledge; the late Victor Kiernan (historian at Ediburgh, and early translator of the poetry of Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz; all the courses taught at the major centers for Urdu in Sou
- Thank you for your clear and cogent discussion of proposal points 2. to 8. I entirely agree with them. However, I have to disagree with your point about 1, about making Hindustani a section of Hindi-Urdu. It is belied by the statistics. The references to Hindi-Urdu are overwhelmingly not to Hindustani language as shown above; however the references to "Hindustani language" are by ratio of 4 to 1 not to Hindi-Urdu (which I have added later). Clearly, therefore Hindustani language cannot be a part of Hindi-Urdu. To be more explicit, in the 21st-century, in Google Scholar there are 513 references to "Hindustani language," indicating it is still has a wide currency of reference, but only 138 of these have references to Hindi-Urdu. Whichever way you cut the pie, Hindustani language has a specific independent meaning, referring to the language standardized by the British during the period 1800 to 1947, and promoted in the last period by Indian nationalists. To make it a part of Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:DUE. As for Britannica, I wasn't aware at the time when I made my initial proposal, but was told by a reliable source at the University of Chicago, which for a long perio d in the second-half of the 20th centurty oversaw the entries in Britannica, that the last major revision was in 1979. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS What you say about declining usage of "Hindustani language" is partially true. It is very true for journals in Linguisitics and Languages. For out of 513 modern references to "Hindustani language" only 44 are in these Linguistics/Languages journals, which means that the remaining 469 references are in journals in History, Asian Studies, etc most referring to the Raj Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you for your clear and cogent discussion of proposal points 2. to 8. I entirely agree with them. However, I have to disagree with your point about 1, about making Hindustani a section of Hindi-Urdu. It is belied by the statistics. The references to Hindi-Urdu are overwhelmingly not to Hindustani language as shown above; however the references to "Hindustani language" are by ratio of 4 to 1 not to Hindi-Urdu (which I have added later). Clearly, therefore Hindustani language cannot be a part of Hindi-Urdu. To be more explicit, in the 21st-century, in Google Scholar there are 513 references to "Hindustani language," indicating it is still has a wide currency of reference, but only 138 of these have references to Hindi-Urdu. Whichever way you cut the pie, Hindustani language has a specific independent meaning, referring to the language standardized by the British during the period 1800 to 1947, and promoted in the last period by Indian nationalists. To make it a part of Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:DUE. As for Britannica, I wasn't aware at the time when I made my initial proposal, but was told by a reliable source at the University of Chicago, which for a long perio d in the second-half of the 20th centurty oversaw the entries in Britannica, that the last major revision was in 1979. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
References
- Dua, Hans (2009). "Hindustani". In Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.). Concise Encyclopaedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 497–550.
- Kachru, Yamuna (2009). "Hindi-Urdu". In Comrie, Bernard (ed.). The World's Major Languages (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 399–416.
- Southworth, Franklin C. (2005). Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia. London: Routledge.
- @Fowler&fowler: The "historical" Hindustani language (1800–1947) is part of the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani continuum and can therefore be covered as a sub-topic in the History of Hindi-Urdu. I am quite aware that the term "Hindi-Urdu" in the modern sense only gained prevalence with the emergence of Urdu as national language of Pakistan and Hindi as official language of India, whereas propagation of a standardized, official form of Hindustani ended with the partition. Yet, the History of Hindi-Urdu does not start with emergence of the term "Hindi-Urdu"; it is the entire history of the entity variously called "Hindustani" and "Hindi-Urdu", which also inlcudes the topic of the Hindustani language (1800–1947). I recommend to re-read the above-cited quotes from Tariq Rahman's book From Hindi to Urdu in this context. –Austronesier (talk) 16:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- The primary usage of the term Hindustani language is a synonym for Hindi-Urdu, which has two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu. It is for this reason that an academic institution such as the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon offers a class on Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu. The creation of an article about Hindustani apart from Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:CFORK. Any history about the language in colonial India can be added to the History of Hindi-Urdu article. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we are in agreement here, User:Austronesier. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 17:38, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: Among 21st-century sources 5,420 references are found to "Hindustani""language" and "history" which are not references to music or other variables that we have discounted above Of these, 596 are also references to "Hindi-Urdu"; In other words, the usage "Hindustani" and "history" are only infrequently, in the ratio 1 to 9, correlated with "Hindi-Urdu". I only today became aware of the History of Hindustani page. It is a can of worms, unrelated to statistics of usage, that I do not want to open. It should be moved to History of Hindi-Urdu, but Hindustani language has nothing to do with it, as its history mentions Hindi-Urdu only once in nine times. If the editors of the new History of Hindi-Urdu want to make a small section on the Hindustani language, it is there prerogative, but it will have to have a banner up top, Main article: Hindustani language. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:57, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- The primary usage of the term Hindustani language is a synonym for Hindi-Urdu, which has two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu. It is for this reason that an academic institution such as the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon offers a class on Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu. The creation of an article about Hindustani apart from Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:CFORK. Any history about the language in colonial India can be added to the History of Hindi-Urdu article. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we are in agreement here, User:Austronesier. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 17:38, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose. Another proposed content fork over the definition of the word "language". The change in name is secondary in the proposal to a continuing attempt to deny the nature of the language. The language is still often called "Hindustani" today, as repeatedly shown above. It's also called Hindi-Urdu and Urdu-Hindi. Two of the advantages of the name Hindustani is that (a) it doesn't give one standard form primacy over the other, and (b) it doesn't conflate so badly with the name 'Hindi', which can mean much more than the Manak Hindi that's the 'Hindi' part of Hindi-Urdu. This can confuse people, as Fowler's confusion with the map attests. The fact that Fowler wants to move Hindustani to Hindi-Urdu, but in the history section add a hat note 'Main article: Hindustani language', demonstrates that confusion, as does their continued insistence that 'Hindustani language cannot be a part of Hindi-Urdu.' So even if we did change the name, we wouldn't satisfy them, and AFAICT the only reason to move the articles would be to placate Fowler. IMO, that's not sufficient reason to do it. — kwami (talk) 09:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- Re. the spurious Google Scholar searches, I just checked one. True, "there are 75 references for 'Hindustani language' that do not refer to the Colonial British Raj or to Gandhi and Indian Nationalism of pre-1947 era". But you shouldn't have stopped there. There are only 52 references for 'Hindi-Urdu language' that do the same. So 'Hindustani' is more common than 'Hindi-Urdu' in the one search I checked. Are those search parameters now invalid because they produce the wrong results? (If you take out the word 'language', the numbers jump to 5,570 and 4,990 -- 'Hindustani' still wins.) — kwami (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- @kwami: My vote for "Hindi-Urdu" over "Hindustani" is triggered by Fowler's proposal, but not solely based on that. I have mentioned some non-statistics-derived reasons for it. But the page moves are of lesser priority. Much more important is to keep up the integrity of the current structure of articles against POV-forking; here, I am in full agreement with Anupam and you. –Austronesier (talk) 11:43, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami:
- I have said nowhere that either Hindustani or Hindustani language should be moved to Hindi-Urdu, only the ancilliary articles on grammar etc, as they are quite disconnected both in scope and depth from the great British grammars and dictionaries of Hindustani I have listed above. I have said only that Hindustani language should either be an independent article with scope only the period 1800 to 1947, or it should be redirected to a page Hindustani language (1800–1947).
- You have interpreted your results incorrectly. The pages we are debating about are Hindustani language and Hindi-Urdu, not "Hindustani language" and "Hindi-Urdu language"; the latter is not a common expression. The total number of 21-century references in Google scholar to "Hindi-Urdu language" are 167. There are other ways to compare the terms. You can compare "Hindi-Urdu" all of whose references are to language with "Hindustani" (with the term normalized for references to music (as in Hindustani classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, ...) which I have done above. Look, as Austronesier has acknowledged the modern term for the common base of Hindi and Urdu is "Hindi-Urdu" not "Hindustani." Please do not use words such as "spurious."
- As for the tags, please note that this page has not changed one whit in content since they were added. The page continues to have a section on Sample Texts which is entirely original research. The first sentence of the UN Human Rights charter in formal high Hindi/Urdu is translitered into Urdu/Hindi respectively. However, the authors have forgotten to add the pronunciation (the "talaffuz" in Urdu of the Hindi) which would show the limitations of what these transliterations can accomplish. How many Hindi speakers in India will be able to pronounce the Urdu consonants: غ (ghain) and ق (qāf)? One in five? How many will be able to pronounce خ khe and ژ zhe? One in ten? And how many will be able to correctly pronounce ث se and ص su'ād in Arabic words in Urdu? One in twenty?) So what is the point of saying that the same text in one language can be written in the other which one can do in any language using a mechanical translator and by using diacritics? Until you are able to fix that section, and add some sources for that section, please leave the OR tag in. Meanwhile I will describe other issues in the article—unrelated to naming and periodization—which necessitated adding the tags. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Austronesier: What is that sense of integrity that trumps usage. E.g. Anyone can see that references to Hindustani grammar are almost entirely to those of the Raj years. However, references to "Hindi-Urdu grammar"—the few that there are (as today most books either discuss Hindi grammar or Urdu grammar—are more akin to the grammar section of this page.
- Finally, there is a deeper POV at the root of this notion of Hindustani. I am not saying that the authors of this page subscribe to it, but it is linked to what Syed Shabuddin has called the "slow linguistic genocide" of Urdu in India. See his article Status of Urdu in India: Based on Analysis of the Language Census, 2001; Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 1, December 20, 2008. In particular note his chilling conclusion:
It is my contention that the redefinition of Hindustani with these new meanings and claims is a POV of denial of this linguistic genocide, so the increase in Urdu-illiteracy can be countered by citing no decrease in Hindustani literacy. The children of the Urdu-literate who cannot read Urdu, will still be able to read the redefined Hindustani in the Hindi or Roman script. That is why, as I've already stated, it is of supreme importance that Wikiproject Pakistan, History, and British Empire, as well as Linguistics should be sounded out about the forthcoming RfC. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family. Thus, Urdu faces the prospect of becoming an ethnic language as far as Hindi-speaking States are concerned. Soon it will be limited to those whose parents take special pains to teach Urdu by sending them to local Maktabs and Madrasas or by arranging private tuition at home. One does not know whether and how long Urdu in north India can stand this steady erosion and multi-pronged encroachment. Urdu may soon become extinct in the region of its birth, while it continues to expand horizontally, in all its glory beyond its borders and even across continents and oceans.
- I'm not sure what you mean when you state that Hindi speakers are not able to pronounce certain sounds in loanwords from Persian or Arabic. Most educated Hindi speakers know how to prounounce the words properly, as evidenced by watching any news anchor or watching any Hindi movie. Listen to a recent song, such as Tum Hi Aana and look at the lyrics. The Hindi-Urdu word gham (sadness) for example, is written as ग़म in Devanagari and غم in Nastaleeq. Do you think that Jubin Nautiyal is misprouncing the words when he sings the song? You also mentioned ख़ / خ. Load the first few seconds of this sample from the news: "आज की ताज़ा ख़बर Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar (آج کی تازہ خبر)". Do you still think that educated Hindi speakers do not use these words or know how to pronounce them? If so, I think you need to reevaluate your opinion. Anupam 19:58, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Kwamikagami:
- @kwami: My vote for "Hindi-Urdu" over "Hindustani" is triggered by Fowler's proposal, but not solely based on that. I have mentioned some non-statistics-derived reasons for it. But the page moves are of lesser priority. Much more important is to keep up the integrity of the current structure of articles against POV-forking; here, I am in full agreement with Anupam and you. –Austronesier (talk) 11:43, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- Re. the spurious Google Scholar searches, I just checked one. True, "there are 75 references for 'Hindustani language' that do not refer to the Colonial British Raj or to Gandhi and Indian Nationalism of pre-1947 era". But you shouldn't have stopped there. There are only 52 references for 'Hindi-Urdu language' that do the same. So 'Hindustani' is more common than 'Hindi-Urdu' in the one search I checked. Are those search parameters now invalid because they produce the wrong results? (If you take out the word 'language', the numbers jump to 5,570 and 4,990 -- 'Hindustani' still wins.) — kwami (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@Anupam: Thanks for you examples, which I have not examined. I do not need to. Syed Shahabuddin in his seminal article has already stated:
Slow Linguistic Genocide: THE impact of this process of assimilation is increasingly perceptible as the Urdu-speaking population in the post-independence period moves from the second to the third or the fourth generation in Hindi-speaking areas. The denial of facilities for learning Urdu in schools could not deprive the second generation from learning to speak the language at home. This generation was not able to read or write Urdu but even then while writing in Devanagri script, it used Urdu vocabulary, which it had learnt at home and in social intercourse (and perhaps through the film). But, steadily, because the dots have been given up in Devanagri script and azadi is written as ‘ajadi’, to give an example, it has lost the capacity to pronounce Urdu words correctly. In the third generation, one notices a clear setback. This generation has lost its command of basic Urdu vocabulary and has become largely dependent on the language it learns at school.
If the new generation from the Urdu-speaking cross-section of India's population were unable to pronounce these words 20 years ago, then what does the example of one or two Bollywood singers with plenty coaching in altering their accents accomplish? Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you for the reply User:Fowler&fowler, though I would encourage you to look at the examples I provided. As you do not have an Indo-Pakistani background and have not travelled to these countries (I have been to both many times), you may not be aware of how the language is spoken practically. In India, if you visit Delhi or Lucknow, no educated Hindi speaker will prounounce azadi (आज़ादी / آزادی) as ajadi (आजादी / آجادی), though when writing the word, typists may omit the nuqta for convenience sake as it is understood (similarly, most typists omit vowel markers in Urdu; for example, خُدا is written as خدا). Indeed, in Language and Society in South Asia, published by Motilal Banarsidass, Michael C. Shapiro and Harold F. Schiffman note:
The pronunciation of many speakers includes a number of consanants that are not part of the indigenous systems, and which have been introduced into the language through the absoption of Persian and Arabic loan words. The presence or absence of thee consanants is seldom categorial within a community, and tends to be correlated with the degree of education, sex, and social background of the speaker.
- You admit that some Bollywood singers may have had coaching; that only corroborates my point that there is a proper way to pronounce certain words in Hindi/Urdu (by the way, this is not an issue of accent, as you have incorrectly noted). Now, rural speakers or speakers of Hindi as a second language may mispronounce these consonants and no one is disputing that. With respect to Urdu, these phoenomes are not always maintained either; Mangat Bhardwaj notes in Panjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar (published by Routledge) that "Almost all Panjabi speakers (and many Urdu speakers as well) pronounce the first two of these words with instead of " in reference to the words taqriban and haqiqtan. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 02:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Anupam: Thanks for your post. The diacritics (zabar, zer, pesh, sukoon, and even tashdeed or those of izafat) are added for children or disambiguation. However, a nuqta is an entirely different thing. In the old days if you had not added the nuqta correctly, the Ustad would have smacked you with the takhti so hard that your back would have ached for days. The dropping the dot in the z sound in Hindi is the equivalent of dropping the nuqta in Urdu, Persian, or Arabic. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:49, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
- @Fowler&fowler: It is simply grotesque to see that a long-standing definition of the term Hindustani employed by scholars from Sir George A. Grierson to Dr. Tariq Rahman is linked to these developments. Your source does not make such a connection. –Austronesier (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- FYI - WikiProject Linguistics is informed about this. That's the very reason why I'm here. –Austronesier (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@Austronesier: I respect your clear posts.
- However, this announement in WT:Lingustics, about which we were never told, is not exactly POV, nor the process in consonance with WP rules. In contrast, I pinged only administrators on this page to head off edit-warring.
- Greirson is a primary source. It it is an effort of the Raj years. We are talking about modern linguistics.
- As for Tariq Rahman's doctorate. It is in Pakistani English Literature. Tariq Rahman has has been teaching English for most of his career. Is Rehman supposed to trump:
- C.M. Naim at Chicago, the author of major textbooks in Urdu and the founder of the two major journals in Urdu? Where in Naim, C. M. (2004), Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim, Orient Blackswan, pp. 121–, ISBN 978-81-7824-075-6 is the only reference to "Hindustani" if it is not to the Raj?
- the late Annemarie Schimmel at Harvard, whose short biography says, "Alongside her Islamic “tripos” in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish under Hans Ellenberg, Richard Hartmann, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, and Annemarie von Gabain, Schimmel also studied Urdu, then called Hindustani, with Tarachand Roy at Berlin University,"
- Or the late Ralph Russell, who, by your own information, changed the name of his textbook from Hindustani to Urdu.
- Look, we can all cherry-pick information. But it is abundantly clear that the overwhelming references to "Hindustani" in the modern scholarly literature is to the British-promoted language of the period 1800 to 1947. The even more overwhelming referenes to "Hindustani grammar," Or "Hindustani phonology" or "Hindustani orthography" are all to the Raj period, whose great grammars and dictionaries I have listed above. I have proposed the move:
- Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar, not because the latter term encapsulates the former, but because the page as it exists is only about the latter term. I feel, the great grammars of the British period can be discussed adequately in the Hindustani language once it is disabused of interpretations not commonly found in the literature.
- As for the decline of Urdu, Shahabuddin is not the only one. Barbara D. Metcalf, (in Metcalf, Barbara D. "Urdu in India in the 21st Century: A Historian's Perspective." Social Scientist 31, no. 5/6 (2003): 29-37. Accessed January 15, 2020. doi:10.2307/3518032.), says
"Concern about the condition of Urdu in India is widespread. Urdu illiteracy has increased without question. In both Delhi and Hyderabad, for example, a few years back, I found that libraries with Urdu holdings might have no librarian able to read the script. There is a shortage of teachers able to teach Urdu adequately."
- I respect your posts here for their clarity and cogency. Why you would want to move Hindustani language to Hindi-Urdu in light of what you have previously argued is perplexing and not supported by the arguments. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:16, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS Finally, I note that both Shahabuddin and Metcalf's articles were written around the turn of the century, reporting information from the census of 2001. Next year there will be another census. The horror that its numbers will unfold about Urdu illiteracy is anybody's guess. For us, however, it is very important to take note that in India in many newspaper- and other popular accounts, a redefinition of Urdu, called Hindustani, with a lexicon of Hindi lightly sprinkled with the simple Urdu of Bollywood lyricists, and written in Roman letters, constitutes the new effort to reclaim Urdu and to deny its precipitous decline. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- Fowler, you continue to confuse the name with the thing. WP is not a dictionary. This article is about the *language* that Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu are registers of. Period. It's amazing that we need to repeat such a basic fact over and over. What we *call* this article may be debated, but its subject is set. You can continue denying that, but you're just spinning your wheels and wasting everyone's time, including your own. You can write another article on a different topic, if you like, but denying that Hindi/Urdu exists is ridiculous. — kwami (talk) 08:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- Please don't misquote me. I have not denied that Hindi-Urdu exists, only that Hindi-Urdu is not Hindustani. The usage is clear. Hindi-Urdu is about the "language," the mutually comprehensible substrate of Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani is about the version of Urdu, mostly prose, promoted by the British in India during the period 1800 to 1947, and in the last quarter-century of which to a rudimentary version promoted by Indian nationalists. It was in the realm of that Hindustani that the great British grammars and usage guides were written. So good were those guides that the great modern poets of the Urdu language such as the late Fahmida Riaz had used them to them by their own acknowledgment. It was in aid of that later Hindustani that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in mid-life, learned how to write in the Perso-Arabic script, that Subhas Chandra Bose chose Qadam Qadam Badaye Ja () to be the anthem of his Indian National Army, and "Ittehad, Itmad aur Qurbani" its motto. It is to that "Hindustani," that the modern scholar of Urdu, C. M. Naim, Naim, C. M. (2004), Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim, Orient Blackswan, pp. 122–, ISBN 978-81-7824-075-6 attributes the efforts of John Borthwick Gilchrist and Fort William College. It is this "Hindustani" that Tariq Rahman refers to in his Teaching of Urdu in British India. That is why Hindustani language has to be moved to Hindustani language in British India or Hindustani language (1800–1947). My preference is to the former, as it clearly acknowledges, and thereby limits, the usage to the British years. I am pretty sure what I am talking about. I have consulted the scholars. I have the usage numbers on my side. It will borne out in the RfC when editors from WikiProjects India Pakistan, History, and British Empire take part. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:44, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- Fowler, you continue to confuse the name with the thing. WP is not a dictionary. This article is about the *language* that Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu are registers of. Period. It's amazing that we need to repeat such a basic fact over and over. What we *call* this article may be debated, but its subject is set. You can continue denying that, but you're just spinning your wheels and wasting everyone's time, including your own. You can write another article on a different topic, if you like, but denying that Hindi/Urdu exists is ridiculous. — kwami (talk) 08:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- PS Finally, I note that both Shahabuddin and Metcalf's articles were written around the turn of the century, reporting information from the census of 2001. Next year there will be another census. The horror that its numbers will unfold about Urdu illiteracy is anybody's guess. For us, however, it is very important to take note that in India in many newspaper- and other popular accounts, a redefinition of Urdu, called Hindustani, with a lexicon of Hindi lightly sprinkled with the simple Urdu of Bollywood lyricists, and written in Roman letters, constitutes the new effort to reclaim Urdu and to deny its precipitous decline. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
"Hindustani is about the version of Urdu" -- no, that is one definition of the word 'Hindustani', one of several, as has been pointed out to you over and over again. You're engaged in POV-pushing and I didn't hear that. Unless you're willing to acknowledge that your Truth isn't the only 'truth', this discussion appears to be a waste of time.
"That is why Hindustani language has to be moved to Hindustani language in British India ..." -- but this article is about regular old Hindi/Urdu Hindustani, as the lead clearly states. What you're proposing is that we intentionally misrepresent the language, and claim that the lingua franca of India and Pakistan, the language of Bollywood, was restricted to the British Raj. That's not a serious proposal. — kwami (talk) 03:40, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: There is no contradiction between my strong rejection of your claim that the term Hindustani exclusively refers to the limited entity "Hindustani language (1800–1947)" (which you maintain in spite of all the above-mentioned post-independence sources which range well into the 21th centrury), and my reservations whether "Hindustani language" is the ideal page title for an encyclopedia that is directed at a general audience.
- You see, if I were discussing this in a narrow-topic encyclopedic project that only involved fellow linguists and also non-specialists with a genuine interest in linguistics, mostly likely I wouldn't even encounter someone who had a problem with the use of the term "Hindustani" that has an unbroken scholarly tradition from Grierson to the current day. With a rudimentary familiarity with secondary and tertiary literature in our field, this usage of "Hindustani" will be easily recognized.
- However, specialized in-group terminology for a given topic will not always coincide with common usage. And since this encyclopedia aims at a general global readership, we certainly have to consider common usage and—as a corollary—also easy recognizability. It is in this context that I have cited the Russell anecdote, and prefer "Hindi-Urdu" as page title for this main article as well as all related size-splits (such as the current Hindustani grammar), including history-related material that most definitely also includes "Hindustani language (1800–1947)", which is independent of whether the overarching lemma is "Hindustani language" or "Hindu-Urdu". –Austronesier (talk) 17:14, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
- Fowler, making edits after experiencing mass opposition towards them is far from being constructive. Read the comments here again, especially by Kwamikagami and please don't make misleading edits including this frivolous tagging, because the consensus was established above to remove them. RaviC (talk) 12:13, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Do you think I haven't read the discussion when I initiated it and contributed a great deal to it? The version that I have put in place now is the result of that consensus, from the sources that had been added in the previous version—but only in piecemeal fashion, a little from here, a little from there. What is Hindustani? Is it the Rekhta of Ameer Khusro with colloquial basis in Braj, not Khari boli, the Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Muallah with colloquial base Khari boli, is it Braj, is it Khari boli, is it as Dinesh Jain and George Cardona say an informal name for the shared grammar and lexicon of some dialects of the upper Ganges Valley? I have accepted the POV of my interlocutors that it is a language, not a dead name for a language, Urdu. But the tags are about the scripts, which the sources say nothing about. In fact, those sections are not cited. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- You're still effectively saying that Hindi and Urdu have zero speakers. Not acceptable. — kwami (talk) 12:46, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Of course not. They have millions of speakers, but they are not Hindustani speakers. They are speakers of Hindi-Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- @Fowler&fowler: No, these edits (made with frivolous and erratic edit summaries and citations with wrong attributions) do not represent the consensus. You still want to push your POV about the narrow definition of Hindustani, only garnished with minor cosmetical changes. As it stands, it is still one editor against the remaining contributors to this page and this discussion. –Austronesier (talk) 12:50, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Well disabuse the exquisitely cherry-picked fragments of the current citations by expanding each to the fullest extent of what they are attempting to say. That is all I did. The current ones take the Central Indo-Aryan bit but not the Muslim bit. They take colloquial but add scripts from out of thin air, without a citation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- The fact that Hindustani is written in two scripts, Devanagari and Perso-Arabic, is a non-controversial and well-known fact. I have added more references to the article corroborating this. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 20:33, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Well disabuse the exquisitely cherry-picked fragments of the current citations by expanding each to the fullest extent of what they are attempting to say. That is all I did. The current ones take the Central Indo-Aryan bit but not the Muslim bit. They take colloquial but add scripts from out of thin air, without a citation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- You're still effectively saying that Hindi and Urdu have zero speakers. Not acceptable. — kwami (talk) 12:46, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Do you think I haven't read the discussion when I initiated it and contributed a great deal to it? The version that I have put in place now is the result of that consensus, from the sources that had been added in the previous version—but only in piecemeal fashion, a little from here, a little from there. What is Hindustani? Is it the Rekhta of Ameer Khusro with colloquial basis in Braj, not Khari boli, the Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Muallah with colloquial base Khari boli, is it Braj, is it Khari boli, is it as Dinesh Jain and George Cardona say an informal name for the shared grammar and lexicon of some dialects of the upper Ganges Valley? I have accepted the POV of my interlocutors that it is a language, not a dead name for a language, Urdu. But the tags are about the scripts, which the sources say nothing about. In fact, those sections are not cited. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
BTW, I've at least partially fixed (I hope) the dialects in the info box. Unless I'm mistaken, Khariboli (Delhi dialect) is the dialect basis of the standard, but is not a distinct language from neighboring dialects. Dakhini also, I believe, is mutually intelligible. These would then be dialects of Hindustani. "Hindi dialects", however, is just a redirect to the Hindi Belt, which covers all the languages lumped under the name 'Hindi', not just Hindustani. If we have specific articles on other dialects of the language, they should also be listed, of course. — kwami (talk) 12:53, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Kwami, there is nothing called Hindustani. It is the POV developed on this page. No wonder the page is reduced to citing fragments of citations. Anyway, I will engage you on email, where I think gradually I might be able to explain my position a little better. I remain firm in my opinion that this page has in effect come to espouse a current India-related-POV (though I don't mean that any editors involved in creating it are Indian, or necessarily even subscribe to that POV). That POV is attempting to loosely redefine Hindustani as a way to mask India's vastly depleted literacy in Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- The article as it stands now does not reflect any POV, but simply reiterates what a consensus of linguists teach, that Hindustani is the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent, having two mutually intelligible standard registers, Hindi and Urdu. My recommendation is that any correspondence with respect to this article take place on-site, so that others can also offer their input and thoughts. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 21:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Fowler, it's disappointing that you still can't see past your political ideology to recognize that this article is about the national language of India and Pakistan, which, incredibly, you maintain doesn't exist. It's like edit-warring to rewrite the article on India to be about George Bush's cat, because the country "India" doesn't exist (Pakistan's eastern neighbor being "Bharat"). I've given up. You are evidently unwilling or incapable of understanding this elementary point, and are wasting all of our time. If you continue to mangle the article to turn it into what appears to be political propaganda, claiming bullshit "consensus", then I will request ANI to have you blocked from editing it altogether. Its a shame you won't use your time and energy to improve the coverage of Urdu on WP at an encyclopedic level. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
- Why don't you try. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Split into Hindi and Urdu
The text says but after the partition of British India in 1947, the literary language was split into two standardised registers, Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. But, as far as I can figure out, one reference (13) says 18th century while the others don't specify a time for the split. Regardless, our text gives the impression that neither Hindi nor Urdu existed prior to the partition of India, which, imo, is not the case. If we're talking about standardization rather than existence, then, perhaps, the text needs to be rewritten to make that clear. --regentspark (comment) 16:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
- You are right. Khestwol (talk) 16:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for your comments User:Khestwol and User:RegentsPark. I've done some editing to clarify the introduction. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 23:45, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
- Dear Anupam, As in several places, you have only partially quoted from or paraphrased your sources, I have added what was left out in your selective paraphrasing. I have left the quotes in, for now, so we can all decide here the best way to paraphrase them. I hope this helps. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:55, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for your comments User:Khestwol and User:RegentsPark. I've done some editing to clarify the introduction. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 23:45, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Fowler&fowler's notes for an eventual RFC
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At some point of time, I will be conducting an RFC, and will advertise not only in WikiProjects Linguistics, but also India, Pakistan, History, and British Empire. Please do not respond in this section, only in the Responses sub-section below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
The term "Hindustani" for any current language-related concept is considered obsolete in the scholarly literature
"Hindustani" is being used in this article in a variety of closely related meanings:
- "a register of the language, deliberately free of ultra-Sanskritization on the one hand and ultra-Perso-Arabization on the other." (See long quote from Michael C. Shapiro below)
- "a common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India" (See long quote from Colin Masica below)
- a "Khari boli lingua franca" (See long quote from Ruth Laila Schmidt below.)
- For the "formalized middlebrow style—associated with Gandhian attempts at Hindi-Muslim unity." (See the long quote from Ashok Kelkar below)
- a "simplified Hindi-Urdu" (See long quote from George Cardona below)
- "as a term for the lingua franca of a large swath of South Asia" (See long quote from Afroz Taj below.)
- "as a term for the "lingua franca of northern India' (See long quote from Tom Hoogervorst below.)
- "synonymous with both Hindi and Urdu." (See long quote from Richard K Barz below)
- the same language whose essentially different dialects are Hindi and Urdu. (See long quote from Barry Blake below)
Shapiro, Masica, Schmidt, Kelkar, Cardona, Taj, Hoogervorst, Barz and Blake, are all scholars of linguistics. All except Blake are scholars of languages spoken in South Asia; of these, all except Barz specialize in languages of Northern India and Pakistan.
It is their contention that the term "Hindustani" in any of these closely related meanings is obsolete.
- Scholarly literature:Michael C. Shapiro Professor Emeritus of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington says on page 150 of: Shapiro, Michael C. (2001). "Dictionary Etymologies of South Asian Loanwords into English: Some Suggestions for Improvement". Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. 22 (1): 145–152. doi:10.1353/dic.2001.0011. ISSN 2160-5076.
Note: Note: Shapiro is also author of: Shapiro, Michael C. (2007), "Hindi", in Dinesh Jain, George Cardona (ed.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 250–285, ISBN 978-1-135-79710-2, which is being used selectively on this page to make the case that the term Hindustani is not obsolete. But you have heard it very clearly from the horse's mouth now!At the level of everyday speech (but not in their formal and literary registers), spoken Hindi and Urdu are for all practical purposes the same, and for this reason it is not uncommon for hear reference to "Hindi-Urdu," analogously to the now disappearing term "Serbo-Croatian."
The term "Hindustani" is now obsolete except in extremely specific contexts (e.g., "Hindustani music," with reference to the classical musical traditions of North India)
. In earlier times the term was used in several distinct, and sometimes contradictory senses. As used by Gandhi, it referred to a register of the language, deliberately free of ultra-Sanskritization on the one hand and ultra-Perso-Arabization on the other. The term could also be used in different contexts to refer to a wide range of spoken or written styles, which would today be thought of as Urdu, Hindi, or even regional vernacular dialects.There is little basis, however, for continuing to use the term "Hindustani" today, when a wide range of more specific and up to date terms are available.
- Scholar literature: Pioneering linguist Ashok Ramchandra Kelkar, Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Deccan College, University of Poona, in his classic study, Kelkar, Ashok Ramchandra (1968), Studies in Hindi-Urdu, Postgraduate and Research Institute, Deccan College, pp. 2–3, 9 says,
"If we say that Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, and the rest are the regionally ‘‘marked" koines of South Asia (to use the convenient cover term for India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Ceylon),
Hindi-Urdu (or Hirdu as I propose to call it from now on) is, much like its predecessor Sanskrit and its contemporary rival English, the regionally ‘‘unmarked" koine of South Asia.
When its homeland is defined, it is done negatively as the residual area left by the regionally "marked" koines. This residual area is sometimes called Hindustan or Upper India or, with some inexactitude, North India (pages 2, 3) ...Attempts to set up a middle path—using the name Hindustani and using the formalized middlebrow style—associated with Gandhian attempts at Hindi-Muslim unity can now be definitely relegated. to history.
Outside the Hindi-Urdu (Kelkar uses his contraction "Hirdu" here) adherent area, Hindi is cultivated by Hindu Rajasthanis in Maharashtra, in Calcutta, and elsewhere; by some Hindus in the Panjabi dialect-area of (East) Panjab; and by some Hindus (especially women) in Kashmir, while Urdu is cultivated by speakers of Panjabi, Kashmiri, and Regional Dakhani and by some Parsis in Bombay. Within the Hindi-Urdu adherent area of India, the cultivation of Urdu has been associated with Muslims, and with Kayastha Hindus and immigrant Kashmiri Hindus and the cultivation of Hindi has been associated with Hindu women (even among Kayasthas and Kashmiris), Hindu baniyas, and pandits (but not, apparently, with sadhus). (p 9)
- Scholarly literature: Afroz Taj is Associate Professor of Urdu at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was previously an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. His old website "About Hindi-Urdu," at NC State being prominently cited in the lead sentence to make the case that "Hindustani" is not an obsolete term. However, his new website at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says:
The languages commonly known as Hindi, Urdu, Hindi-Urdu and Hindustani, are virtually the same language in spoken form and have for centuries functioned as the lingua franca of a large swath of South Asia, from Baluchistan to Bengal and from Karnataka to Kashmir. Nowadays, however, many people reflexively consider Urdu and Hindi separate languages largely on the basis of their different writing systems, Urdu being written in a modified Perso-Arabic script called Nastaliq, and Hindi in a script called Devanagari which is used in a number of other South Asian languages including Marathi and Nepali.
Meanwhile, the terms “Hindustani,” which was popular in the colonial period, and “Hindi-Urdu,” which has been favored in academic circles since the 1980s
, acknowledge and affirm Hindi and Urdu’s shared history, although neither term has much popular currency in South Asia today.
- Nomenclature Colin Masica, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and South Asian Languages at the University of Chicago says in his magnum opus, Masica, Colin P. (1993), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press, p. 30, ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2 (Google Scholar citation index 1133 (i.e. the book has been cited in 1,133 scholarly publications.))
2.4 Nomenclature Although European languages present a few instances of multiple or fluctuating names (e.g. Ruthenian! Little Russian/Ukrainian), these have now been largely sorted out. Linguistic nomenclature in the Indo-Aryan field, on the other hand, still constitutes a boulder-strewn path over which one must pick one’s way carefully.
Nomenclature complicates the Hindi-Urdu situation, as we have seen. (it is in fact even more complicated than just described: besides the once-ubiquitous Hindustani (now seldom used)
, the more specific Dakani or Dakhini, and the earlier Hindui and Hindavi, there was also Rekhta (< Pers. ‘mixed’ = ‘the Hindustani or Urdu language’ ), and its specialized feminine counterpart Rekhti women’s speech’. “Hindi” in the broader sense, referring to all the speech varieties of the Hindi area, is, of course, equivalent to a plethora of more specific names.)
- Official nomenclature: Colin Masica also says in Masica, Colin P. (1993), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press, p. 430, ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2 says:
Hindustani - term referring to common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India, much in vogue during Independence movement as expression of national unity;
after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it their mother tongue
(the majority of HINDI speakers and many URDU speakers had done so in previous censuses); trend continued in subsequent censuses: only 11,053 returned it in 1971...mostly from S India.
- Official nomenclature: Ruth Laila Schmidt Professor Emeritus of Urdu, University of Oslo and author of Schmidt, Ruth Laila (2005), Urdu: An Essential Grammar, Routledge, ISBN 1-134-71319-3 (Google scholar citation index 162), says in her article Schmidt, Ruth Laila (2007), "Urdu", in Dinesh Jain, George Cardona (ed.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 286–350, 291, ISBN 978-1-135-79710-2:
In the early 1800s, the British chose the Khari Boli lingua franca, which they called Hindustani, as their medium for administration, and sponsored the composition of Hindustani prose texts in both the Persian and Dévanagari scripts
. The Hindi variant of Khari Boll, hitherto seldom written (Nespital 1998:214) now began to emerge as a literary language. In the course of the nineteenth century, it was to rival not only Urdu, but claim other languages in north India as its ‘dialects’ (Srivastava 1995:229), and in due course to inherit the literary traditions of its Hindi sister dialects Braj Bhasa and Avadhi. Grierson comments that the Hindustani Prem Sagar, or ‘Ocean of Love’ composed by Lalliji Lal in the Dévanagari script, was:so far as the prose portions went, practically written in Urdu, with Indo-Aryan words substituted wherever a writer in that form of speech would use Persian ones ...The language fulfilled a want. It gave a lingua franca to the Hindus. It enabled men of widely different provinces to converse with each other without having recourse to the (to them) unclean words of the Musalmans (Grierson 1916:46).
Urdu was already Persianized. Khari Boli Hindi was now made acceptable by preferring tadbhava Hindi words over, or substituting tatsama Sanskrit words for, Perso-Arabic ones.
Hindustani officially disappeared after 1947; neither Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India, which enumerates the languages of India, nor the official documents of Pakistan make even a cursory mention of it (G. C. Narang, personal communication).
Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora.
- Scholarly literature: Barry Blake, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, La Trobe University, Melbourne, in Blake, Barry J. (2008), All About Language: A Guide, Oxford University Press, pp. 2–, ISBN 978-0-19-162283-0 (Google scholar citation index 40) says:
There is one other language with a vast number of speakers and that is Hindi-Urdu, which has over 300 million first-language speakers and about 300 million second-language speakers. Hindi is the national language of India and is written in a form of Indian (Devanagari) script, Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is written in a form of Arabic script adopted from Persia, but the two are essentially different dialects of the same language,
to which the term ‘Hindustani’ was often applied before the partition of India into India and Pakistan
.
- Scholarly literature: Tom Hoogervorst, a historical linguist, in Hoogervorst, Tom (2018). "Sailors, Tailors, Cooks, and Crooks: On Loanwords and Neglected Lives in Indian Ocean Ports". Itinerario. 42 (3): 516–548. doi:10.1017/S0165115318000645. ISSN 0165-1153. says:
The term “Hindustani” is used here to refer to the lingua franca of nineteenth-century northern India, bearing in mind that it is not used much at present.
Within the Hindustani continuum, the variety written in Devanāgarī script and relying on Sanskrit for lexical enrichment is known as “Hindi,” whereas the mutually intelligible variety drawing from the Perso-Arabic script and lexicon is known as “Urdu.” See Rahman, “From Hindi to Urdu,” for more discussion on the terminological nuances of this macro-language.
- Already Obsolete in 1976/1983: The use of "Hindustani" had given rise to the common American malapropism, "Do you speak Hindu?" Richard Salomon, the William P. and Ruth Gerberding University Professor Emeritus of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, scholar of early Buddhism, and author of Salomon, Richard (1998), Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-535666-3 (Google scholar citation index 309), at the beginning of his career in 1976, caught William Safire, then a columnist at the New York Times committing some version of it:
Dear Mr. Safire: Regarding "pundit": This is a Hindi word (actually, a Sanskrit word used in Hindi). "Hindu" designates religion; there is no language by this name.
This very common confusion may be caused by the obsolete term "Hindustani" ("Language of the land of the Hindus"), used to refer to the colloquial form of what is now called "Hindi."
Sincerely yours, Richard Salomon Visiting Assistant Professor of Sanskrit, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- Obsolete also in the outposts of the British indenture system of the 19th-century: Richard K Barz in Barz, Richard K. (2007). "The cultural significance of Hindi in Mauritius". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 3 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1080/00856408008722995. ISSN 0085-6401., says:
Since Hindustani is thus synonymous with both Hindi and Urdu,it has become an obsolete term and what used to be known as Hindustani is today called either Hindi or Urdu.
- Scholarly usage for the lingua franca is now Hindi-Urdu, sometimes simply Hindi, if about India: George Cardona, Sanskritist, and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, in his signed article, Indo-Aryan Languages in Encyclopaedia Britannic says:
Modern Indo-Aryan stage Before independence, under British rule (entrenched from the 18th century), there were princely states within dialect areas; under Mughal rule (16th–18th centuries), Persian was the language which was used by the court and by courts of justice and this practice continued in the latter function for a time under the British.
Though Hindi–Urdu may have been a lingua franca, the great dialectal diversity of earlier times continued. ... Moreover, the attempt to establish a single national language other than English continues. This search has its origin in national and Hindu movements of the 19th century down to the time of Mahatma Gandhi, who promoted the use of a simplified Hindi–Urdu, called Hindustani.
... When the time came, however, Hindi could not be declared the sole national language; English remains a co-official language.Though Hindi can claim to be the lingua franca of a large population in North India, other languages such as Bengali have long and great literary traditions
References
- Safire, William (1983), What's the Good Word?, HarperCollins Publishers, p. 179, ISBN 978-0-380-64550-3
Sources are being misused to minimize the Muslim contribution
- Example 1: The first sentence, "Hindustani ... historically known as Hindi, Hindavi, Urdu, Dehlavi, and Rekhta, is the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan. is being cited to a book on human geography by a mother-son geographers, Lydia Mihelič Pulsipher; Alex Pulsipher; Holly M. Hapke (2005), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-7167-1904-5}} with a quote:" By the time of British colonialism, Hindustani was the lingua franca of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan.
- The citation in the article does not give the page number, but it is 324. It must have required sleight-of-hand in the barrel as the full quotes in the book, Pulsipher, Lydia Mihelic; Pulsipher, Alex; Hapke, Holly M. (2005), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, W. H. Freeman, p. 396, ISBN 978-0-7167-1904-5, about Hindustani, which are on pages 314 and 324, are rather different:
One legacy of the Mughals is the more than 420 million Muslims now living in South Asia. The Mughals left a unique heritage of architecture, art, literature, and linguistics that includes the Taj Mahal, the fortress at Agra, miniature painting, and the tradition of lyric poetry.
The Mughals also helped to produce the Hindustani language, which became the lingua franca (the language of trade) of the northern Indian subcontinent. Hindustani is still used by more than 400 million people (page 314)
...By the time of British colonization, Hindustani—an amalgam of Persian and Sanskrit-based northern Indian languages—was the lingua franca of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan.
The Muslims wrote Hindustani in a form of Arabic script and called it Urdu, whereas the Hindus and other groups wrote it in a script derived from Sanskrit and called it Hindi. ...Hindi, because of its origins in Hindustani and the popularity of Hindi-language films, is understood by most Pakistanis and by about 50 percent of India’s population. (p 324)
- The citation in the article does not give the page number, but it is 324. It must have required sleight-of-hand in the barrel as the full quotes in the book, Pulsipher, Lydia Mihelic; Pulsipher, Alex; Hapke, Holly M. (2005), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, W. H. Freeman, p. 396, ISBN 978-0-7167-1904-5, about Hindustani, which are on pages 314 and 324, are rather different:
- Example 2: "It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving its base primarily from the Western Hindi dialect of Delhi, also known as Khariboli." This sentence is cited to: Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier. 2010. p. 497. ISBN 978-0-08-087775-4. with quote = Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khaṛi Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardization of Urdu and Hindi.
- The full quote is:
Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khari Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardization of Urdu and Hindi. The linguistic relationship among Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi highlights the theoretical and empirical problems of linguistic analysis and description. It also reveals the politics of language conflict and identity in the complex sociopolitical and multilingual situation of India.
Hindustani as a colloquial speech developed over almost seven centuries from 1100 to 1800. The Muslims conquered northern India from the 10th to the 13th centuries and settled down in the country, bringing with them their Persian language and culture. This mixing of cultures provided the contact situation for the emergence of Hindustani as a lingua franca.
- The full quote is:
- Example 3: Hindustani is a pluricentric language, with two standardised registers, Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu.
- This is cited to a book on Hindutva by an English professor: Basu, Manisha (2017). The Rhetoric of Hindutva. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-14987-8. with quote: "Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals.
- a book on Hindi Christian literature: Peter-Dass, Rakesh (2019). Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-00-070224-8. with quote, "Two forms of the same language, Nagarai Hindi and Persianized Hindi (Urdu) had identical grammar, shared common words and roots, and employed different scripts."
- another book on geography: Robert E. Nunley; Severin M. Roberts; George W. Wubrick; Daniel L. Roy (1999), The Cultural Landscape an Introduction to Human Geography, Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-080180-7 with quote, "Hindustani is the basis for both languages ..."
- The reader had no opportunity to consider the major source: Michael Clyne, ed. (2012), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1–, ISBN 978-3-11-088814-0 (Google Scholar citation index 611), whose article: Dua, Hans R. (1992), "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language", in Michael G. Clyne (ed.), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 381–400, ISBN 978-3-11-012855-0 begins with:
The emergence and development of Hindi-Urdu as pluricentric national varieties spans over almost nine hundred years. The protagonists of both Hindi and Urdu have expressed a wide range of views and theories, sometimes confusing and contradictory, about their origin and development. However, there seems to be agreement on the basic premises regarding the origin, directions of development and the emergence of Hindi-Urdu as pluricentric varieties. For a clear understanding of the course of development, the entire period of almost nine hundred years can be considered in terms of the following stages: (i) Formative period (ii) Emergence of different bases (iii) Consolidation period (iv) Polarization and identity formation
The formative period may be considered to begin roughly from 1100 AD with the invasion of Muslims and their settlement in India. It marks the beginning of a variety for communication between the rulers and the local population. The early form of Hindi-Urdu had a wide dialect base which, though derived basically from the Western Apabhrarhsa, included Braj-Bhasha, Harayani or Bangru, “vernacular Hindustani” and even sometimes Panjabi and Rajasthani, besides the Perso-Arabic element as a result of interaction between the Muslim and Hindu cultures. It is
- The reader had no opportunity to consider the major source: Michael Clyne, ed. (2012), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1–, ISBN 978-3-11-088814-0 (Google Scholar citation index 611), whose article: Dua, Hans R. (1992), "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language", in Michael G. Clyne (ed.), Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 381–400, ISBN 978-3-11-012855-0 begins with:
therefore not surprising that the origin of Urdu has been traced to Braj-Bhasha, Harayani or even Panjabi (See Zaidi 1989 for a summary of various views on the origin of Urdu). However, it must be pointed out that it was the “vernacular Hindustani” or Khari Boli which was present as one of the elements in the early formative periods and which gradually
became stronger with the growth of Hindi-Urdu so that by 1800 it could be clearly stated that its basic source was Khari Boli.
- Example 4: "The language's first written poetry, in the form of Old Hindi, can be traced to as early as 769 AD." This has been cited to a phrasebook published by Lonely Planet Travel Books. Delacy, Richard; Ahmed, Shahara (2011), Hindi, Urdu & Bengali, Lonely Planet Travel Books, p. 11-12, ISBN 978-1-74220-306-5
- But the fuller quote on pages 11 and 12 says:
Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. This means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets (and watch the same Bollywood films) have no problems understanding each other. ... Considered as one, these tongues constitute the second most spoken language in the world, sometimes called Hindustani. ... Both Hindi and Urdu developed from Classical Sanskrit, which appeared in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan and northwest India) at about the start of the Common Era. The first old Hindi (or Apabhransha) poetry was written in 769 AD, and by the European Middle Ages, it became known as 'Hindvi'.
Muslim Turks invaded the Punjab in 1027 and took control of Delhi in 1193. They paved the way for the Islamic Mughal Empire, which ruled northern India from the 16th century until it was defeated by the British Raj in the mid-19th century. It was at this time that the language of this book began to take form, a mixture of Hindvi grammar with Arabic, Persian and Turkish vocabulary. The Muslim speakers of Hindvi began to write in Arabic script, creating Urdu, while the Hindu population incorporated the new words but continued to write in Devanagari script."
- But the fuller quote on pages 11 and 12 says:
Please do not edit the section above as it will keep changing. Please respond here if you need to. This is not the RFC though. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:39, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
Linguistic definition of Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu)
Academic linguists define the Hindustani language, also known as Hindi-Urdu, as the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent, which has two standard registers, Hindi and Urdu. A plethora of references corroborate this. Work in India, authored by Daniel Ratheiser and published by Knowledge Must, states:
Hindustani, also known as “Hindi-Urdu”, is a term covering several closely related dialects in Pakistan and India, especially the vernacular form of the two national languages, Standard Hindi and Urdu. Hindi and Urdu can be seen as a single linguistic entity, the key difference being that Urdu is supplemented with Perso-Arabic vocabulary and Hindi with a Sanskritic vocabulary, especially in their more literary forms. Besides, the difference is also sociolinguistic. When people speak Hindustani, Muslims will usually say that they are speaking Urdu and Hindus will typically refer to themselves as speaking Hindi, even though they are speaking essentially the same language.
Principles of Historical Linguistics, authored by Hans Henrich Hock and published by Walter de Gruyter, states:
During the time of British rule, Hindi (in its religiously neutral, 'Hindustani' variety) increasingly came to be the symbol of national unity over against the English of the foreign oppressor. And Hindustani was learned widely throughout India, even in Bengal and the Dravidian south. ... Independence had been accompanied by the division of former British India into two countries, Pakistan and India. The former had been established as a Muslim state and had made Urdu, the Muslim variety of Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani, its national language.
Arun Kolatkar and Literary Modernism in India, authored by Laetitia Zecchini and published by A & C Black, states:
The fratricidal trauma of partition between India and Pakistan is replayed through the scission of Hindi and Urdu from an originally common language, Hindustani, the lingua franca of North India.
The Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, published by Elsevier, states:
Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khaṛi Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardization of Urdu and Hindi.
Encyclopaedia Britannica states:
The everyday speech of well over 50,000,000 persons of all communities in the north of India and in West Pakistan is the expression of a common language, Hindustani.
Urdu Through Hindi: Nastaliq With the Help of Devanagari, authored by Afroz Taj and published by Rangmahal Press, states:
A poet could draw upon Urdu's lexical richness to create an aura of elegant sophistication, or could use the simple rustic vocabulary of dialect Hindi to evoke the folk life of the village. Somewhere in the middle lay the day to day language spoken by the great majority of people. This day to day language was often referred to by the all-encompassing term "Hindustani." Because day to day Hindustani was essentially a widespread Indian lingua franca not associated with any particular region or class, it was chosen as the basis for modern Hindi, the national language of India. Modern Hindi is essentially Hindustani with a lexicon of Sanskrit-derived vocabulary in preference to the Persian borrowings of literary Urdu. Likewise, Hindustani in its Urdu form was adopted by Pakistan as a national language because Urdu is not tied to any of the regions comprising modern Pakistan.
The Rhetoric of Hindutva, authored by Manisha Basu and published by Cambridge University Press, states:
Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals.
Though much of what is said here is common knowledge to those familiar with the history of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu, I have added these sources here should anyone find them helpful to reference in the near future. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 00:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
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