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Make it Clear: Mutual Intelligibility of Urdu with Hindi, but not Urdu with Arabic and Persian/Farsi

Dear all and To editor Fowler&fowler:,

Urdu being a form of standard register of Hindustani, is mutually intelligible with Hindi as they share the grammar, construction, conjunctions ... and even the accent, they are linguistically same language even though "the large religious and political differences make much of the little linguistic differences (between Urdu and Hindi)", see reference

An Introduction to Sociolinguistics By Ronald Wardhaugh, Janet M. Fuller, Wiley & Sons. 2015. pp30]. Hindi and Urdu are not mutually intelligible with Arabic or Persian. Even Hindi has loan words from English and writing Hindi in Latin script does not make it mutually intelligible with Latin, English or French. None of these four are mutually intelligible, all are from Indo-European family and last three use Latin script. Even Hindi is not mutually intelligible with Sanskrit from which it draws heavily and shares the Devnagri script with. In fact variations of Arabic, though they sue same nastaliq script, are not mutually intelligible with each other, let alone being mutually intelligible with Urdu. See this reference The article mentions that Urdu draws from Hindi, Arabic and Persian. Article also makes it clear that Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible, this needs to be made clear that urdu is not mutual intelligibility with Arabic and Persian.

It will also be useful to include the reason why Urdu is mutually intelligible with Hindi and not with Arabic and Persian. "two closely related and by and large mutually intelligible speech varieties may be considered separate languages if they are subject to separate institutionalisation contexts, e.g. official speech forms of different states and state institutions, or of different religious ethinic communities. Examples of such language paris are Norwegian and Swedish, Hindi and Urdu", see reference The same source further clarifies that, "on the other hand, speech varieties that differ considerably in structure and are not always mutually intelligible, such as Moroccan Arabic, Yemeni Arabic and Lebanese Arabic." Those who want to understand the concept of mutual intelligibility in more detail please refer to this source, last para on page to page 8 and separate language versus dialect and this.

I suggest the following: 1. include the statement upfront (the current unofficial "exec summary" type section on top) that while Urdu is mutually intelligible with Hindi but not with other. 2. include a subheading in the article to discuss the mutual intelligibility of urdu with languages it borrows from. The central logic being that the "base" of Urdu is Khadiboli (Hindustani), and there are other toppings added to it including Hindi, Arabic, Persian and Chagatai, etc. Among those it is MI with Hindustani and not with the rest for the reasons mentioned above. The concept of Hindi and Urdu being two language could politically motivated but their mutual intelligibility is not subject to the political consideration but to linguistic considerations.

Discuss it here please.

Thanks Being.human (talk)

References

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 18 November 2019

"The other side of the divide came with the beginning of the Hindi movement in the 1860s when some Hindus began to assert that one could no longer be a good Hindu and an advocate of Urdu at the same time. This movement made deliberate changes in Khari Boli which eventually resulted in a highly Sanskritized Hindi. The split in the common trunk of Hindi and Urdu, Khari Boli, which began with the growth of one major branch, Persianized Urdu, now continued with the growth of another major branch, Sanskritized Hindi. The process of multi-symbol congruence now commenced in earnest and culminated in slogans such as 'Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan' whose creators saw no room for non-Hindi speakers and non-Hindus in Hindustan. We might go so as to call this process the 'Sanskritization of Urdu' or at least the 'Sanskritization of Khari Boli'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.157.255.108 (talk) 10:15, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

You haven't provided reliable source for the claims. Secondly, this is an article on Urdu. So excessive discussion of Hindi would be off-topic and WP:UNDUE. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:05, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Urdu is not an Indian language

Urdu is origannnely Pakistani Better Knowledge (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Urdu was Urdu long before there was a Pakistan. Its speakers on the India side of the border didn't magically stop speaking it when the countries split, and Urdu is the native language of 50.8 million people in India today, three times as many as in Pakistan. Largoplazo (talk) 10:27, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: The bit about the native language is only theoretically true. A large number of people, especially the young, in the Urdu heartland of UP in India, are no longer able to write in Urdu, mainly because Urdu language has not been taught in Government schools for nearly 70 years. Many have also lost not just the proper pronunciation ("talaffuz") of Urdu words, but also the words themselves in their functioning vocabulary. Yet, every ten years they write "Urdu speaker," in the Indian census. They are pretty much all Muslim, the census-exercise is a way of asserting their nearly lost language identity. In Pakistan, on the other hand, Urdu is universally taught. So, although most Pakistanis are second-language Urdu speakers, their Urdu ability stands far above the Indian average. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 01:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

It's almost as though you'd written that Americans don't really speak English because their pronunciation has changed so much with respect to the pronunciation used by Brits. (As though there were a single pronunciation within the U.K. or within the U.S., or as though the way people in the U.K. pronounce it themselves hasn't changed drastically over the centuries.) And—I'm pretty sure we call the colonial language that people in South Asia still speak today "English", though, heaven knows, their pronunciation is tremendously different from that descendants of the old colonists.) Or as though languages people speak aren't really languages, or aren't really *their* languages, if they don't also write them. Largoplazo (talk) 02:51, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I apologize, I shouldn't have said "pronunciation." You are right. That's not important. But the Americans have not lost the vocabulary of American English. They have managed to produce ... lord knows ... since the Boston tea party ... off the top of my head ... from the ones I have read ... only Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathanial Hawthorne, Hermann Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Jack London, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Earnest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, and many more I'm forgetting ... The proper analogy would be if America had been annexed by the French in 1947, and if all English-language instruction had stopped in public schools. Only those Americans with parents wealthy enough to pay for either private schooling or parochial schooling would have received English-language instruction; the rest would have been learning only French. Eventually, America would stop being an English-speaking nation. ( Some old-timers around here shake their heads and say we didn't need help from the French; it is already happening.) But you get the idea, something akin to that is happening in India and Urdu. The words, the collocations, the phrases, ... that make Urdu Urdu, and not Hindi, are gradually being lost by the (mostly Muslim) native Urdu speakers in India. There is encroachment by English as well, which most Indians, I imagine, see to be their ticket to higher education and professional success. The Urdu-speaking population is more likely to spend the extra money they have on, for instance, English-language tutoring than, say, Urdu instruction. But the decline of Urdu in India compared to Pakistan is a well-documented fact. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 03:49, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

But the 50.8 million figure is also a documented fact. Also, your French scenario happened in reality, in England, over the couple of centuries following 1066, yet the language has retained the name "English" since centuries before that. For what it's worth. Largoplazo (talk) 19:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

It is documented only in the census figures. When the census officer comes to their homes one every ten years they routinely reply, "Urdu" to the question about "Mother tongue." No one tests their ability. The Norman conquest obviously didn't kill the language as there were few Normans and many more Saxons, and Britons. This is a 14% minority. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 19:36, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that you aren't speaking the language you speak unless someone tests your ability. Who tested the ability of the English speakers in 12th century England to make sure they were still speaking English? I don't know what you mean about the Normans killing the language. After 300 years it was largely unrecognizable. Also, minorities speak the languages that the speak just as surely as majorities speak the languages that they speak. There, have I addressed your battery of widely dispersed arguments? Largoplazo (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Good, you won the argument. Congratulations on your wonderful knowledge. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 02:34, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Please no data dumps of POV text copied from elsewhere

Anupam Please don't past copied POV text from elsewhere in the history of this article. I haven't looked at the history, but what you have added is not neutral reliable history. I have reverted your additions. Best regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 15:11, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, I hope you're enjoying Shrove Tuesday. I would be grateful if you could kindly have a look at the information that User:Fowler&fowler removed. He claims it is not neutral, despite the multiple sources that buttress it. Thank you for your time and help. With regards, Anupam 18:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know the history, so I can't judge. Fowler, you need to say how it is unbalanced. Anupam, it is rather annoying for the reader to come across multiple quotes to justify routine claims. Normally we make the claims in our own words and simply cite them. — kwami (talk) 19:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, thank you for your reply. I understand your point about multiple quotes to justify routine claims; however, I use them so that editors can't simply remove well-sourced information becacuse they don't like it (the quotes help ensure verifiability too). User:Fowler&fowler, based on his comments here, wishes to argue that the development of the language should solely be attributed to Muslims (this is a communal and revisionist POV). The academic and neutral perspective is that Urdu developed as a result of cultural contact between Muslims and Hindus in North India; during the time of Islamic administrative rule in India, the Hindi tongues of the Delhi area absorbed large amounts of Persian loanwords. I am pinging User:Kautilya3, User:RaviC, User:Gotitbro, and User:Fylindfotberserk so that they can offer their comments here as well. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 21:08, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

It's unnecessary to overload the article with references and quotations in cases of disputes. You can present them here on the talk page rather than disrupting the experience of ordinary readers who aren't participants in the argument. Largoplazo (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Please see thissection of Talk:Hindustani language and the section below. I'm saying rather that the languages of the Upper Doab became the base of a lingua franca only because of the Muslims; without them, without their empires centered in and around the upper Doab, they would have remained little-known vernaculars. But where do you find the word "Muslim" mentioned in the Hindustani language lead? The text takes a flying leap from 769 AD and Old Hindi to 1920 and Gandhi. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 23:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I see that you have changed it to a grudging acknowledgement in more POV language, supported with more recondite cherry-picked sources. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 23:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler, are you sure about that? You can read the introduction again; it neutrally states: "During the period of Islamic administrative rule in India which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani." The words Islamic/Muslim are mentioned twice (and I was the one who added that information there). I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam 23:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Of course I am. What poetry was there in Old Hindi and what script? You're talking like it was hunky dory, a perfectly rich language, to which were added a few Perso-Arabic words. No. It was a mostly illiterate vernacular culture, which the Muslims raised out of anonmity by mixing it with their language(s) and giving it a literature, and which was eventually copied by the Hindus in the late 19th century to create Standard Hindi. There would have been no Maithili Sharan Gupt, no Jaishankar Prasad, no Nirala, not even Premchand without the Muslim conquest of India and their privileging of Delhi as their capital (mostly). If the Muslims had made their capital in Calcutta, Hindustani would have been some variant of Bengali, and north India would very likely have been speaking Bengali with Perso-Arabic words. The original illiterate culture is only incidentally relevant. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 04:35, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, the "Muslims" didn't raise it. The British did. . -- Kautilya3 (talk) 05:03, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing that source User:Kautilya3. There is helpful information in it that can be added to this article. Kind regards, Anupam 08:02, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

That article is talking about Urdu instruction in Government schools, which by the way, was not limited to Muslims. In the United Provinces, Urdu, and sometimes and Persian, were routinely taught until 1947 in a very large proportion of schools. High schools in many large towns such as Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Muradnagar, Khoja, Aligargh, Eta, Etawah, Kanpur, Lucknow, Badayun, Bareili, Rae Bareili, Sitapur, Barabanki, Allahabad, ...., required students to take at least Urdu, and sometimes Persian as well.

But here are talking here about the variety of Hindi spoken in the region northeast of Delhi, extending roughly from Delhi to Muzaffarnagar, the heart of Khari boli speech. That language, supplemented with Persian vocabulary, had spread all over north India by the end of the 18th century because of the Muslims. It had been given a literature by the Muslims. (Not prose, to be sure, for that grew out of the College of Fort William after 1800, when the British employed Urdu literateurs to write text-books (in prose obviously) for their civil servants, and to go on to creating a simplified Urdu standard, which they called Hindustani, in which the civil servants had to take exams. Urdu prose literature grew out of that. And eventually Hindi copied. ) We are talking about poetry, of Sauda, Mir, and Insha, ..., that had thrived in the 18th century in Urdu, not in Persian; the latter had stopped being a language of mushairas, qasidas, ghazals, ... after 1700 or thereabouts. There were even prose-poems, the Shahr Ashobs, for example, of Nazeer Akbarabadi, on Diwali, Raksha Bandhan (see my example there), even the Agra famine of 1837–38. (See a bigger list here).

So, again, summing up: the British chose the Khari boli Urdu because it has already become the lingua franca during Mughal rule, especially in the 18th century. Had the lingua franca been a Persianized Tamil, or -Bengali, you can bet your bottom dollar the College of Fort William would have produced the textbooks in those languages. But the point is that without the Muslims, without the accidents of geography that brought the Muslims to that region, these dialects would have remained obscure ones; their role is incidental. The Muslims however are not incidental. They would have created a lingua franca wherever their rule had established itself in India. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Here is an example of Mir's poem on his cat Mohini. It is written in Khari boli Urdu. This is not the complete version, which I have somewhere. Anyway, note that though it has very common words, it also has some highly Persianized expressions. His other poems are even more Persianized, sometimes more even than Ghalib, whose poetry is highly Persianized. It runs counter to the POV in all these Hindi-Urdu articles that there was this simple colloquial language Hindi-Urdu, which split on the one hand into Persianized Urdu and on the other hand into Sanskritized Hindi. Urdu was highly Persianized long before 1800 and the College of Fort William. Hindi began to be Sanskritized only in the latter half of the 19th century; in other words, much later. There wasn't a split. There was a highly Persianized language Urdu, which was given a prose during a time when a simplified version of it was promoted by the British. Hindi literature, in Khari boli, then arose, and by the end of the 19th century, had be ramped up sufficiently to be on par with Urdu. Ralph Rusell has written about it, but I can't seem to find the paper. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 17:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

PS I found it. It is here. Ralph Russell was Professor of Urdu at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and one of the foremost scholars of Urdu in the latter half of the 20th century. Austronesier had mentioned a textbook of his on Urdu. Here he is:

People who would like to think that Prem Chand wrote Hindustani therefore assume that he did; and he didn’t. In the same way “fair-minded” opponents of excessively Sanskritized Hindi assume that there is a parallel excessively Persianized/Arabicized form of Urdu; and there isn’t. Urdu as written both in India and Pakistan is no more Persianized/Arabicized today than it ever was. Its Persianization, if one wants to use that term, was already accomplished when modern Hindi came into existence, and there is virtually no further scope for it.

Fowler&fowler «Talk» 17:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

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