two points

1) i can understand "low" hindi much more easily than stuff in bollywood. that is, i note that i can make out villagers being interviewed from UP and translated, but when i listen to the hindi it is more intelligible than the stuff in movies. frankly, it is sometimes more intelligible than stuff in bengali language films which uses a "elevated" diction. i think that gets to the root of the reality that until the "modern" era the difference between various languages on the mass level was clinal, grading. but the elite/literate level showed sharp discontinuities. i recall reading that the difference between "bulgarian" and "macedonian" is simply due to the local south slav dialects that literary languages are based upon. but if you move from the black sea coast all the way to macedonia it is a graded change, so that villagers on the border can understand each other with much greater ease than in other parts of macedonia or bulgaria.

2) it does get tiresome when some urdu speaking muslims act as if urdu is the language of muslims in south asia. i think there are muslims in kerala and bengal who would beg to differ.*

* though i do know that in bengal bengali had hindu associations until relatively recently, and the muslim upper classes were urdu speaking. the past is the past, and the mughals are long gone. deal with it.

on the clinal gradation point, i obviously grant that this is true within language families, but not across, so much. e.g., using the eastern european example the south slav languages might be somewhat artificial creations of 19th century nationalism, but the difference between them and romanian or albanian are real and substantive, and the separation across linguistic zones is going to be relatively crisp. in south asia the appropriate boundary would then i assume be between indo-aryan and dravidian languages (though there is shared vocabulary obviously).

Dude, points for even trying to learn the script. Also, I want to point out that this divide exists to some extent in any Indian language that has large numbers of Muslim speakers...there will be a distinct style and vocabulary that is typical for them. Off the top of my head, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, and Malayalam, all have a more Persianized register when spoken by Muslims (Malayalam may not be as differentiated as the others). Hindi-Urdu takes it to a whole different level as they are considered two separate languages and have gone their separate ways...whereas at least with the other languages I mentioned, they are still referred to as being the same language, just a muslim style vs a non-muslim style.

That being said, lots of non-muslims contributed to Urdu.

Yes, Razib just reminded me...you can add Bengali to my list.

1) i can understand "low" hindi much more easily than stuff in bollywood. that is, i note that i can make out villagers being interviewed from UP and translated, but when i listen to the hindi it is more intelligible than the stuff in movies.

Bollywood is 'low hindi' or Hindustani, often mixed with Bombay gangsta speak.

Rural UPites speak a dialect called Bhojpuri (also spoken in Bihar and other areas bordering Bengal) which has a greater similarity to Bengali than general Hindustani and that probably explains why you understand more of it (if you already understand bengali).

Really interesting topic and post (though I have no academic knowledge about it). My grandparents in Delhi always spoke somewhat wistfully about speaking Hindustani pre-Partition with some regret (as opposed to Hindi afterwards, though of course those labels are a bit fluid), almost like it was some kind of golden age. But, they never emphasized the script issue. I will have to ask my parents about whether they knew both scripts, or only Devanagari. My grandfather's books seemed to be mostly in English, from what I recall as a kid, but that may be my own biased memory, from what I would look at!

The debate in Pakistan is essentially over, and Urdu wins. But according to the scholars Liberman cites, the split over scripts is very much alive in India (especially northern India, though I have Muslim friends from places like Hyderabad who say their families only speak Urdu at home).

I wonder how much of this is really Urdu as opposed to just Hindi peppered with phrases like "inshallah".

Obviously, with Partition, the terms of the debate over “standard” scripts changed in the Indian subcontinent. The debate in Pakistan is essentially over, and Urdu wins.

Urdu won over Hindi but less than 10% of Pakistanis speak Urdu as their native language. In India language politics are no longer a big issue. In Pakistan there is fierce debate on whether Urdu ought to be supplanting the local languages. In addition in Pakistan spoken Urdu is very divergent from standard Urdu as words from regional languages and English seep in. I don't think the same thing is happening to Hindi since so much of the intellectual discourse in India takes place in English, thereby preventing a high form of Hindu from becoming as entrenched in India as Urdu is in Pakistan.

Great post! I think it's cool that you're learning Urdu.

My dad and his siblings were all born before partition, and they learned Urdu (both written and spoken) as their "native language". They didn't learn Hindi till they were in their teens. In fact, my dad always thought of Urdu as his real language even though he was fiercely proud of being Indian. He even learned Farsi at school. (In those days, that was a common subject). I think it's cool that he got to learn so many different languages.

Off the top of my head, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, and Malayalam, all have a more Persianized register when spoken by Muslims

I met a Muslim girl recently whose family is from Bangalore, and apparently they speak Urdu as well (according to her, her family had been there for [at least three] generations, but then again she didn't seem to know too much about her family background). I had no idea an Urdu-speaking population lived in Bangalore too?

Why shouldn't Muslims preserve the language for the time when the Mughals return? Inshallah. If in doubt, ask Modi.

WTF?? And please don't think Modi = India. :(

1 · razib said

two points

1) i can understand "low" hindi much more easily than stuff in bollywood. that is, i note that i can make out villagers being interviewed from UP and translated, but when i listen to the hindi it is more intelligible than the stuff in movies.

Thats coz the Hindi used in Bollywood is not standard hindi or khariboli but a Bombay based Bambaiya Hindi. We had trouble in school coz our text books were in khariboli and we spoke Bambaiya Hindi

Like for the english word "you" in khariboli one would use "aap" while in bambaiya hindi one would use "tum or tu". The word "tu" is not Hindi word but is borrowed from Marathi.

First of all, great post Amardeep. And full marks for learning a new script!

An Indian linguist has illustrated how far the styles deviate from each other by asking how the abstract expression “salvation’s true path” might be translated into Hindi and Urdu at different style levels and among different ethnic-social groups. Village people would render this as mukti-ki sacci sarak (Bazaar Hindustani). Pandits or educated Hindus would say mukti-ki satya upay (Highbrow Hindi). Cultured Muslims would translate the phrase as nájat-ki haqq rah (Highbrow Urdu). Indians who speak English as their second language might say salweshan-ki tru path. The only indication that these four “languages” are in some sense variants of the same language is the genitive marker -ki.

I agree with the substance of Kelkar's thesis, but his classification of Bazaar/Highbrow Hindi, Highbrow Urdu and Anglicised Hindi (or Urdu) is arbitrary at best. In reality, there are no such quantum boundaries amongst the speakers. People fluently switch between such and other dialects and mix them as well.

Nor is it possible to draw these lines on the linguistic continuum in any meaningful way. The words "salvation", "true" and "path" have many more variants than the four cited above, and are quite likely to be found in mixed usage with each other. For example, "path" itself can be path (unstressed 'a'), raah, maarg, rastaa, raastaa, sarak etc.

Also, the genitive marker -ki is not strictly common. "mukti-ki satya upay" would actually be "mukti-ka satya upay", so there is a change of gender here. Further, Bazaar Hindustani is more likely to have the expression "mukti-ka sacci rasta" (or even "mukti-ki sacci raah") than "mukti-ki sacci sarak".

I am not a trained linguist, so apologies in advance if I have mistaken Kelkar.

Oops.. the last line of my comment should read:

"I am not a trained linguist, so apologies in advance if I have misunderstood Kelkar."

Please let's not feed the troll. Are Keshav and Lotia the same pesron, out of curiosity?

My dad and his siblings were all born before partition, and they learned Urdu (both written and spoken) as their "native language". They didn't learn Hindi till they were in their teens. In fact, my dad always thought of Urdu as his real language even though he was fiercely proud of being Indian. He even learned Farsi at school. (In those days, that was a common subject).

My dad was born shortly post-Partition, but he also speaks/reads Urdu and Punjabi and identifies with Punjabi as his native language (he speaks but does not read Hindi). My roomie speaks Urdu (her parents are Pakistani Punjabi immigrants and native Punjabi speakers, but only taught their kids Urdu), so she and I do "pidgin language exchanges." We're always delighted by how much is similar, and I actually think the differences between the languages (Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi) are interesting. They reflect so much in terms of literary influences, language mixing, travel, migration, and politics.

Malayalam, all have a more Persianized register when spoken by Muslims (Malayalam may not be as differentiated as the others).

Excellent post, Amardeep, and many kudos to you for trying to learn Urdu script. My family traces its roots throughout northern India, but the past few generations have been scattered throughout Bihar until very recently. Their root language at home and amongst their "friendlies" was Bengali, but a dialect more Sanskritized. In retrospect, it makes sense given their proximity to Muslims living in their region - yet another (silly) way to distinguish their selves from the people around them. Eventually, many of my family members ended up speaking only Hindi and a pidgin form of Bengali, a trend that changed in the past two generations and will all but dissolve to English given the education that my generation seems to be getting in the States, abroad, and back home. The geographic and cultural rationale for spoken language are so closely tied to a sense of identity so it's not surprising why Urdu and Hindi would evolve as they have in their particular regions.

whoot whoot hindustani! that's all I gotta say.

Bravo, Amardeep, for making the effort. For just a bit of pain, you gain a new language with ease. It's not like trying to learn Arabic, say, where you have both a new script and a completely new language -- in spite of the 'high-end' differences, I'm sure it will actually come quite easily.

Turkey provides another example of 'digraphia', with shades of the widening Hindi/Urdu divide. Attaturk wanted to propel the country into the modern era by writing Turkish in Roman rather than Arabic script, and in the process also threw out many Arabic and Persian words, replacing them with Anatolian equivalents. Walking around Istanbul and seeing the incredible tugras, firmans other examples of Ottoman Turkish written in Arabic script, one does feel that the Turks today have become quite estranged from their recent past -- even Pamuk, as I understand it, reads Ottoman Turkish in Roman transliteration. One can only wonder what sort of digraphic neuroses are being experienced by some of the Central Asians who have gone from writing their Turkic languages in Arabic, Cyrillic and now Roman scripts -- sometimes in the space of a century.

her parents are Pakistani Punjabi immigrants and native Punjabi speakers, but only taught their kids Urdu)

I hate that...and it's all too common. It's like this massive neurosis they have about their own language.

it does get tiresome when some urdu speaking muslims act as if urdu is the language of muslims in south asia

Because there's nothing like Urdu, so cut them some slack. My grandmother was a total Urdu snob and I guess it rubbed off on me. The style is definitely more elegant and there's a sort of decency (for want of a better word) about the language. On my last visit to India, my sister-in-law was telling me how thrilled she was since her new maid happened to be muslim and her girls had finally started speaking hindi with "tameez". I guess this is just a north indian thing and people from bombay probably couldn't even tell the difference.

wonder how much of this is really Urdu as opposed to just Hindi peppered with phrases like "inshallah

Before reading this post, my common sense understanding was that the difference between Hindi and Urdu is just in the nouns. The sentence structure stays almost the same for the two languages and only the noun changes. For example, one would say "Did you hear the khabar" (khabar suni?) and the other would say "Did you hear the samachaar" (samachaar suna?).

I don't think more than a handful could ever understand the highly sanskritized hindi news or the highly arabicized Urdu news. Thankfully, Aaj Tak saved the day by reverting to good old hybrid hindustani. But I've noticed that the Urdu in India is losing its Persian influence and becoming more Arabic. Notice they've started saying "Ramadan" instead of "Ramzaan"? At least in the english language papers.

Vivek#15,

I think you are right, I would personally also phrase it mukti ka sachcha raasta or rah. I must say that I have never heard anyone use the hinglish version quoted in the paragraph.
I grew up in a predominantly muslim area in Delhi and most of my close friends spoke chaste urdu, my paternal grandfather grew in pre partition Punjab and could read and write urdu/punjabi and hindi so for me there was no clear demarcation of when hindi ended and urdu began.

Divya,

To be honest I had never heard Ramadan till I came to America, it was always Ramzaan.

Re: Digraphia. See Konkani. Goan Konkani has (had?) Devnagari-Roman divide, somewhat similar to Urdu-Hindi debate.

And what, one wonders, of Sindhi -- Hindu speakers of which write it in a Devanagari script; Muslim speakers in the modified Persian script designed for it by Sir Richard Burton? Today's Pakistani Sindhi Hindus describe feelings of alienation from Indian Sindhis they meet abroad and presumably the feeling is mutual. But this they ascribe to perceiving themselves as "culturally 80% Islamicised," as a Pakistani Sindhi Hindu friend puts it, with the political divide between Pakistan and India further exacerbating it. But pre-1947 when they were mostly all still together in Sindh there may have been some scholarly comment on the matter.

Malayalam, all have a more Persianized register when spoken by Muslims (Malayalam may not be as differentiated as the others).

The malayalam spoken by the Moppila muslim community in Malabar(Kerala) has many loan words from Arabic. My understanding is that Urdu has been strongly influenced by Persian and less by Arabic. The Arabic and Persian languages are quite distinct from each other, even though Persian uses the Arabic script. After partition, there have been cases of Kerala Moppilas who suffered greatly in Pakistan because they could not speak Urdu. Moppilas were tortured by the Pakistani government and were suspected to be Indian spies, mainly because they could not speak Urdu.

Amardeep.....it is fantastic that you are learning another script. It is quite a challenge, particularly when it is as different as the arabic script is from devanagari or roman script.

Speaking of Urdu.....Urdu itself has a number of dialects, but I think there may be an increasing homogenization of the language itself. Dakhini, for example, is still spoken around Hyderabad (in Andhra) or Belgaum/Bijapur (in Karnagaka), but is increasingly being influenced by more "standardized" Urdu of the kind spoken around Delhi or Lucknow. While I have a couple of Hyderabadi muslim friends who can speak in Hyderabadi dakhini (since they spoke it at home), they say it is increasingly less common in the old city, and many muslims there speak a more "standardized" urdu of the kind you'll see on, say, some pakistani TV serials.

Amardeep, nice post, and congratulations on learning the Perso-Arabic script. I can't read it myself, and now I have no reason not to try to learn! My 'higher Urdu' vocabulary has improved significantly over the past year or so, just watching and listening to Pakistani and BBC Urdu news channels. My 'Sanskritized Hindi' vocabulary is quite good already, so in comparing the two, I find that I rather prefer the sound and flow of the 'Urdu zabaan'.

One major difference I find between the languages is that - as far as the governmental, administrative and legal vocabularies go - Urdu is much better developed, and understandably so, since it can freely draw on Persian, which served as the administrative language during the Mughal and early British period. Hindi is significantly handicapped in that the words have to be invented anew, and have never been in everyday usage. I find also that spoken Urdu ('Hindustani') is much more receptive to the introduction of English words wholesale than is Hindi.

As a language of romance and poetry as well as comedic wit and repartee - also, Urdu is much better developed - and has a much (much) larger oeuvre. Bollywood dialogues and songs are still written in Urdu (although, there is a trend now to write them in Roman script.)

Shodan, good call on Konkani digraphia - actually there is a pentagraphia there - with Arabic, Malayalam, Kannada scripts also being used in addition to Roman and Devanagari.

As a South Slav who's been observing the rapid evolution of my mother tongue, I find this very interesting.

As Razib already mentioned above, something similar has been going on in the Balkans for a while. Macedonian/Bulgarian is one example; Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian is another.
Before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the language used to be called Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian). It was the native language of the majority of Yugoslav population, with the exception of Slovenes and Macedonians, who also spoke South Slavic languages, and Albanians, whose language is completely unrelated.

Before the war, roman script was used predominantly in the West of the former country, and cyrillic script predominantly in the East, but every kid growing up learned both scripts. Now, you will extremely rarely come across a Croatian publication written in cyrillic and Croatian children do not learn the script in school. Similarly, cyrillic is the norm in Serbia, though almost everyone in Serbia knows the roman script because of English and globalization. Those differences in script and also in grammar and vocabulary (relatively minor, but real) have been reinforced and exaggerated since the war by each side. The result is that children growing up on either side of the Croatian/Serbian border would have much more trouble understanding each other than do those of us who grew up in the eighties and before.

Unlike both Serbian and Croatian, Bosnian vocabulary has a lot of Arabic/Turkish loanwords and many of them are completely foreign to non-Bosnian South Slavs (making Bosnian sound very poetic). And, in Bosnia they also say Ramazan, not Ramadan - I had never heard of "Ramadan" until I crossed the ocean.

Please let's not feed the troll. Are Keshav and Lotia the same pesron, out of curiosity?

Yes. That's why you shouldn't feed the troll, people. Also, this is exactly why we ban for 'handle-switching' on the same thread. Creating a false sort of "momentum" for your position is lame and unfair. Onwards.

13 · Samir said

Like for the english word "you" in khariboli one would use "aap" while in bambaiya hindi one would use "tum or tu". The word "tu" is not Hindi word but is borrowed from Marathi.

I always understood the "aap vs. tu" as a question of formality. In Punjabi, you'd use "tu" with equals and intimates, but "tusi" to address somebody above you in the social hierarchy. Living in Texas, my dad likes to point out the similarities between us and Latin@s. In Spanish it's "usted vs. tu."

"You say, camisa; we say kameez. You eat tortilla; we eat roti."

Interesting post Amardeep.

My 'Sanskritized Hindi' vocabulary is quite good already, so in comparing the two, I find that I rather prefer the sound and flow of the 'Urdu zabaan'.

I don't like either highly Persianized or highly Sanskritized versions of Hindi-Urdu, but I did enjoy listening to some of the (highly Sanskritized) dialogues in the Mahabharat serials from some years ago...which interestingly were written by a Muslim. But regular, earthy, everyday, spoken, colloquial Hindi-Urdu sounds best to me.

As for The word "tu" is not Hindi word but is borrowed from Marathi., that's completely false. Hindi has three forms of 'YOU'...the formal (and grammatically plural) aap, the informal (and grammatically still plural) tum, and the singular tu. Punjabi has the formal/plural tussin and the informal singular toon.

but "tusi" to address somebody above you in the social hierarchy.

Keep in mind Harbeer that you'd still use tussin when addressing a bunch of kids for example...not because you're showing them respect but because it's a group of people, you have to use the plural form.

Keep in mind Harbeer that you'd still use tussin when addressing a bunch of kids for example...not because you're showing them respect but because it's a group of people, you have to use the plural form.

:-)

7 · JGandhi said

I wonder how much of this is really Urdu as opposed to just Hindi peppered with phrases like "inshallah".

J Gandhi, I have a somewhat oblique answer to your comment :), excepted from here. The author of the piece quotes Sauda, a poet who started to use Urdu/Hindi, "at the very cusp of the era when the Mughal elite began using Urdu for literary purposes" to make his point:*

"Kaise kahiye kaun baat man sun ke bujhe/ Rovat hun din raat Husain ran mein jujhe/ Nainan barsaat nirkhat, umagat hai chaati/ Pyaase mare hai nabi ke aise naati/ Geru se kapre range mukh par male bhabhut/ Puchhe Bibi Fatima, “kit gaiyo mero put?/"

Whom shall I tell, who will understand?
Weeping I spend my days and nights
my Husaina dead in battle
Eyes rain as I gaze, and my chest heaves
How they slayed with thirst the grandson
of the Prophet
Dyeing her clothes with saffron, rubbing
her face with ashes
Sobbing, says Bibi Fatima, “Where's
my son gone?"

We may well shy away from the politically thorny issue of labeling Fatima's speech for the choices are many, and bewildering: is it Urdu or proto-Urdu, Hindi or Hindavi? Or is it, instead, simply the dialect of Braj? The debate about the precise nomenclature and classification of Hindi, Urdu and the various types of Hindi has long exercised us. It is a debate which I deliberately want to avoid, since answers to it are dependent on one's ambitions in forging either long or short genealogies for contemporary speech. It is a debate which ultimately tells us far more about the politics of contemporary South Asian language communities than it does about pre-modern social realities. I would, in fact, go so far as to claim that the debate over Hindi or Urdu is largely a distraction which keeps us from the more pertinent issue of discussing the aesthetics and politics of pre-modern literary creations, whatever their linguistic classification.

* To (over-)simplify, Hindi was at the time not used for any formal/official communication. Educated men, even Hindus, communicated in Persian, and Hindi was the rustic language used at home, and associated with women. In Persian poetry, it seems, poets used Hindi to signal that a woman was speaking. In fact, most educated (including Hindu) men (either Mughal officials or later, munshis of the East Indian Company) did not write any script other than Persian, and writing in Hindi was solely the preserve of educated Hindu women. Which was, of course, a small domestic domain.

Amardeep, very nice post. I do not know if you have a scholarly interest in this but David Lellyveld has written extensively about the choice of script in North India, and the identity politics related to that particular controversy. I will, time permitting, find some nice links to his work.

Great post! I have one question on the Mukti-ki satya upay part though. As far as I know, upay means "method". So shouldn't it be mukti-ka-satya-marg ?

Village people would render this as mukti-ki sacci sarak (Bazaar Hindustani). Pandits or educated Hindus would say mukti-ki satya upay (Highbrow Hindi). Cultured Muslims would translate the phrase as nájat-ki haqq rah (Highbrow Urdu).

32 · Amitabh said

Keep in mind Harbeer that you'd still use tussin when addressing a bunch of kids for example...not because you're showing them respect but because it's a group of people, you have to use the plural form.

Right, like "y'all." In most Spanish, too, there is no informal 2nd-person verb form. (Who the heck uses "vosotros?")

I also use tussin when I'm tryna get mah lean on.

Digraphia is regularly an outer and visible sign of ethnic or religious hatred. Script tolerance, alas, is no more common than tolerance itself. In this too Hindi-Urdu is lamentably all too typical.

I wonder if the "sanskritisation" of Hindi is because of religious divides. My own sense is that it started with the rise of nationalism in pre-independent India. Keep in mind, Persian and Arabic are not indigenous languages while Sanskrit is. So as we adopted our own identity as an independent country,it made sense to "indigenise" the national language.

Aw, yeah, this is the kind of post I'm talking about! Mashup of the Mutiny & Language Log! Excellent.

Congrats on learning the Urdu. It's a huge goal of mine sometime in this life to learn Hindi or Bengali. Sigh. So many goals, so little time (yeah, being a bit lazy doesn't help).

Great post! I have one question on the Mukti-ki satya upay part though. As far as I know, upay means "method". So shouldn't it be mukti-ka-satya-marg ?

Upay also means solution; one of the features of sanskrit (and many other similar languages) is that words can differ in shades of connotation depending on the context. therefore you will often observe that shlokas use extensive wordplay where the same word is used in all its variations and hence the same passage is imparted with up to four or five different meanings.

also about sanskrit, it has a highly logical construction...it is probably one of the most "logical" languages in the history of human languages. mathematicians and linguists--most notably panini--contributed extensively in developing it, and this is the reason why logic and linguistics was highly developed in ancient india. in fact you can find shades of chomskyian "generative grammer" in the works of panini (chomsky himself has noted as much ...

I have made the mistake of telling my Amrikan friends that my pak friend speaks Hindi only to be rebuffed by her saying she speaks Urdu. I tend to ignore the difference especially coming from Hyderabad where people in old city speak Hyderabadi Hindi + Urdu mish-mashed. But I know this, Urdu is not an option in many central syllabus schools around Hyderabad, Telugu, Sanskrit and Hindi are. Most people in my generation from Hyderabad have their exposure to Urdu from a mandatory Urdu news program in Doordarshan after Telugu news, which was started in early 90's (for political reasons). And beginning 2000 many bus numbers (not route no.s, I mean the tag registration) were painted in Telugu or Urdu. Funny, because the registration itself consisted of English Alphabets and numbers. And then of course there was "Anjuman" on Doordarshan where Urdu Shaayari would go on with a bunch of people wah-wah-ing after every sentence. Amardeep, your take on the poetic qualities of Urdu? Btw, excellent post.

I basically feel that Urdu IS Hindi with a Persianized vocabulary. The base of the language is Hindi. Urdu in many ways is analagous to Hinglish...a Hindi substrate with a heavy superstructure from another language. The Hinglish which is used all over print ads and other advertising media in India (and written in the Roman script) is, in a way, a literary form of Hinglish.

I'll put it this way...whatever difference exists between Persian and Urdu, is Hindi. In other words, whatever words Urdu speakers use that Persian speakers do not, is usually a Hindi word. That includes all the pronouns, all the grammar, the postpositions, and quite a large chunk of daily vocabulary.

I should point out that one difficulty faced by Punjabi literati from Pakistan when collaborating with their Indian counterparts, is not only the two scripts, but that even Punjabi has become more and more Persianized in Pakistan, and more and more Sanskritised in India. Overall though I think 'theth' or pure, hardcore Punjabi words (which are neither Persian nor Sanskrit) are better preserved in India. This difference is most notable in pop music...Punjabi pop music in India is often still difficult for a Hindi-Urdu speaker to follow, whereas Pakistani Punjabi pop music is very easy for the average Hindi/Urdu speaker to understand. Ironically, the hardest Punjabi music seems to come from the UK...which is also where traditional instruments like dhad, algoza, tumbi, etc. are used most.

10 · nala said

I met a Muslim girl recently whose family is from Bangalore, and apparently they speak Urdu as well (according to her, her family had been there for [at least three] generations, but then again she didn't seem to know too much about her family background). I had no idea an Urdu-speaking population lived in Bangalore too?

There is a significant Urdu speaking population in Bangalore but their Urdu is a version of Dakhni, mentioned elsewhere. It's somewhat similar but a little harder to understand (for someone who understands Hindustani/Urdu) than the Hyderabadi dialect.

wonder how much of this is really Urdu as opposed to just Hindi peppered with phrases like "inshallah

'Inshallah' is Arabic, not Urdu.

her parents are Pakistani Punjabi immigrants and native Punjabi speakers, but only taught their kids Urdu) I hate that...and it's all too common. It's like this massive neurosis they have about their own language.

I hate it too. Most Pakis speak Urdu with a Punjabi accent (except for the Muhajirs). Its rather painful to hear.

Also even the Mujahirs in Pakistan and their kids have picked up ridiculous words like 'iddhar' uddhar' 'tu' from the dominant culture.

I'll put it this way...whatever difference exists between Persian and Urdu, is Hindi.

Urdu also has identifiable Turkish and Arabic words. Also, Persian and Sanskrit are Indo-European languages, while Turkish and Arabic are not, so this is an important aspect of the difference between Urdu and Hindi.

So, while I certainly agree that the 'base' of Urdu is a form of Hindi (that is, the grammar and a very basic vocabulary), Urdu also has many words that are neither from Persian nor from Hindi.

It's also worth acknowledging that a number of Urdu idioms are directly derived from an Islamic religious milieu, but that should not prevent Sikhs or Hindus from fully enjoying the language :)

Urdu also has identifiable Turkish and Arabic words. Also, Persian and Sanskrit are Indo-European languages, while Turkish and Arabic are not, so this is an important aspect of the difference between Urdu and Hindi.

Most of the Arabic words (not sure about the Turkish) came to Hindi-Urdu via Persian. Persian itself is a highly arabicized language, although it is indeed an Indo-European tongue. During the Shah of Iran's rule, there was an effort to purge Persian of its non-Persian (read: Arabic) vocabulary and influences...much as in India they tried to get rid of the Perso-arabic vocab. For that matter literary Turkish used to be a highly Perso-Arabic influenced language as well (called Ottoman Turkish), so in that sense very analagous to Urdu. The Turks successfully managed to purge their language of most non-Turkish elements, as was alluded to upthread, and young turks (haha) can not understand Ottoman Turkish.

These processes (both the infiltration of foreign elements in a language as well as their subsequent removal) are often NOT organic, but rather deliberate actions based on power, domination, politics, and religion. I usually don't have a big problem with organic processes, so I enjoy the fact that much Perso-Arabic vocab has become a part of Hindi or Punjabi. What I don't like are the deliberate removal of common words and replacing them with wholesale unnecessary borrowings from other languages, just to fit a notion of what's more sophisticated or to fulfill whatever agenda.

Most of the Arabic words (not sure about the Turkish) came to Hindi-Urdu via Persian. Persian itself is a highly arabicized language, although it is indeed an Indo-European tongue.

Amitabh, you make some very good points. I think the Turkish words might have started coming in from the time of the Turkish (Slave) Dynasty in the Delhi Sultanate from the 11th Century onwards. But Turkish 'nobles' were part of the ruling classes throughout India's subsequent history as well, all the way to the 20th Century - for example, with the Nizam of Hyderabad. So that's another possible channel. In fact, the word 'Urdu' is itself of Turkish origin ('ordu' = camp) and supposedly also related to the English word 'horde'!

glad to see your efforts to learn urdu were far more successful than mine! like you, my college hindi class had a mandatory urdu component, but the professor was a bit shady, which made it that much harder to learn a script that depends heavily on nuance (and clear handwriting). will you be using this knowledge to discover more urdu literature that is less often translated?

Because there's nothing like Urdu, so cut them some slack. My grandmother was a total Urdu snob and I guess it rubbed off on me. The style is definitely more elegant and there's a sort of decency (for want of a better word) about the language./i>

that's all subjective. i think that both hindi and urdu are pretty ugly to the ear actually. i prefer to hear farsi. so what? everyone has tastes, i have mandarin speaking friends who can't listen to cantonese because they find it ugly.

Amitabh, you make some very good points. I think the Turkish words might have started coming in from the time of the Turkish (Slave) Dynasty in the Delhi Sultanate from the 11th Century onwards.

the muslim warrior caste was generally identified turkish (though some were mughals). the persian spreakers tended to be civilian functionaries and what not. persian was a frequent court language even in the ottoman empire, and a language of culture in the turkic homelands of the mughals (remember that the mughals were timurids).

and just a note: the ruling dynasties in iran itself were of turkic provenance (safavids, qajars).

30 · Harbeer said

ve you in the social hierarchy. Living in Texas, my dad likes to point out the similarities between us and

Yes there is a degree of formality when you use "aap", one would use "tum" for some one equal or younger than oneself but never use "tu" in Hindi. We used to get warned by our Hindi teacher that the word "tu" is not a part of the standard Hindi. It comes into bambaiya hindi coz of its contact with marathi where "tu" is used instead of "tum" and "aap" becomes "apan"

never use "tu" in Hindi. We used to get warned by our Hindi teacher that the word "tu" is not a part of the standard Hindi.

Dude you're wrong...'tu' is indeed a legitimate, standard, proper Hindi word. It is grammatically what is called 2nd person singular...its use is discouraged by some people since it is considered rude in most contexts.

Dude you're wrong...'tu' is indeed a legitimate, standard, proper Hindi word. It is grammatically what is called 2nd person singular...its use is discouraged by some people since it is considered rude in most contexts.

We used to get warned by our Hindi teacher that the word "tu" is not a part of the standard Hindi. It comes into bambaiya hindi coz of its contact with marathi where "tu" is used instead of "tum" and "aap" becomes "apan"

this reminds me of my tamil teacher who told us that 'sir' (or 'saar' as we say:)) is only used in india in the military!

And the Tamil film industry!

that's all subjective. i think that both hindi and urdu are pretty ugly to the ear actually. i prefer to hear farsi. so what? everyone has tastes, i have mandarin speaking friends who can't listen to cantonese because they find it ugly.

that is very true, the subjectivity part. i have decided (for my sanity) that ppl say something sounds better than another mainly because they kept others saying so, since my choice of what sounds good and what does not is usually pretty much opposite of what everyone else thinks :). eg? i love german, hate hearing french---to me german has a nice "beat" while french is all over the place.

I learned Hindi in Tamil Nadu, where no actual Hindi was spoken, and this was before TV deeply penetrated people's lives. I used to find the Doordarshan Hindi news to be similar to the Hindi being taught in school and quite understandable. It had a lot of recognizable Sanskrit words that I could correlate with the other Indian languages. However, I could not actually understand Bollywood Hindi dialogues, much less the Bollywood songs. Perhaps this is true in other South Indian states too, where the exposure to Sanskrit is much more than the exposure to Persian/Arabic and hence the Sanskritized (high) Hindi is more understandable than Urdu/Hindustani.

And the Tamil film industry!

Let me try to explain the "never use tu" prohibition in Hindi. (Would this be a diversion from the original excellent article?)

There are two separate forms of 2nd person (you) in Hindi:

Regular form: singular = tu, plural = tum.

Respectful form: singular = tum, plural = aap.

Also, there is a general RULE that to make a form more respectful, you turn singular to plural. (You can see an example of this rule above with 'tum').

This worked perfectly well, but people wanted to be really, REALLY polite and respectful. Carrying this to ridiculous extremes, they started to apply the RULE to the Respectful form. The singular 2nd person, therefore, became "aap". And this ridiculous form is now standardized:

Ridiculous form: singular = aap, plural = aap.

The consequence? The Ridiculous has become the new Respectful. The word "aap" has become ambiguous, forcing people to say "aap sub" or "aap log" when they mean the plural. And poor "tu" has been, well, dissed.

The "tu" form is now used only to refer to God, just like the English "thou" is, and for the same reason: to indicate intimacy with the Maker.

3 · Amitabh said

Dude, points for even trying to learn the script. Also, I want to point out that this divide exists to some extent in any Indian language that has large numbers of Muslim speakers...there will be a distinct style and vocabulary that is typical for them. Off the top of my head, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, and Malayalam, all have a more Persianized register when spoken by Muslims (Malayalam may not be as differentiated as the others). Hindi-Urdu takes it to a whole different level as they are considered two separate languages and have gone their separate ways...whereas at least with the other languages I mentioned, they are still referred to as being the same language, just a muslim style vs a non-muslim style.

That being said, lots of non-muslims contributed to Urdu.

What are you talking about? Check out the word "diasystem" on Wikipedia. Urdu/Hindi, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Romanian/Moldovian, and Farsi/Dari are all linguistic diasystems - the same dialect of a language, but they were regarded as being different due to political reasons.

Urdu and Hindi were regarded as the same language up until the 1800s or so. They were collectively called "Hindustani." The development of Zanziban-e-Urdu built upon Hindi language starting around the 1200s. Even though Urdu is a polished language, 'urdu' is cognate with the word 'horde'. Even though it borrows heavily from the Dari dialect of Farsi (spoken in Afghanistan and *NOT* in Persia), the word 'urdu' is Turkic. Note: Hindi doesn't borrow from Farsi, Turkic, or Arabic, like Urdu, but Hindi has incorporated many loan words (via Muslims who created the Urdu diasystem) such as "shaadi" (marriage) and "duniya" (world).

So Urdu and Hindi are the same language, but due to politicalization and an attempt to distinguish/differentiate from the other community, it can be hard for one to understand the other (especially in written form).

Thank you Amardeep for posting this! Interesting topic, I'll tackle it in point form:

On learning the script:
- What book/website are you using? To anyone wishing to learn, I would recommend Teach Yourself Beginner's Urdu Script, as that is what I'm using. I'm having the same problems as Amardeep in differentiating some characters. I can read, but I can't spell correctly because you just have to know spellings of borrowed words, even if the phonemes they delineate don't exist in Urdu anymore.

On Ramzan/Ramadhan:
- True, I hadn't heard of Ramadhan before coming here either. Read this Languagehat post, which explains the difference. I prefer the /z/ version. When someone tries to 'correct' me, I say "FU, I'm an Indian Muslim!". Besides, they're not pronouncing it using the 'correct' Arabic pronunciation, whatever that is.

On Hindi and Urdu being the same language, Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache:

This (the German words) is a criteria to determine whether one variety of speech is a separate language from another variety. Abstand means distance. If two languages are not mutually-intelligible, there is enough abstand for them to be considered separate languages. Ausbau literally means "building away". In most general terms, a speech variety is a language by this criteria, even if it has zero abstand with another variety, if it has official language status. Urdu and hindi in the most popular forms have very little abstand but are considered separate languages by the criteria of ausbau.

I agree with Amitabh that both are basically the same languages. I think that both are part of the same language continuum with variations in class, religion, geography, purpose of communication, participants in conversation etc. I would recommend Google Books: Status and Function of Languages pp. 592-604, to anyone with the slightest interest in this topic. Or, just search for "hindi urdu ausbau" on Google Book Search.

Official language planning sucks. I don't like the increased Arabization/Persianization of Pakistani Urdu, and increased Sanskritization of Indian Hindi (e.g. compare PTV Urdu, with Doordarshan Hindi). I'm more of an advocate of einbau, or building towards, and that can only happen with increased media and arts exchange between the two countries (e.g. Pakistani singers in Indian movies, language on private cable channels).

On aap/tum/tu
These have varying acceptability depending on where you are or who you're talking to. e.g. in Delhi, tu is considered friendly, whereas in other areas, it's considered extremely rude.

Let's finish with a sher by Daag Dehlvi:

Transileration
ranj kii jab guftaguu hone lagii
aap se tum tum se tuu hone lagii

Gloss
Grief/distress of when conversation started happening
You(formal) to you(informal), you(informal) to you(intimate) started happening

30 · Harbeer said

13 · Samir said

Like for the english word "you" in khariboli one would use "aap" while in bambaiya hindi one would use "tum or tu". The word "tu" is not Hindi word but is borrowed from Marathi.

I always understood the "aap vs. tu" as a question of formality. In Punjabi, you'd use "tu" with equals and intimates, but "tusi" to address somebody above you in the social hierarchy. Living in Texas, my dad likes to point out the similarities between us and Latin@s. In Spanish it's "usted vs. tu."

"You say, camisa; we say kameez. You eat tortilla; we eat roti."

Interesting post Amardeep.

Camisa, chamois, and kameez are all cognates with one another, mutaal!

48 · Amitabh said

These processes (both the infiltration of foreign elements in a language as well as their subsequent removal) are often NOT organic, but rather deliberate actions based on power, domination, politics, and religion. I usually don't have a big problem with organic processes, so I enjoy the fact that much Perso-Arabic vocab has become a part of Hindi or Punjabi. What I don't like are the deliberate removal of common words and replacing them with wholesale unnecessary borrowings from other languages, just to fit a notion of what's more sophisticated or to fulfill whatever agenda.

I agree 100% with you. I get annoyed when Indians view these borrowings as being superior/classier than what we had originally. Why not borrow South Indian/Dravidian words? Oh yeah, why don't we hear Persians/Turks/Arabs using Hindi words as much as we use their words?

Which begs the question, what makes artificial unnecessary borrowing of Dravidian language words more acceptable?

*Remove one of the two words before 'borrowing' (I really wish this site had an edit feature)

Also, I think you misunderstood Amitabh. I think he's talking about borrowing words from a language-planning point of view, where I think you're talking about people using foreign words to sound snooty.

66 · SSK said

Which begs the question, what makes artificial unnecessary borrowing of Dravidian language words more acceptable?

I believe that when a language borrows words/syntax from another language, that this has an enrichening effect. I believe that Hindi has borrowed a lot from Daari Farsi, Turkic, Arabic, and even English. But why not take what's already there from your southie siblings?

If you oppose the unnecessary borrowing of dravidian loan words, then you should consider, or at least ponder, your usage of Turkic, Farsi, and Arabic words.

I get annoyed when Indians view these borrowings as being superior/classier than what we had originally.

This is something very natural. You yourself must have a manner of speaking that you consider more desirable (superior/classier) than others. This does not have to be conscious. To me it's just a reflection of these 21st century memes that it's somewhat taboo to express any idea that some cultural facet may be preferable to some other comparable one.

Of course it's a matter of taste but it also depends on the kind of exposure people have. Most people are not in a position to even make a comparison. A Delhi-ite may understand or even manage to speak some Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, local Rajasthani or Pahari dialects, etc. There's bound to develop an appreciation of some languages over the others. From some of the comments it appears that this attitude is wrong. If people consider Urdu a "superior" language, this just means they're snobs. I agree there's some level of snobbery but there's a great deal of genuine appreciation. Urdu is a very formal language, full of airs and graces, and has this whole demeanor which sets it apart from other similar languages. If you like formality and fuss then you've got to love it.

I'm not talking about how a language sounds to those who don't know it. This is about knowing the regional languages and then saying (as a matter of taste) what is preferable. Language is a symbol of culture and cultivation. Why is it so troubling to grant that some languages just may be more cultivated and hence considered superior? In any case, I find it equally objectionable that the only acceptable outlook seems to be one that relegates this to being a matter of taste without any consideration of the actual sophistication of a language or its literature.

On the issue of "borrowing" of words from other languages, I don't think there is a language committee that sits and decides what words to borrow from which language. Mostly, language of the "dominating" or "ruling" class percolates down to the other not so fortunate languages. The reason why we find the abundance of "persian/farsi/arabic" root words in Hindi is because the "ruling class" was using those as official languages for centuries. Later, English took the role and it is now mostly spreading through cultural and technological dominance. In India, "Hindi" is seeping into other language domains through official patronage and cultural and media organs like the Bollywood/Doordarshan etc..

"But why not take what's already there from your southie siblings?"

What words exist in Dravidian languages than do not exist in Hindi?

Language and to some extent other social features generally move from rulers to the ruled. When the ruling class used words like zameen, mohabbath, ishq and so on its natural for the general populace to emulate that.

Analysing the etymology of "common words" is fascinating. I used to read one column in a "pakistani newspaper", forgot the name of the writer and the paper.

Do you folks know where "firangi" of Hindi/Urdu comes from?. It has a fascinating etymology.

I think it's worth making the point that most Indian languages have some words from Persian and Arabic - Urdu may represent an extreme case, but Tamil and Malayalam do too, as do Bengali, Marathi etc. And within these linguistic communities, there are subcultures where the influence is substantially stronger than in the 'mainstream' - with not just a larger Arabic-derived vocabulary, but also influences in the script, even when the Arabic script is not directly used.

There seems to be a sense among some commenters that Arabic influences arrived only by land in 'North India'. They also arrived by sea in 'South India', and at times that was just as strong an influence, or occasionally stronger.

And let us remember that Arabic-derived words do exist in English also, but also especially in many languages of Mediterranean Europe - especially Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. It is a real fact of the historical interaction between Arabs and the rest of the world. And that is why the 'kameez' in Punjabi and the 'camisa' in Spanish (or chemise in French) are all related. The commercial aspect is also important - Brazil and Saudi Arabia use the same word for their currencies, for example - real and riyal.

Of course, as far as conscious adoption of words from other languages goes - relative power between groups within a society, and between different societies - does matter, as do elite tastes and prejudices etc. But that said, the actual use to which a language is put changes (or enhances) the vocabulary and stylistics. To come back to Urdu and Hindi, Divya correctly points out that some of the formal speaking styles of Urdu do not exist in Hindi, and also, I would add the vocabulary of love, longing, desire, etc is considerably smaller. The legal vocabulary of even Sanskritized Hindi is limited, as I noted upthread. These are not matters merely of 'taste', they are real differences in the range and expressive power of the languages. The formal styles of address, for example, also change the frequency with which different grammatical tenses and moods appear in the language - and also the verb/noun and subject/object placements, verb declensions, etc in a sentence. Perhaps Amardeep can address this in more detail! These differences are hardly unique to Hindi vs Urdu - some of these exist in French vs English also (for example). So we note the reality of the power issue, but also acknowledge the reality of the differences in the language that it can create.

I would add the vocabulary of love, longing, desire, etc is considerably smaller.

One could make the claim (although I don't know for sure) that Sanskrit may have a vocabulary of love, longing, desire etc. that rivals or surpasses Urdu's. And the fact remains that all those fancy terms they have for love, etc. in Urdu are essentially words from another language (Persian, Arabic, Turkish whatever) that have been grafted on to an Indic/Hindi base. It's a highly artificial language. That being said, so is Sanskritised Hindi.

Chachaji, is it your opinion that French is more expressive or powerful than English? I have found the opposite...that often English conveys things in a very simple, concise, straightforward manner, while French does so in a rather more cumbersome way. And this is due to differences in grammar more than anything. The best examples are if you have a booklet of instructions (how to set up a stereo system or something) and it gives you the directions in English as well as French...next time, compare the two languages sentence for sentence and you'll see what I mean. Or if you buy an electronic product for example...look at the box it comes in...the French renderings of English descriptions of the product's features always seem long-winded. Although that last sentence of mine was also quite long-winded.

Chachaji, is it your opinion that French is more expressive or powerful than English? I have found the opposite...that often English conveys things in a very simple, concise, straightforward manner, while French does so in a rather more cumbersome way. And this is due to differences in grammar more than anything. The best examples are if you have a booklet of instructions (how to set up a stereo system or something) and it gives you the directions in English as well as French...next time, compare the two languages sentence for sentence and you'll see what I mean. Or if you buy an electronic product for example...look at the box it comes in...the French renderings of English descriptions of the product's features always seem long-winded. Although that last sentence of mine was also quite long-winded.

I absolutely agree with this, Amitabh. I also find French quite formal, in a way I don't much care for. In general, English is a very practical and "to the point" language, one of its many advantages as a modern day lingua franca. My mother tongue (from the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian continuum) also happens to be extremely long-winded in comparison to English.

Thanks boondi. I have a love-hate relationship with English...I think it's a great language, very expressive, very powerful, very open to new words and to adapting new ideas...very beautiful at times...I love all that. And I certainly appreciate the fact that knowledge of it (along with other factors) has enabled me (and my family) to do well in the current world situation.

But...when I think of the damage English is doing to Indian languages (which ultimately is the fault of the Indian people) it's hard for me not to resent it. I'll put it this way...when I hear English in most contexts, I love it. When I'm in India and I see people who are perfectly fluent in Punjabi or Hindi or other languages opt to speak English instead, or parents talking to their children in it instead of their mothertongue, I hate it.

Ponniyan Selvan:

On the issue of "borrowing" of words from other languages, I don't think there is a language committee that sits and decides what words to borrow from which language.

Depends on the language. English is not regulated, which is partly why it has a wide variety of dialects to suit local needs. Hindi is regulated (within India) by the Central Hindi Directorate. Urdu is regulated in both India and Pakistan (not sure about other countries).

Regulation of a language does not have to be rigid: it may be any or all of the following: promotion of the language, purely technical standards (like Unicode), spelling reform (Tamil and German come to mind), grammar reform, script reform (German, from Gothic style to Latin style), and even the vocabulary (French). French in particular is micromanaged so much so that they would not let "CD-ROM" be used until they officially inaugurated a new French word "cédérom" and its gender (masculine). It is acceptable to use "cd-rom" in small letters, to indicate that it is not considered an abbreviation of English origin.

At the larger level, whether or how much a language is regulated depends on whether the descriptivists are more powerful than the prescriptivists.

I should just add that I did study French from 7th grade to 12th grade. Was fairly good at it by the time I graduated high school. Never really liked it though. Of course now I've forgotten a lot of it, but I think I could get it back quickly if I tried.

France's language policies have been barbaric, cruel, and brutal. PLEASE READ THIS.

pingpong:

I know that there are different councils set up for promotion of languages and "Hindi" gets a lot of federal government funding and there are "Hindi prachar sabhas" established in all corners of the non-Hindi speaking states. I was talking about the 'borrowing' of words.

But...when I think of the damage English is doing to Indian languages (which ultimately is the fault of the Indian people) it's hard for me not to resent it. I'll put it this way...when I hear English in most contexts, I love it. When I'm in India and I see people who are perfectly fluent in Punjabi or Hindi or other languages opt to speak English instead, or parents talking to their children in it instead of their mothertongue, I hate it.

it can be argued that english now is and indian language.

Amitabh:

When I'm in India and I see people who are perfectly fluent in Punjabi or Hindi or other languages opt to speak English instead, or parents talking to their children in it instead of their mothertongue, I hate it.

Yes, I remember you making this point some months back, that you got annoyed with someone in Punjab saying "water drink karo, ji".

The Académie française does manage the French language rigidly, but I had no idea that linguistic discrimination was involved. Oy vey! It made for some sad reading.

What you said about French not being as concise as English is true, and not just for technical instructions. It's even for advertising slogans like what's written on my DVD player carton: "Vous l'avez? À nous de jouer!", which is much more snappy in English: "You have it? We play it!".

German sometimes goes the other way, with detailed or subtle concepts being written as one word. "Schadenfreude" and "Weltanschauung" come to mind.

Amitabh, I certainly agree that English often enables a more concise and to-the-point communication, in fewer words or sentences than French (but there are some exceptions, when French expressions are more concise. Usually they are more cumbersome). That's just the point. French and English, having somewhat different histories of evolution, and even though sharing a large vocabulary (though you will quickly find that words identically spelt in both are pronounced differently, often have different senses, and sometimes have altogether different meanings) - are suited to doing different things.

French enables circumlocution and double-entendre somewhat more easily, and a different combination of voice, mood, and tense altogether, that can, among other things, be more languid in effect. And that is more suited to things like poetry and romance, courtly affectation, politesse, etc where conveying a bit of ambiguity, languor, faux sincerity, or even, dare I say it, nuance - rather than a complete or exact meaning, may actually be, er, desired. To a large extent, this is also true of Urdu vis-a-vis Hindi.

As for Sanskrit having a similarly large vocabulary, that may be true (after all there is Kalidasa and the Kama Sutra, and so much else). Still, Urdu has a much larger contemporary oeuvre. If you look back far enough, older forms of Persian and Sanskrit have quite a lot in common - though it is the Arabicized Persian that, as you pointed out, influences Urdu most.

I think it is time to move beyond the communalization of the identity of Urdu. A more whole-hearted embrace of the language, facilitated by an internet-assisted de-facto Romanization of the script, is currently under way. Purists and scholars can learn the Perso-Arabic script, others, like myself, can derive joy from the poetry, wit and repartee, and the sound and flow of the language in audio and video.

Not to give Google ideas, or maybe they've already thought it and implemented it, but it would be great to have a tool that lets you paste in Perso-Arabic, and get back Romanized, er, renditions.

69 · Divya said

In any case, I find it equally objectionable that the only acceptable outlook seems to be one that relegates this to being a matter of taste without any consideration of the actual sophistication of a language or its literature.

Divya, a lot of people are taking a political stand when they refuse to recognize a language as more "sophisticated" or having more "refined" literature.
From the 18th century onwards, when post-Enlightenment thinkers considered the world and came up with reasons why Europeans were more cultured than other peoples of the world (sometimes as a justification for slavery and/or imperialism), they claimed that African, Aboriginal, and Asian languages sounded coarse (for instance, they found the 'clicking' sounds made in certain African languages to be "primitive"). Moreover, the prevalence of oral histories, or the traditions of storytelling in these cultures was also considered inferior to the print culture of Europe. The lack of European style history-writing in these languages was also considered a sign of the inferior intellect of non-European people; they had no conception of linear progress, and did not conceive themselves to be different from generations past (James Mill brings up all these criticisms as a justification for imperialism in 'History of India', and also see Walter Ong's 'Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word' for a discussion of oral culture and the transition to print).
Now, many refuse to take a stand on the relative superiority certain languages over others (eg in terms of the mellifluousness or literary achievement) because these metrics depend on one's cultural preferences and socialization and look too much like the judgments 18th-19th century imperial sympathizers. Moreover, such measures of 'judging' a language de-value languages which orally transmit literary works such as myths, epics, folk songs, poetry, and stories (many native American, adivasi, and regional dialects of India, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) would be examples of this).
Interestingly, Urdu (too 'mongrel') and Braj style Hindi which many modern critics consider very poetic and refined, in their time, were considered pretty declasse and coarse. At the time, the nobility preferred their poetry in Persian.