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Hindustani (Hindi: हिन्दुस्तानी, Urdu: ہندوستانی) is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in the republics of India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu respectively. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Persian Gulf and as such is considered a lingua franca in the northern Indian subcontinent. [1] It is also one of the most widely spoken languages in the world by total number of speakers. [2] It developed in north India, principally during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian language exerted a strong influence on the Western Hindi languages of central India; this contact between the Hindu and Muslim cultures resulted in the core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the Indian dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi, being enriched with Persian loanwords. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Rekhta , or "mixed" speech, which came to be known as Hindustani, Hindi, Hindavi, and Urdu (derived from Zabaan-i-Ordu by Mashafi meaning "language of the Horde".), also locally known as Lashkari or Lashkari Zaban in long form [11] [12] [ full citation needed ], was thus created. [13] This form was elevated to the status of a literary language, and after the partition of colonial India and independence this collection of dialects became the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers with regards to their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular form. From the colonial era onwards, Hindustani has also taken in many words from English, with an urban English-influenced variety emerging known as Hinglish. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
Most of the grammar and basic vocabulary of Hindustani descends directly from the medieval Indo-Aryan language of central India, known as Shauraseni Prakrit. [19] After the tenth century, several Śauraseni dialects were elevated to literary languages, including Braj Bhasha and the Khari Boli of Delhi.
During the reigns of the Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire in India, where Persian was adopted as the official language and Delhi was established as the capital, the imperial court and concomitant immigration infused the Indo-Aryan dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi (the earliest form is known as Old Hindi) with large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Chagatai words from the court; this occurred as a result of cultural contact between Hindus and Muslims in Hindustan and became the fruit of a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. [3] [4] [20] [9] [21] [22] The introduced words were primarily nouns and were employed for cultural, legal and political concepts. These Persian and Arabic loanwords form 25% of Urdu's vocabulary. [10] [23] As a form of Hindustani and a member of the Western Hindi category of Indo-Aryan languages, [22] 75% of Urdu words have their etymological roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit, [10] [24] [25] and approximately 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit. [23] [26]
The new court language developed simultaneously in Delhi and Lucknow, the latter of which is in an Awadhi-speaking area; and thus, modern Hindustani has a noticeable Awadhi influence even though it is primarily based on Delhi dialect. In these cities, the language continued to be called "Hindi" as well as "Urdu". [27] [21] While Urdu retained the grammar and core vocabulary of the local Hindi dialect, it adopted the Nastaleeq writing system from Persian. [21] [28]
The term Hindustani is derived from Hindustan, the Persian-origin name for the northwestern Indian subcontinent. The works of the 13th century scholar Amir Khusro are typical of the Hindustani language of the time:
سیْج وہ سُونی دیکھ کے روْوُوں مَیں دِن رَین،
پِیا پِیا مَیں کَرَت ہُوں پہروْں، پَل بھر سُکھ نہ چَین
(Urdu script)
सेज वो सूनी देख के रोवुँ मैं दिन रैन ।
पिया पिया मैं करत हूँ पहरों, पल भर सुख ना चैन ॥
(Hindi script)
sej vo sūnī dekh ke rovũ ma͠i din rain,
piyā piyā ma͠i karat hū̃ pahrõ, pal bhar sukh nā cain.
(Roman Urdu, transliteration)
Seeing the empty bed I cry day and night
Calling for my beloved all day, not a moment of happiness or peace.
(Translation)
The language went by several names over the years: Hindavi ("of Hindus or Indians"), Dahlavi ("of Delhi"), Hindustani ("of Hindustan") and Hindi ("Indian"). [13] The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built a new walled city in Delhi in 1639 that came to be known as Shahjahanabad. The market close to the royal fort (the Red Fort) was called Urdu Bazar ("Army/camp Market", from the Turkic word ordu, "army"), and it may be from this that the phrase Zaban-e-Urdu ("the language of the army/camp") derives. This was shortened to Urdu around the year 1800. The Mughal term Ordu with the local equivalent Lashkari [29] or "camp language" (cognate with the English word, "horde"), was used to describe the common language of the Mughal army. The language spread from the interaction of Persian-speaking Muslim soldiers to the local people who spoke varieties of Hindi. Soon, the Persian script in the cursive Nasta'liq form was adopted, with additional letters to accommodate the Indian phonetic system. A large number of Persian words were adopted in Hindustani, as were even grammatical elements such as the enclitic ezāfe. [10] [30]
The official language of the Ghurids, Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as their language of poetry and literature, was Persian, while the official language of religion was Arabic. Most of the sultans and the nobility of the sultanate period were Turkic peoples from Central Asia who spoke Chagatai as their mother tongue. The Mughals were also Chagatai, but later adopted Persian. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the Indian subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. [31] Muzaffar Alam asserts that Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. [32] However, the armies, merchants, preachers, Sufis, and later the court, also incorporated the local people and elements of the medieval Hindu literary language, Braj Bhasha. This new contact language soon incorporated other dialects, such as Haryanvi, Panjabi, and in the 17th century the dialect of the new capital at Delhi. By 1800, Delhi dialect had become the dominant base of the language. [33]
When Wali Mohammed Wali arrived in Delhi, he established Hindustani with a light smattering of Persian words, a register called Rekhta, for poetry; previously the language of poetry had been Persian. When the Delhi Sultanate expanded south to the Deccan Plateau, they carried their literary language with them, and it was influenced there by more southerly languages, producing the Dakhini dialect. During this time Hindustani was the language of both Hindus and Muslims. The non-communal nature of the language lasted until the British Raj in India, when in 1837 Hindustani in the Persian script (i.e. Urdu) replaced Persian as the official language and was made co-official along with English. This triggered a Hindu backlash in northwestern India, which argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script. This literary standard, called simply Hindi, replaced Urdu as the official register of Bihar in 1881, establishing a sectarian divide of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide that was formalized with the partition of India after the withdrawal of the British in 1947. [34] In the middle of the 18th century, a movement among Urdu poets advocating the further Persianisation of Hindustani occurred, in which certain native Sanskritic words were supplanted with Persian loanwords. [35] On the other hand, organizations such as the Nagari Prachar Sabha (1893) and Hindi Sahitya Sammeland (1910) "advocated a style that incorporated Sanskrit vocabulary while consciously removing Persian and Arabic words." [36] Despite these movements to Persianize or Sanskritize the Hindustani language, Professor Afroz Taj states that "the distinction between Hindi and Urdu was chiefly a question of style. 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." [21] Likewise, when describing the state of Hindi-Urdu under British rule in colonial India, Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay stated that "Truly speaking, Hindi and Urdu, spoken by a great majority of people in north India, were the same language written in two scripts; Hindi was written in Devanagari script and therefore had a greater sprinkling of Sanskrit words, while Urdu was written in Persian script and thus had more Persian and Arabic words in it. At the more colloquial level, however, the two languages were mutually intelligible." [37]
The term bazaar Hindustani, in other words, the 'street talk' or literally 'marketplace Hindustani', also known as Colloquial Hindi [a] or Simplified Urdu [b] , has arisen to denote a colloquial register of the language that uses vocabulary common to both Hindi and Urdu while eschewing high-register and specialized Arabic or Sanskrit derived words. [40] It has emerged in various South Asian cities where Hindustani is not the main language, in order to facilitate communication across language barriers. It is characterized by loanwords from local languages. [41]
British rule in India introduced some English words into Hindustani; further influences occurred over time as English became a world language, with a new variety of Hindustani emerging known as Hinglish or Urdish. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
The poet Wali Deccani (1667–1707) visited Delhi in 1700. [42] His Rekhta or Hindavi ghazals established Hindustani as a medium of poetic expression in the imperial city. Hindustani soon gained distinction as the preferred language in courts of India and eventually replaced Persian among the nobles. To this day, Rekhta retains an important place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals and nazms, came to both influence and be affected by Indian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritages. A famous cross-over writer was Amir Khusro, whose Persian and Hindavi couplets are read to this day in the subcontinent. Persian has sometimes been termed an adopted classical language of South Asia alongside Sanskrit due to this role.
The "Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb" is one such instance of the composite culture that marks various regions of the country. Prevalent in the North, particularly in the central plains, it is born of the union between the Hindu and Muslim cultures. Most of the temples were lined along the Ganges and the Khanqah (Sufi school of thought) were situated along the Yamuna river (also called Jamuna). Thus, it came to be known as the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, with the word "tehzeeb" meaning culture. More than communal harmony, its most beautiful by-product was "Hindustani" which later gave us the Hindi and Urdu languages.
Historically speaking, Urdu grew out of interaction between Hindus and Muslims.
Persian became the court language, and many Persian words crept into popular usage. The composite culture of northern India, known as the Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb was a product of the interaction between Hindu society and Islam.
... more words of Sanskrit origin but 75% of the vocabulary is common. It is also admitted that while this language is known as Hindustani, ... Muslims call it Urdu and the Hindus call it Hindi. ... Urdu is a national language evolved through years of Hindu and Muslim cultural contact and, as stated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, is essentially an Indian language and has no place outside.
The primary sources of non-IA loans into MSH are Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Turkic and English. Conversational registers of Hindi/Urdu (not to mentioned formal registers of Urdu) employ large numbers of Persian and Arabic loanwords, although in Sanskritized registers many of these words are replaced by tatsama forms from Sanskrit. The Persian and Arabic lexical elements in Hindi result from the effects of centuries of Islamic administrative rule over much of north India in the centuries before the establishment of British rule in India. Although it is conventional to differentiate among Persian and Arabic loan elements into Hindi/Urdu, in practice it is often difficult to separate these strands from one another. The Arabic (and also Turkic) lexemes borrowed into Hindi frequently were mediated through Persian, as a result of which a thorough intertwining of Persian and Arabic elements took place, as manifest by such phenomena as hybrid compounds and compound words. Moreover, although the dominant trajectory of lexical borrowing was from Arabic into Persian, and thence into Hindi/Urdu, examples can be found of words that in origin are actually Persian loanwords into both Arabic and Hindi/Urdu.
Urdu is closely related to Hindi, a language that originated and developed in the Indian subcontinent. They share the same Indic base and are so similar in phonology and grammar that they appear to be one language.
Quite different group of nouns occurring with the ending -a in the dir. plural consists of words of Arabic or Persian origin borrowed by the Old Hindi with their Persian plural endings.
On this there are far more reliable statistics than those on population. Farhang-e-Asafiya is by general agreement the most reliable Urdu dictionary. It twas compiled in the late nineteenth century by an Indian scholar little exposed to British or Orientalist scholarship. The lexicographer in question, Syed Ahmed Dehlavi, had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Persian, as is evident even from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55,000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are derived from these sources. What distinguishes Urdu from a great many other Indian languauges ... is that is draws almost a quarter of its vocabulary from language communities to the west of India, such as Persian, Turkish, and Tajik. Most of the little it takes from Arabic has not come directly but through Persian.
...Hindustani, Rekhta, and Urdu as later names of the old Hindi (a.k.a. Hindavi).
It might be useful to recall here that Old Hindi or Hindavi, which was a naturally Persian- mixed language in the largest measure, has played this role before, as we have seen, for five or six centuries.
Whilst the Muhammadan rulers of India spoke Persian, which enjoyed the prestige of being their court language, the common language of the country continued to be Hindi, derived through Prakrit from Sanskrit. On this dialect of the common people was grafted the Persian language, which brought a new language, Urdu, into existence. Sir George Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, assigns no distinct place to Urdu, but treats it as an offshoot of Western Hindi.
All verbs in Urdu are of Sanskrit origin. According to lexicographers, only about 25 percent words in Urdu diction have Persian or Arabic origin.
On the issue of vocabulary, Ahmad goes on to cite Syed Ahmad Dehlavi as he set about to compile the Farhang-e-Asafiya, an Urdu dictionary, in the late nineteenth century. Syed Ahmad 'had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Farsi, as is evident from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55.000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are from these sources' (2000: 112-13). As Ahmad points out, Syed Ahmad, as a member of Delhi's aristocratic elite, had a clear bias towards Persian and Arabic. His estimate of the percentage of Prakitic words in urdu should therefore be considered more conservative than not. The actual proportion of Prakitic words in everyday language would clearly be much higher.
Urdu nouns and adjective can have a variety of origins, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Pushtu and even Portuguese, but ninety-nine per cent of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit/Prakrit. So it is an Indo-Aryan language which is a branch of Indo-Iranian family, which in turn is a branch of Indo-European family of languages. According to Dr Gian Chand Jain, Indo-Aryan languages had three phases of evolution beginning around 1,500 BC and passing through the stages of Vedic Sanskrit, classical Sanskrit and Pali. They developed into Prakrit and Apbhransh, which served as the basis for the formation of later local dialects.
Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. That means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets (and watch the same Bollywood films) have no problems understanding each other -- they'd both say yeh kitne kaa hay for 'How much is it?' -- but the written form for Hindi will be यह कितने का है? and the Urdu one will be یہ کتنے کا ہے؟ Hindi is written from left to right in the Devanagari script, and is the official language of India, along with English. Urdu, on the other hand, is written from right to left in the Nastaliq script (a modified form of the Arabic script) and is the national language of Pakistan. It's also one of the official languages of the Indian states of Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. Considered as one, these tongues constitute the second most spoken language in the world, sometimes called Hindustani. In their daily lives, Hindi and Urdu speakers communicate in their 'different' languages without major problems. ... 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 the year 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 the Arabic script, creating Urdu, while the Hindu population incorporated the new words but continued to write in Devanagari script.
The movement for linguistic purification, which may be called the 'Islamisation of Urdu', started in the middle of the 18th century. The ancestor of Urdu was an Indic-oriented language. This means that it had words of the local languages (bhaka or bhasha) and Sanskrit, and its allusions were to India and the local culture. Even though the script of some writings in this language is Perso-Arabic (Urdu), as opposed to Devanagari used in the Rajput writings, the language is similar." "In this purification movement, the Indic element was purged out by Muslim poets who, it appears, wanted a class-identity marker. Among the changes which occurred were: the removal of local (bhaka) and Sanskritic words, the substitution of Iranian and Islamic cultural allusions and metaphors in place of Indian and Hindu ones, and the replacement of the Indian conventions about the expression of love (woman to man) by Persian ones (man to woman or adolescent boy).
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