Aga Khan on Arabic as National Language of Pakistan

[Dance]

I can.

Yeah you mentioned you've been to Pakistan. Did you find Urdu easy to learn? I feel like Farsi would be difficult to learn.

 

[Al-zakir]

Is there no translated version of Quran? Will it not be easier?

Yes. Translation is there to understand the content of Qur'an but translation is not original. We must recite Qur'an in Arabic and we must pray in Arabic. No substitute. So there is no way a Muslim can avoid Arabic language completely.

 

[afg]

You aren't exactly correct.

Chetori is informal still. Also it would be "Khub-e" and not "Khub-i." Similarly it is "Koja ast" and not "Kojai."

i've been speaking Dari for 19 years, i know from my own experience. Chetori is the Farsi dialect.

 

[afg]

Yeah you mentioned you've been to Pakistan. Did you find Urdu easy to learn? I feel like Farsi would be difficult to learn.

Dari would be much easier for you to learn than Farsi.

If you are someone who wishes to learn Persian, learn the Dari dialect, you'll learn much faster, with more ease.

 

[Pasban]

i've been speaking Dari for 19 years, i know from my own experience. Chetori is the Farsi dialect.

Indeed. I wasn't referring to the Dari portion but only to the Iranian Farsi/Persian one. Chetori is Iranian Farsi/Persian of course. It is an informal greetings and that is all I was saying.

Also, whilst I'm not a native Dari speaker but I too can converse in Dari thanks to a little help in explanation of the minor differences from some Afghan friends. There are some minor details one has to remember and then of course the tell-tale accent-- mine is very Iranian.

On an average, Iranians and Afghans would have some difficulty in verbal conversation. It's like an Arabic speaker from Qatar trying to converse with an Arabic speaker from Morocco-- it's the same language but they'd be better off if they wrote down what they are saying.

I have more trouble with Hazarengi though it is also considered close to Persian/Dari in general. Do you understand it?

 

[Pasban]

Yeah you mentioned you've been to Pakistan. Did you find Urdu easy to learn? I feel like Farsi would be difficult to learn.

I'm also a linguist and my studies largely center around Persian and it's variants (Irani, Dari, Tajiki etc.). As such I have some interest in languages that share ties with Persian such as Urdu, Pashto and Baluchi etc.

My basic interest in Urdu was poetry alone. Learning the language became easier whence I understood the basic male-female breakdowns in Urdu (as there aren't any in Persian) and then differing pronunciation. It would seem natural to you but for me it was an uphill climb.

Also, about learning languages, no book or class can truly teach you one. Only an environment can. I only made tremendous progress in Urdu when I stayed in Pakistan itself. Though Urdu has a high amount of Persian word influence, my spoken Urdu has even higher by default. So whereas I speak Urdu fluently, it isn't the same as it is spoken on the street in general.

I have a "Learn to Speak Persian/Farsi" thread here. For starters you can view it. For anyone choosing between Urdu and Persian, I think Persian is a much easier language to learn given the simplicity in conjectures and verb tenses.

 

[Old School]

Aga Khan on Arabic as National Language of Pakistan

Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan, the 48th Fatimid Imam Caliph and founder of Pakistan at a session of Motamer al-Alam-al-Islamiyya on February 9, 1951 in Karachi said:

We do not recognize this gentleman's authority to talk about a very complex subject as national language. He is no body to us. I do not know about Pubjab but no one will accept Arabic as the national language in Sindh and this will cause massive explosions which is beyond imagination. Sindhis will never accept any language other than Urdu and Sindhi to be used at the official level in Sindh. Period.

To all those advocating Arabic , do you want to destroy Pakistan once again ?

 

[Ahmad]

Really? I was under the impression that its mostly derived from Hindi, Farsi, and Turkish. Isn't Dari similar to Farsi?

Farsi and dari are one language with different name.

 

[Ahmad]

Yeah you mentioned you've been to Pakistan. Did you find Urdu easy to learn? I feel like Farsi would be difficult to learn.

I can assure you that Farsi(or Dari as some people prefer to call it) is one of the easiest languages to learn. There is no gender issues in it, and you dont see grammatical complications in it.

 

[Ahmad]

Indeed. I wasn't referring to the Dari portion but only to the Iranian Farsi/Persian one. Chetori is Iranian Farsi/Persian of course. It is an informal greetings and that is all I was saying.

Also, whilst I'm not a native Dari speaker but I too can converse in Dari thanks to a little help in explanation of the minor differences from some Afghan friends. There are some minor details one has to remember and then of course the tell-tale accent-- mine is very Iranian.

On an average, Iranians and Afghans would have some difficulty in verbal conversation. It's like an Arabic speaker from Qatar trying to converse with an Arabic speaker from Morocco-- it's the same language but they'd be better off if they wrote down what they are saying.

I have more trouble with Hazarengi though it is also considered close to Persian/Dari in general. Do you understand it?

Dari and Farsi are exactly the same language with some small amount of vocabulary differences in iran, afghanistan and central asians, and off course the difference in accent. There is no any grammatical differences between, as they are the same language. we shouldnt forget that 4 decades ago the language in Afghanistan used to be called Farsi. they changed it to Dari for some political reasons which doenst have much of acadamic value. Having different vocabularies in differnt countries which speak the same language is very normal, you can see this in every part of the world, as you mentioned arabic language.

 

[Ahmad]

I have more trouble with Hazarengi though it is also considered close to Persian/Dari in general. Do you understand it?

Hazaragi is another local dialect of Farsi with some small number of local words and that is it. if you pay a little bit of attention to it, it is just a farsi like mine.

 

[apophenia]

We do not recognize this gentleman's authority to talk about a very complex subject as national language. He is no body to us.

Lets not perpetuate stupidities..in the struggle for independence of the Indo-Pakistan, he was in the forefront. He earned his respect.

 

[ice_man]

We do not recognize this gentleman's authority to talk about a very complex subject as national language. He is no body to us. I do not know about Pubjab but no one will accept Arabic as the national language in Sindh and this will cause massive explosions which is beyond imagination. Sindhis will never accept any language other than Urdu and Sindhi to be used at the official level in Sindh. Period.

To all those advocating Arabic , do you want to destroy Pakistan once again ?

firstly like i previously said ARABIC should be taught in schools so that we can UNDERSTAND THE QURAN leading to NO MORE RADICAL EXTREMIST MULLAH ISLAM!!! currently we just believe whatever the mullah's tell us!! hell i think 70% of pakistanis don't know what is actually written in the quran!!!

i say WE DON'T ABANDON urdu as our national language but infact make arabic the second language (this will address the problem of teaching provincial languages in different provinces)


as for the last part that i highlighted in BOLD! with all due respect sice childhood i have been hearing PAKISTAN will be destroyed!! pakistan cannot be destroyed because of languages it has more to do with rights!!balochis & pathans feel deprived by the punjabis,sindhis & urdu speaking! please tell me what is the ideology of pakistan...what is keeping it together..if a change of language can destroy it!

since ZIA's era we have been hearing :QOUM KAAY WASSI TAAR MUFAAD MEIN! infact its just a hoax nothing will inshAllah happen to pakistan if we stop trying to divide ourselves into different ethnic groups!

we are pakistanis first everything else second! hence arabic or no arabic it shouldn't destroy us as a nation!

 

[Ahmad]

I cant understand any other reason apart from religion to make arabic as national/official language of pakistan. dont confuse pakistani people by this decision. urdo is better for you, each of you understand it, each of you respect it, then what is the bloody problem?

 

[Dance]

I cant understand any other reason apart from religion to make arabic as national/official language of pakistan. dont confuse pakistani people by this decision. urdo is better for you, each of you understand it, each of you respect it, then what is the bloody problem?

Don't worry its not going to happen. This was just an idea some politician had. Urdu and English will remain the national languages of Pakistan