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how much of Urdu is Sanskrit based and persian based?

I have never understood how much of the Urdu language is persian/arabic based and how much of it comes from Sanskrit, does any one know this?


This is exactly like asking, "How wet can a day get?"

It can get very wet; it can stay absolutely dry. Both are possible.

For much of what follows, I seek a caveat from objections by Bang Galore and Rig Vedic. It is difficult to write coherently while keeping the differing versions of the linguists' war in mind, and this account is based on the older theories and narration.

The underlying grammatical form of Urdu is derived from a version of Prakrit. Pakistanis and Indians below the age of 40 are requested to skip the following two paragraphs.

The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is often misunderstood and misrepresented; Prakrit is neither a descendant nor a derivative of Classical Sanskrit, the codified language that emerged after Panini's work with it. Prakrit existed even as Panini proceeded to codify the original Indo-Aryan which went back to a much older language, the language of the Rg Veda, which was cognate with Avestan.

Put simply, Prakrit is what people actually spoke, in Panini's time, while Sanskrit is the distilled version of the root language from which Prakrit had evolved. Prakrit more or less means natural, Sanskrit more or less means polished, indicating the degree of regimentation that each version suffered. Sanskrit was used in immaculate and unalterable form by the Brahmin orthodoxy, who imposed their own unitary version of orthodoxy using it. Prakrit, on the other hand, evolved from Old Indo-Aryan, the language of the Vedas; it was the common speech, clearly akin to the artificial Sanskrit that Panini reduced to its pure form from the available versions and usages, including usages of the original Old Indo-Aryan. Panini's Sanskrit actually removed certain forms and uses that are to be found in Old Indo-Aryan, and is therefore in some ways a distillation of the older language to a theoretically stricter form, but an historically anachronistic one - no such thing as Classical Sanskrit was spoken by the people who composed the Vedas, it was the theoretically purified version of their speech.

Urdu uses only the grammar of this 'Prakrit', the rules that determine how sentences are composed, where the verb goes, how other parts of speech connect to it and are themselves modified, and so on. This grammar is not Sanskrit grammar, but is the grammar common to all languages derived from this middle language, Sauraseni Prakrit.

On that grammatical skeleton, a speaker may string whatever nouns and adjectives and adverbs strike his or her fancy, and a few unusual verbs as well, though verbs tend to be the original Prakrit verbs, by and large.

There is nothing called a pure Urdu, any more than there can be something called a perfectly dry wine. There can be highly Sanskritised (not Prakritised) Urdu at one end, which is nothing but Hindi, or an extremely exotic version with no nouns of Sanskrit origin whatsoever, which some might fancy represents their ideal of Urdu. That is a subjective opinion, and might well be true, but has no connection with grammar or linguistics.
 
Urdu script is Persian based if I am not wrong.

I have never learned Urdu in my life, and only know Hindi. But when two Pakistani people talk in Urdu, I can understand 99% of the words they are talking. Similarly, if Pakistanis understand Hindi in Bollywood movies, you probably would not have trouble communicating with Inidans in Hindi. Not sure about verbal communication links between Urdu speakers and Persian speakers.

Would be interesting to get a similar feedback,

^ well even modern hindi has a lot of words from persian because of the rule

These are not differences worth the mention. The percentage of non-Sanskrit words is the index, and I doubt that anybody speaks a language with a derivatives filter on.

For neutral_person to understand what two Pakistanis are saying, not having learnt 'Urdu' in his life, and only having learnt 'Hindi', is quite natural, although very badly phrased. If those two Pakistanis had been speaking Sindhi to each other, he would not have got much out of the conversation. What he means is that if he was to listen to two Urdu-speaking Pakistanis, he might understand a lot of what is being said. Then again, he might not. If one of them took pleasure in using Persian words, or Persian and Arabic, or those and Turkic, nothing much might come through. It all depends on the luck of the draw, the precise percentage used by the speaker of Sanskrit and not-Sanskrit words (=nouns, mostly).

Again, what abvgroup says is a 'truism', it is so true as to be almost a parody of itself. Hindi containing a lot of Persian words is no longer Hindi, it is a Persianised Hindi, which is Urdu. A Hindi pure according to the dictates of the language fanatics that run Government of India's languages policy would have no Persian words in it.
 
Unfortuntely due to cable tv, today's Pakistanis have drifted away from Urdu and true Islam.

Persian and Arabic words have been replaced with hindi.

e.g. we used to say 'Ibtida' today children says 'shoroat' there are numerous such examples.

Today, we can conveniently say that Pakistan's national language is Hindi and not Urdu any more.

This is simply not true, and only makes sense from the point of view of a crusty old man muttering about the dilution of his national culture. Very understandable, very sympathy-inducing, but not true. Not unless the children are speaking the weird concoction that the female character in the TV clip happens to be speaking. They are merely speaking a more Sanskritised version of Urdu, more Sanskritised than BATMAN can bring himself to accept.

^^ Actually Urdu has nothing of it own it borrow words from, Persian/Arabic/Turkish/English/ and now with advent of cable tv we can count Sankskrit too.

A simple example:

'Sun'
Arabic - Shams
Persian - Aftab
Hindi - Suraj

'moon'
Arabic - Qamar
Persian - Mahtab
Hindi - Chand

which one do you keep in your voc.

This post, if I may humbly point out, is the entire matter in a nutshell. Nothing needs to be added or subtracted from this. Period.
 
i love sanskrit. we indians should speak more sanskritized hindi... leave tis stupid persian/arab crap out of our language
 
Well we learned in school Chand/Suraj.

However, Urdu is a very versatile language.

It depends on the user and what they want to do with it.

Allama Iqbal had the literary command of a Master.

In some of his poems he uses Suraj, and in some he uses Aftab.


Urdu has always in my opinion been an evolving language.

Even english words have been incorporated.

While we need not dilute comment 6, this is a useful comment on that. As is, for the identical reason, comment 8.
 
I learned it for 3 years but I have mostly forgotten it. I love it though. We must promote sanskritized hindi because it is our culture and not imported from other cultures.
 
english is fine but not this inferior arab sh!t.
 
Chand.......

I think its very simple Urdu is connecting the Humans, difference between Urdu and Sanskrit is not a issue because Urdu and Sanskrit are two different languages and Urdu is very simple and what is the Hindi ? it is 90% Urdu because 100% pure Sanskrit can't bridge between two different language group, as example Bollywood films if they use 100% pure Sanskrit then what you think ?
 
A language that closes it's vocabulary will die eventually...it is a good thing that sanskrit is allowing words from other languages....Urdu did not fall from sky after all and there is no saying as to which words can not be part of urdu, just because a word has sanskrit origin does not mean it should not be part of urdu as urdu already has many sanskrit origin words.
 

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