What's new

Urdu is not our language: Mahmood Khan Achakzai in PDM's Karachi gathering.

What is people's obsession with these undeveloped, insignificant provincial languages anyways? Why would anyone go to school to study Sindhi or Pashto? How stupid can you get? This is the 21st century, learning a language is a huge investment of time and resources, so make sure you select a language that is worthwhile to learn. Don't waste your life studying some obsolete language like Balochi or whatever.
 
.
We need to elevate and popularize Farsi in Pakistan to appreciate our literary, religious, and historical traditions mainly.

Thank you so much,
Now there is clarity, and I am in total agreement with you.

In the UK from secondary level, you have an option to learn a number of languages, French, German, Italian, Spanish, some schools are offering Chinese as well.

I learnt French, but have forgotten almost all of it because have rarely used it, although I have visited France a number of times. I think and speak in English, for some reason I do maths in Urdu lol

Yes, your idea is beautiful, we could offer a number of languages that students could pick and there would be sufficient speakers of such languages to effect your point, people also would be happy because they are free to choose. I actually think it would be quiet popular.
 
. . .
On a more serious note, does it really make a difference what is the national language of Pakistan? Its not like we use it for anything anyway. Our preferred mode of education is English (unless ofcourse someone belongs to a poor family and then has to go to a public school). Majority of the people speak their own native tongues. Even people that speak Urdu nowadays speak a distorted version of it, either a mish-mash of Urdu & English or an extremely distasteful version of bollywood underworld hindi mix, especially in Karachi and it sounds horrible.

On a serious note :)

The private schools you refer to are a small minority, and I've met many of those private school lot, including myself, they speak English to look cool, otherwise it tends to be Urdu, and their quality of English to put it mildly is shameful. There is an even smaller section in the last 10 years or so where the quality of English is more of a decent standard, but that's a recent occurrence.

Twenty years I ago I knew someone who had gone to a private school in Lahore and went on to study English at university level, I wouldn't have said his English is good. This story he told me himself, one day he was sitting with a local guy. During their conversation, the English guy put his hand on my friend's lap and said I am gay, my friend said yes I am very gay, henceforth, confusion started. Obviously it was cleared up. Old meaning of gay is to be happy, the modern meaning exclusively is to be homosexual. The Pakistani who had learnt English right up to a university level, in his head, meaning of gay was to be happy. :rofl:


It matters because all nations need a language that you can use to communicate with each other, and that is acceptable to the populace, in our case Urdu was already widely used among the educated classes of the Indus region, and common people were aware of it. it's writing style was similar to Arabic and local Indus languages have contributed a lot towards the development of the Urdu language.

Whether distorted version or not is irrelevant, it is still the same language, in no part of the world you will find a language that is the same as it was a few hundred years ago, and in some case just a few decades ago, not English, not Chinese. Urdu is in daily use n Pakistan a lot more than you recognise. Almost everyone below the age of 40 in my entire family speaks Urdu mostly. It is about mutuality, not primacy of one language over of the other.

There is a national language, a regional one, and a global one. There also have been studies that show if a child speaks more than one language, it helps with the development of the brain. It doesn't mean you learn ten, but more than one, it helps.
 
. .
Is that why more Indians speak it then Pakistani's? It is as "Islamic" as a Divali festival.
There is nothing wrong he said. Pashto, Balochi, Sindhi are native languages of Pakistan. They dominate three of the four provinces. Urdu is sourced from the Hindi/Urdu heartland of Utter Pradesh in India.
South America has more Spanish speakers than Spain.
North America has more English speakers than England
Brazil has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal
Egypt has more Arabic speakers than Yemen & Saudi Arabia, even though Arabic started around the area of these two countries before it was spread to Egypt.

So you're argument is seems is fallacious. Number of speakers does not necessarily give the history of a language. Utter Pradesh is only one theory. Many linguists point it toward Hindustan or Indus land, more precisely to medieval Lahore. Hardly in the heartland of Utter Pradesh where it arrived during the Delhi Sultanate.
 
.
Urdu is the best language that unites the people of Pakistan.

It’s a combination of multiple languages, Farsi, Turkish, Arabic and other local languages. After watching Turkish dramas, I realized that Urdu had many words from old Turkish language.


1. Aashiqui

2. Adalat

3. Ahmaq

4. Bahaar (Spring)

5. Bazaar

6. Baji

7. Fida

8. Fitna

9. Fuzool

10. Gul

11. Haqeqat

12. Hatun (khatun)

13. Hisaab

14. Imtehan

15. Inteqam

16. Etemaad (Trust, Reliable)

17. Ishq

18. Janaza

19. Jawab

20. Jung

21. Laakin (Lekin)

22. Mashaal

23. Masoom

24. Qaatil

25. Quli

26. Sabr

27. Shayer

28. Sherbet

29. Shishi (Glass bottle)

30. Shukr

31. Wasiyat

32. Zeher
 
Last edited:
.
To be honest i wish Quaid-e-Azam had selected another language as the national language. I would have been happier with any language even if he had selected Klingon as long as we didn't share a language with Indians.

Majority of Muslims in Northern india can communicate with each other in Urdu and that’s why urdu was selected as the language for Pakistan. Quaid Azam’s Mother tongue was not Urdu, it was Gujrati.
 
.
South America has more Spanish speakers than Spain.
North America has more English speakers than England
Brazil has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal
Egypt has more Arabic speakers than Yemen & Saudi Arabia, even though Arabic started around the area of these two countries before it was spread to Egypt.

So you're argument is seems is fallacious. Number of speakers does not necessarily give the history of a language. Utter Pradesh is only one theory. Many linguists point it toward Hindustan or Indus land, more precisely to medieval Lahore. Hardly in the heartland of Utter Pradesh where it arrived during the Delhi Sultanate.
Valid points.

Thank you for that link.
 
.

Thank you, indeed :)

Found the full version of that book, it's available to download as pdf. Only 5MB in total.
Enjoy :)

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/bailey/000introduction.pdf

@Indus Pakistan @HRK @AgNoStiC MuSliM @Pan-Islamic-Pakistan @Syed1.

An article that provides a brief background to the book and castes some doubts on the authors' findings, although no details as such.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1545075
 
Last edited:
.
To be honest i wish Quaid-e-Azam had selected another language as the national language. I would have been happier with any language even if he had selected Klingon as long as we didn't share a language with Indians.
Dont we also share Punjabi & English with the Indians? What about the Sindhi migrants who left for India and retain the Devanagari variety of Sindhi?
 
.
Urdu may have some good reasons but not the way you are going about it. What you are really doing is building a hierarchy of languages on which urdu will come on top for pakistanis. And that hierarchy is not based on any utility of the language or its practical benefits but based on egoistical reasons whatever you can grab and showcase - 2000 year old Aryan theory, fair skin/dark skin, shitty racist science like phenotypes , lavish praise and a sense of belonging to Sanskrit to the dismay of any right thinking person.

What I have noticed about you is that you're emotional to the point that any uncomfortable truth causes you to run for the hills. Intellectual freedom and performance depends on discussing any idea without the fear of libellous accusations. Actually, the theory isn't 2000 year old so get your facts straight. Incidentally, when I use the word Indo-Iranian and Aryan, I am not using it in the context the National Socialists referred to it. The fact is that the word Aryan descends from the reconstructed PIE word "heryos" meaning kinsman. Its a name with ethnic connotations, the meaning of which evolved over time as new culturo-linguistic groups developed. There is a language hierarchy for mankind, and that holds true even if you were to set aside Pakistan. English is among the most important languages in the world today and we would learn it irrespective of its language grouping. The fact that it is an IE tongue is mere coincidence. Following English, Spanish, French, and Chinese are important tongues, but importance also depends on the cultural context of a people. For instance, learning Spanish would benefit a person in North America more than it would a person living in Egypt unless he plans on migrating to a Spanish speaking country.

As for Pakistan, the minor ethnic languages are underdeveloped and believe it or not offer poorer utility at the moment than even Urdu does. Besides, lots of Pakistani kids speak their ethnic tongues in conjunction with Urdu so that native advantage that ethnic tongues offer in education isn't that apparent. Hell, Urdu teaching in Pakistani government schools probably fails to meet the standards of language learning elsewhere and the results show it. Unfortunately, the messed up education system is the result of a number of aforementioned factors that don't necessarily have a bearing on language. Besides, studying in your native tongue is an advantage when you understand the native tongue better grammatically and syntactically then a 2nd language. Most kids in Pakistan that speak Urdu alongside their ethnic tongue have more or less inherited mimicry and couldn't possible perceive and analyze statements better in one than the other. Just read up on their literacy tests so far. Hence, any language that they are formally taught at the start of their schooling has the potential to function as their primary tongue.

You aren't a "right thinking" or a logical person, when you go around denying that similar languages descend from common ancestors, & that's something visible even today. Maltese descends from Arabic and the Romance languages descend from Latin. The fact that you deny that association makes you come across as a fool. I have said this before and I will say it again, I have no qualms with Pakistanis adopting any tongue, it need not be Urdu, but I hope that its an IE tongue. Besides, I ain't the only human that feels an affinity to languages similar to his own. Note that, if the state of Pakistan were to adopt Punjabi, Kashmiri, Balochi or Sindhi as its sole national tongue, it would remain an Indo-Iranian tongue just like Urdu, so your point is moot. Remember that "fair skin/dark skin" conundrum, which caused your "snowflake" mind to wail in agony? That's at play here, because no ethnicity desires that their language be sidelined for someone else's despite them being equal citizens. Hence, Urdu was brought forward as a neutral party, and is one related to and possesses historicity in this geographical sphere to satiate the egotistical and nationalistic tendencies of the ethnic groups. The existence of phenotypes, which is just a classification based on physically observable traits happens to be racist now? Had they not existed, you wouldn't enjoy the diverse appearances that humans possess.

I don't know about you or others but i find your entire approach morally repugnant, distasteful - basically a caste hierarchy of languages. Yours so called Indo aryan iranian people would have been as shitty and disgusting as indians are without semitic Islam to the rescue. It continues to be one of the most poverty stricken part of the world. Ethnic pride must be based on solidarity and achievements not imagined ancestry. what achievements are there in literature of those parts - A single western/japanese university produces more literature and knowledge/research than entirety of indo-aryan languages.

Morally repugnant? Can you back up that claim and explain how stating that one language is more useful than another explicitly violates the rights of a sound system (language)? Or are you just asserting that because of your failure to counter me so far, and have deployed libel and ad hominems to aid your escape? I will tell you what wiseguy, I want you to invest your time in learning some irrelevant and obscure language at the expense of another lingua franca. Why don't you take up learning Quechua? Should you fail to do that, it would be undoubtedly clear that you're a prejudiced racist that despises the people among whom those languages formed.

Islam is Semitic now is it? Don't you realize that your classification of Islam as an ethno-linguistic religion is a rebuke to it. Surely, the true religion cannot be a product of Semitic or Arabic culture. Had you been even minutely aware of Islam, you would've known that there was absolutely no societal imperative in Arabia that would've resulted in the birth of an ideology like Islam. It is a continuation of the revealed scriptures belonging to the Israelites and yet, from the beginning, marked it self as universal. In fact, Islamic tradition inculcates, rectifies, and sheds light upon questions raised by many ancient philosophers and theologians before it and has been inclusive of the rest of mankind from the beginning. Besides which, you're probably aware that much of the world was pagan before the massive shift towards Abrahamic religions.

Firstly, if you've ever been proud of your ethnicity, language, culture, nationality, et cetera, you would have been proud of something that's mostly beyond your control. That does not imply that you do not have the right to be proud of these aspects of your identity. Funny, that you complain about ethnic pride, but you were previously garrulously praising Achakzai for his pride in his mother tongue. Why did you think that his behaviour was acceptable? Its something entirely beyond his control and had he been born a few centuries earlier or a few centuries later he may have been speaking an unintelligible precursor or successor to his current tongue. Hence, based on your logic, your praise of his behavior is unacceptable and he should simply accept Urdu for what it is or possibly English and move on with his life. Don't be a hypocrite and repress your hypocritical morality.

I have already made it clear that the Indo-European connection isn't a disputed one. The fact remains that the IR tribes share a patrilineal lineage with the Yamna and Corded Ware culture. There is archaeological evidence of chariots, which happen to be the hallmark of the old IE tribes and are part and parcel of their mythology. The referenced pagan deities in their myths are essentially the same as those found in the pagan Hellenic and other post IE pantheons of Europe prior to their assimilation into the Sub-Continent. Besides, the presence of Europid people is quite well documented near the Indo-Iranian speaking basin. The Tocharians should ring a bell assuming that you know your history.

As for accomplishments, I already highlighted in my earlier posts that had anyone of us failed to perform, we would end up being surpassed by those that exhibit greater productivity. Ethnic, racial, cultural, national pride does not imply that we look down on other nations or peoples, neither does it imply that others are incapable of overcoming us. It is a fact that we have underperformed and underachieved in the modern world, but that blame lies solely on the people, who are just as capable, except that they are burdened by a host of other problems that stifles their productivity. The world is based on the survival of the fittest and for good measure considering that this paradigm aids the human species. Besides, since I have already alluded to performance being the key to success, I would suggest that you rescind the condescending attitude given your complete failure & hypocrisy so far. Incidentally, languages do not outperform each other, people do. The Indo-Iranian languages are just as capable in regards to scientific and technological development. Persian for instance was used alongside Arabic by plenty of people in the east for literary works, which inculcates mathematics and chronicling.

You may find a "solace" by imagining a connection of urdu with English based on language lexical whatever but no self respecting Englishman will find any solace of his language connection with urdu or pakistani. In fact they will be repelled and would rather spend time learning mandarin.

Firstly, I am not imagining a connection. The Indo-European language family is as well established as the Semitic language family and the macro grouping Afroasiatic. In fact, the Indo-European language family is the best studied out there and the links between the classics exist not merely because of lexical similarity, which by the way is eerily similar, but also due to a similar grammar and syntax, which is indicative of a
genetic relationship. Evidence for it cannot be forged. Scripts used to write Sanskrit remain in use today, as do the languages that inherit its lexical base. The problem with intellectually retarded and morally perverse people like yourself is your inability to accept uncomfortable truths and the insurmountable arrogance, which causes you to believe that academia around the world consisting of diverse nationalities have conspired to deceive you. I can't decide whether its racism, arrogance, or a severe case of solipsism, which has led you to believe that unprovable allegations of forgery recorded in some unknown book constitutes better evidence than all the peer reviewed academic work out there. There is no student of the Indo-European classics that could possibly study these tongues without having his jaw drop open from amazement.

Once again, your irrationality, prejudice, racist demeanor or an inferiority complex emerges from within your inscription. You do realize that it was a British polyglot named Sir William Jones, who happened to be amongst the first among Europeans in the colonial era to study Sanskrit. I will provide you with a quote from him that's pretty well known among people who have a basic interest in this field.

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists."

You realize that you just slandered that man's character? Moving on, other ethnic groups may find solace in whatever they want and are free to detest the idea of someone else speaking a language springing from the same source. Their alleged resentment has no bearing on reality. Urdu, Persian, Russian, et cetera remain related to French, English, and German. Of course, that relation is more distant than those of the archaic classics. You seem to require foreign validation for your views in order to be content. Learning Mandarin isn't exactly a bad choice. You seem to imply that learning Mandarin is a waste of time. Are you subconsciously accepting that there is a hierarchy or caste system of languages, which mankind adheres to when undertaking educational decisions? Weren't you vociferously exclaiming that you found that repulsive? I find your illogicality repulsive. Guess what? People are free to learn whatever they want considering that all knowledge stems from the Creator and as His creation, they have the inviolable right to acquire it as per their whims and discretions. Languages gain importance through the efforts of the people. Is Pakistan as influential, rich, or industrialized as China? Nope, therefore, it is only natural that people would tilt towards the more useful tongue.

Now getting to your remark about finding solace, there are a few things you need to understand. Humans are naturally tribalistic. Tribalism is the reason a diverse variety of sounds, appearances, architectural heritage, et cetera exist on earth. Humanity has evolved to compete and that is an advantage because it averts the placement of all eggs in one basket. As they have competed, they have ended up being displaced, assimilated, and vanquished into and out of geographical and cultural spectrums. Think of modern diaspora populations for instance that have no choice but to labour and bear the rebuke of foreigners merely because their compatriots back home failed to provide adequate economic opportunities or equitable living standards. What is happening today, happened in the past. Your precious Achakzai is a Pashtun. Do you realize that Pasthuns are a hybrid group that absorbed other Iranic speakers? The Bactrians for instance have been assimilated among them and consequently, Bactrian no longer exists. Bactrian is an Iranic language & Achakzai may have some of their blood. That casts doubt on your claim of him celebrating his true roots by honoring Pashto as his sole mother tongue. Where was your intellectual integrity then? Remember when you referred to lesser ancestors? Why are you so discriminatory, racist, and prejudiced towards the Pasthuns of Bactrian descent? Isn't their language due credence, what does it matter if their culture is dead? I am going by your logical conundrums here.

Here is the thing, any single human being is made up of diverse ancestries. Naturally, some happen to be more dominant than others. Hell, even within a successive chain of ancestors unperturbed by outsiders, languages evolve to be mutually unintelligible. Consequently, a modern human is almost never speaking the language of all his forefathers, he is instead speaking a modern variety of a branch of his ancestors more archaic speech. Should he be upset that he doesn't speak them all? How many defunct and extinct languages is he to learn to celebrate his roots? Learning languages is great, but if you learn too many extinct ones, you are simply reinventing the wheel, learn too few contemporary ones and you remain functionally illiterate. Ergo, he may find solace or remain content in the knowledge that his tongue is similar to the speech of his ancestors. What about the Bactrians that assimilated in to the Dari speaking populace? Should their self-esteem be crushed by the fact that they speak a variety of Persian? Or should they be happy to know that Persian is just an alternatively evolved form of their Bactrian, both of which descend from the language of their more archaic ancestors that spoke Proto-Indo-Iranian. In fact, they are similar enough that any novice learner would immediately observe cognates, grammatic, and syntactic similarities between them.

Languages change as people experience the brunt of reality and that desire for cultural and societal preservation can only be maintained so far. Hence, the term compromise. The ethnic groups of Pakistan find themselves as a single federation and couldn't possibly survive otherwise, which necessitates the need for a lingua franca. Urdu, stems from a similar source and happens to be representative enough of the diversity that we find here. In the event that a middle class Punjabi kid, for instance, never bothered to learn his "ethnic" tongue, should he bemoan his circumstances or should he be cognizant of the fact that Urdu is a variety of a similar and not too far removed ancestral tongue to the extent that both languages retain some mutual intelligibility. Consequently, it makes no difference and his vernacular tongue does not modify any other aspect of his identity. The same logic applies to the "Urdu speakers", & the Bactrians in my previous example have undergone a similar transition. For the most part, IE languages retain core similarities and make no mistake, were you to find yourself speaking Polish, it would retain and share core elements with your former IE tongue, which includes a similarity within cognates. A better example would be a comparison between Lithuanian and the IE classics like Sanskrit and Latin. A simple cognate comparison chart may be found here. Why on earth would I cry over having to speak any of these tongues? Stop being xenophobic and learn to be more inclusive. There is much more to it than that and we haven't even begun to look at more complex equations that examine the impact of assimilating in to foreign races, speaking unrelated languages, etc. I could carry on the elucidation, but it's better to leave it here for now. To summarize, speaking another IE tongue is a fair compromise between the need for pragmatism and the desire to conserve existing differences.

And one more thing racism has actually a chance of working in west where race differences more clear and sharp. But there is no chance of it working in pakistan where there are tens of millions of dark people. There is more need to be anti-racist as pakistani rather than American. But like most south asians I believe the dark skinned population of your country are invisible to you.

Actually, there are millions of dark people in the US as well. I am not a racist so stop with your retarded libellous accusations. All I did was use dark skin and fair skin as a euphemism for ethnic groups and you ridiculously wield that to distract readers from your incineration. When you claimed that Sanskrit was reconstructed, you were proven wrong. When you mocked me for not caring about the forgotten languages of our forefathers, you foolishly ended up doing the same thing by contentiously declaring that Pashto is the only linguistic heritage of the Pashtun people. When you claimed to be repulsed by a "caste system of languages", you conveniently forgot that you exhibited and exuded similar tendencies by your derogatory comments against Sanskrit, the vulgar form of which is an ancestor to our modern tongues. Ergo, you ended up insulting our modern day languages for better or for worse.

Coincidentally, Sanskrit has many cognates with English. The word for daughter is "duhitar", which as per your intellect implies that a bit of Sanskrit's diabolicalness rubs off on English. Do you feel that English speakers are evil malignant twerps too? After all, they utter and deploy the same words as the virulent old Sanskrit speakers. You alluded to yourself as being "right thinking", but then you went on to associate anyone being fond of Sanskrit as an oppressor that favours the caste system. How intelligent could you possibly be to believe that having a fondness for a language necessarily equates to admiring the morals and values of the people that once spoke it? I am fond of Latin too, does that mean that I intend to commit a genocide against Gauls? Again, you hypocritically exude the same attributes that you falsely accuse others of, & are outright oblivious to your own "moral repulsiveness".

I am being more inclusive of others by highlighting the similarities between our tongues, whereas you desire lesser inclusiveness. Following which, you dare to speak of racism. What's next, if you feel that your national language doesn't represent your culture or identity, why not jump a step further and claim that your country, which is a conglomerate of ethnic groups doesn't represent your true heritage either? After all, a Pakistani could be anyone ranging from a villager in Sindh to a Turkic person from the Hazara community. I am reasonably certain that people like yourself harbor such thoughts, but I could be wrong, you might just be too imprudent to perceive the consequences of your inclinations. I am not racist against my current compatriots, that would be foolish given that our forefathers have relatively peacefully co-existed and have evolved a culture inclusive of the concerns of others in their neighborhoods. What racism are you referring to in any case? I haven't violated anyone's God given rights or abused anyone because I consider him or her permanently incapacitated. You on the other hand exhibit intellectual and moral bias. Just refer to your earlier examples. Actually, the plight of Pakistan's "dark skinned" communities is the same as the others. In fact, some of the worst impacted communities of the country aren't even dark skinned. Nevertheless, the poor of the country aren't any more apparent to you either considering that you feel Pakistani kids should learn multiple ethnic languages like Switzerland. Are you serious? You do realize that learning minor languages is a waste of time, resources, and equates to a reinvention of the wheel? They would be better off allocating that time to mathematics, science, and information technology. So many poorer kids are unable to make it to school because of the need to labour with their families and adding irrelevant content to their educational burden further exacerbates their plight.

To conclude, languages aren't your area of expertise. I wouldn't say they are mine either, but you sorely lack the knowledge to discuss them. My initial post on this thread was to highlight how petty the dislike towards other IR tongues like Urdu was given that it branches off from the same source. Unless you've something meaningful to add, go waste someone else's time because you clearly aren't in the mood to learn. Put an end to the slanderous remarks that you frequently deploy as a weapon to avoid productive discourse.
 
. .
What I have noticed about you is that you're emotional to the point that any uncomfortable truth causes you to run for the hills. Intellectual freedom and performance depends on discussing any idea without the fear of libellous accusations. Actually, the theory isn't 2000 year old so get your facts straight. Incidentally, when I use the word Indo-Iranian and Aryan, I am not using it in the context the National Socialists referred to it. The fact is that the word Aryan descends from the reconstructed PIE word "heryos" meaning kinsman. Its a name with ethnic connotations, the meaning of which evolved over time as new culturo-linguistic groups developed. There is a language hierarchy for mankind, and that holds true even if you were to set aside Pakistan. English is among the most important languages in the world today and we would learn it irrespective of its language grouping. The fact that it is an IE tongue is mere coincidence. Following English, Spanish, French, and Chinese are important tongues, but importance also depends on the cultural context of a people. For instance, learning Spanish would benefit a person in North America more than it would a person living in Egypt unless he plans on migrating to a Spanish speaking country.

As for Pakistan, the minor ethnic languages are underdeveloped and believe it or not offer poorer utility at the moment than even Urdu does. Besides, lots of Pakistani kids speak their ethnic tongues in conjunction with Urdu so that native advantage that ethnic tongues offer in education isn't that apparent. Hell, Urdu teaching in Pakistani government schools probably fails to meet the standards of language learning elsewhere and the results show it. Unfortunately, the messed up education system is the result of a number of aforementioned factors that don't necessarily have a bearing on language. Besides, studying in your native tongue is an advantage when you understand the native tongue better grammatically and syntactically then a 2nd language. Most kids in Pakistan that speak Urdu alongside their ethnic tongue have more or less inherited mimicry and couldn't possible perceive and analyze statements better in one than the other. Just read up on their literacy tests so far. Hence, any language that they are formally taught at the start of their schooling has the potential to function as their primary tongue.

You aren't a "right thinking" or a logical person, when you go around denying that similar languages descend from common ancestors, & that's something visible even today. Maltese descends from Arabic and the Romance languages descend from Latin. The fact that you deny that association makes you come across as a fool. I have said this before and I will say it again, I have no qualms with Pakistanis adopting any tongue, it need not be Urdu, but I hope that its an IE tongue. Besides, I ain't the only human that feels an affinity to languages similar to his own. Note that, if the state of Pakistan were to adopt Punjabi, Kashmiri, Balochi or Sindhi as its sole national tongue, it would remain an Indo-Iranian tongue just like Urdu, so your point is moot. Remember that "fair skin/dark skin" conundrum, which caused your "snowflake" mind to wail in agony? That's at play here, because no ethnicity desires that their language be sidelined for someone else's despite them being equal citizens. Hence, Urdu was brought forward as a neutral party, and is one related to and possesses historicity in this geographical sphere to satiate the egotistical and nationalistic tendencies of the ethnic groups. The existence of phenotypes, which is just a classification based on physically observable traits happens to be racist now? Had they not existed, you wouldn't enjoy the diverse appearances that humans possess.



Morally repugnant? Can you back up that claim and explain how stating that one language is more useful than another explicitly violates the rights of a sound system (language)? Or are you just asserting that because of your failure to counter me so far, and have deployed libel and ad hominems to aid your escape? I will tell you what wiseguy, I want you to invest your time in learning some irrelevant and obscure language at the expense of another lingua franca. Why don't you take up learning Quechua? Should you fail to do that, it would be undoubtedly clear that you're a prejudiced racist that despises the people among whom those languages formed.

Islam is Semitic now is it? Don't you realize that your classification of Islam as an ethno-linguistic religion is a rebuke to it. Surely, the true religion cannot be a product of Semitic or Arabic culture. Had you been even minutely aware of Islam, you would've known that there was absolutely no societal imperative in Arabia that would've resulted in the birth of an ideology like Islam. It is a continuation of the revealed scriptures belonging to the Israelites and yet, from the beginning, marked it self as universal. In fact, Islamic tradition inculcates, rectifies, and sheds light upon questions raised by many ancient philosophers and theologians before it and has been inclusive of the rest of mankind from the beginning. Besides which, you're probably aware that much of the world was pagan before the massive shift towards Abrahamic religions.

Firstly, if you've ever been proud of your ethnicity, language, culture, nationality, et cetera, you would have been proud of something that's mostly beyond your control. That does not imply that you do not have the right to be proud of these aspects of your identity. Funny, that you complain about ethnic pride, but you were previously garrulously praising Achakzai for his pride in his mother tongue. Why did you think that his behaviour was acceptable? Its something entirely beyond his control and had he been born a few centuries earlier or a few centuries later he may have been speaking an unintelligible precursor or successor to his current tongue. Hence, based on your logic, your praise of his behavior is unacceptable and he should simply accept Urdu for what it is or possibly English and move on with his life. Don't be a hypocrite and repress your hypocritical morality.

I have already made it clear that the Indo-European connection isn't a disputed one. The fact remains that the IR tribes share a patrilineal lineage with the Yamna and Corded Ware culture. There is archaeological evidence of chariots, which happen to be the hallmark of the old IE tribes and are part and parcel of their mythology. The referenced pagan deities in their myths are essentially the same as those found in the pagan Hellenic and other post IE pantheons of Europe prior to their assimilation into the Sub-Continent. Besides, the presence of Europid people is quite well documented near the Indo-Iranian speaking basin. The Tocharians should ring a bell assuming that you know your history.

As for accomplishments, I already highlighted in my earlier posts that had anyone of us failed to perform, we would end up being surpassed by those that exhibit greater productivity. Ethnic, racial, cultural, national pride does not imply that we look down on other nations or peoples, neither does it imply that others are incapable of overcoming us. It is a fact that we have underperformed and underachieved in the modern world, but that blame lies solely on the people, who are just as capable, except that they are burdened by a host of other problems that stifles their productivity. The world is based on the survival of the fittest and for good measure considering that this paradigm aids the human species. Besides, since I have already alluded to performance being the key to success, I would suggest that you rescind the condescending attitude given your complete failure & hypocrisy so far. Incidentally, languages do not outperform each other, people do. The Indo-Iranian languages are just as capable in regards to scientific and technological development. Persian for instance was used alongside Arabic by plenty of people in the east for literary works, which inculcates mathematics and chronicling.



Firstly, I am not imagining a connection. The Indo-European language family is as well established as the Semitic language family and the macro grouping Afroasiatic. In fact, the Indo-European language family is the best studied out there and the links between the classics exist not merely because of lexical similarity, which by the way is eerily similar, but also due to a similar grammar and syntax, which is indicative of a
genetic relationship. Evidence for it cannot be forged. Scripts used to write Sanskrit remain in use today, as do the languages that inherit its lexical base. The problem with intellectually retarded and morally perverse people like yourself is your inability to accept uncomfortable truths and the insurmountable arrogance, which causes you to believe that academia around the world consisting of diverse nationalities have conspired to deceive you. I can't decide whether its racism, arrogance, or a severe case of solipsism, which has led you to believe that unprovable allegations of forgery recorded in some unknown book constitutes better evidence than all the peer reviewed academic work out there. There is no student of the Indo-European classics that could possibly study these tongues without having his jaw drop open from amazement.

Once again, your irrationality, prejudice, racist demeanor or an inferiority complex emerges from within your inscription. You do realize that it was a British polyglot named Sir William Jones, who happened to be amongst the first among Europeans in the colonial era to study Sanskrit. I will provide you with a quote from him that's pretty well known among people who have a basic interest in this field.

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists."

You realize that you just slandered that man's character? Moving on, other ethnic groups may find solace in whatever they want and are free to detest the idea of someone else speaking a language springing from the same source. Their alleged resentment has no bearing on reality. Urdu, Persian, Russian, et cetera remain related to French, English, and German. Of course, that relation is more distant than those of the archaic classics. You seem to require foreign validation for your views in order to be content. Learning Mandarin isn't exactly a bad choice. You seem to imply that learning Mandarin is a waste of time. Are you subconsciously accepting that there is a hierarchy or caste system of languages, which mankind adheres to when undertaking educational decisions? Weren't you vociferously exclaiming that you found that repulsive? I find your illogicality repulsive. Guess what? People are free to learn whatever they want considering that all knowledge stems from the Creator and as His creation, they have the inviolable right to acquire it as per their whims and discretions. Languages gain importance through the efforts of the people. Is Pakistan as influential, rich, or industrialized as China? Nope, therefore, it is only natural that people would tilt towards the more useful tongue.

Now getting to your remark about finding solace, there are a few things you need to understand. Humans are naturally tribalistic. Tribalism is the reason a diverse variety of sounds, appearances, architectural heritage, et cetera exist on earth. Humanity has evolved to compete and that is an advantage because it averts the placement of all eggs in one basket. As they have competed, they have ended up being displaced, assimilated, and vanquished into and out of geographical and cultural spectrums. Think of modern diaspora populations for instance that have no choice but to labour and bear the rebuke of foreigners merely because their compatriots back home failed to provide adequate economic opportunities or equitable living standards. What is happening today, happened in the past. Your precious Achakzai is a Pashtun. Do you realize that Pasthuns are a hybrid group that absorbed other Iranic speakers? The Bactrians for instance have been assimilated among them and consequently, Bactrian no longer exists. Bactrian is an Iranic language & Achakzai may have some of their blood. That casts doubt on your claim of him celebrating his true roots by honoring Pashto as his sole mother tongue. Where was your intellectual integrity then? Remember when you referred to lesser ancestors? Why are you so discriminatory, racist, and prejudiced towards the Pasthuns of Bactrian descent? Isn't their language due credence, what does it matter if their culture is dead? I am going by your logical conundrums here.

Here is the thing, any single human being is made up of diverse ancestries. Naturally, some happen to be more dominant than others. Hell, even within a successive chain of ancestors unperturbed by outsiders, languages evolve to be mutually unintelligible. Consequently, a modern human is almost never speaking the language of all his forefathers, he is instead speaking a modern variety of a branch of his ancestors more archaic speech. Should he be upset that he doesn't speak them all? How many defunct and extinct languages is he to learn to celebrate his roots? Learning languages is great, but if you learn too many extinct ones, you are simply reinventing the wheel, learn too few contemporary ones and you remain functionally illiterate. Ergo, he may find solace or remain content in the knowledge that his tongue is similar to the speech of his ancestors. What about the Bactrians that assimilated in to the Dari speaking populace? Should their self-esteem be crushed by the fact that they speak a variety of Persian? Or should they be happy to know that Persian is just an alternatively evolved form of their Bactrian, both of which descend from the language of their more archaic ancestors that spoke Proto-Indo-Iranian. In fact, they are similar enough that any novice learner would immediately observe cognates, grammatic, and syntactic similarities between them.

Languages change as people experience the brunt of reality and that desire for cultural and societal preservation can only be maintained so far. Hence, the term compromise. The ethnic groups of Pakistan find themselves as a single federation and couldn't possibly survive otherwise, which necessitates the need for a lingua franca. Urdu, stems from a similar source and happens to be representative enough of the diversity that we find here. In the event that a middle class Punjabi kid, for instance, never bothered to learn his "ethnic" tongue, should he bemoan his circumstances or should he be cognizant of the fact that Urdu is a variety of a similar and not too far removed ancestral tongue to the extent that both languages retain some mutual intelligibility. Consequently, it makes no difference and his vernacular tongue does not modify any other aspect of his identity. The same logic applies to the "Urdu speakers", & the Bactrians in my previous example have undergone a similar transition. For the most part, IE languages retain core similarities and make no mistake, were you to find yourself speaking Polish, it would retain and share core elements with your former IE tongue, which includes a similarity within cognates. A better example would be a comparison between Lithuanian and the IE classics like Sanskrit and Latin. A simple cognate comparison chart may be found here. Why on earth would I cry over having to speak any of these tongues? Stop being xenophobic and learn to be more inclusive. There is much more to it than that and we haven't even begun to look at more complex equations that examine the impact of assimilating in to foreign races, speaking unrelated languages, etc. I could carry on the elucidation, but it's better to leave it here for now. To summarize, speaking another IE tongue is a fair compromise between the need for pragmatism and the desire to conserve existing differences.



Actually, there are millions of dark people in the US as well. I am not a racist so stop with your retarded libellous accusations. All I did was use dark skin and fair skin as a euphemism for ethnic groups and you ridiculously wield that to distract readers from your incineration. When you claimed that Sanskrit was reconstructed, you were proven wrong. When you mocked me for not caring about the forgotten languages of our forefathers, you foolishly ended up doing the same thing by contentiously declaring that Pashto is the only linguistic heritage of the Pashtun people. When you claimed to be repulsed by a "caste system of languages", you conveniently forgot that you exhibited and exuded similar tendencies by your derogatory comments against Sanskrit, the vulgar form of which is an ancestor to our modern tongues. Ergo, you ended up insulting our modern day languages for better or for worse.

Coincidentally, Sanskrit has many cognates with English. The word for daughter is "duhitar", which as per your intellect implies that a bit of Sanskrit's diabolicalness rubs off on English. Do you feel that English speakers are evil malignant twerps too? After all, they utter and deploy the same words as the virulent old Sanskrit speakers. You alluded to yourself as being "right thinking", but then you went on to associate anyone being fond of Sanskrit as an oppressor that favours the caste system. How intelligent could you possibly be to believe that having a fondness for a language necessarily equates to admiring the morals and values of the people that once spoke it? I am fond of Latin too, does that mean that I intend to commit a genocide against Gauls? Again, you hypocritically exude the same attributes that you falsely accuse others of, & are outright oblivious to your own "moral repulsiveness".

I am being more inclusive of others by highlighting the similarities between our tongues, whereas you desire lesser inclusiveness. Following which, you dare to speak of racism. What's next, if you feel that your national language doesn't represent your culture or identity, why not jump a step further and claim that your country, which is a conglomerate of ethnic groups doesn't represent your true heritage either? After all, a Pakistani could be anyone ranging from a villager in Sindh to a Turkic person from the Hazara community. I am reasonably certain that people like yourself harbor such thoughts, but I could be wrong, you might just be too imprudent to perceive the consequences of your inclinations. I am not racist against my current compatriots, that would be foolish given that our forefathers have relatively peacefully co-existed and have evolved a culture inclusive of the concerns of others in their neighborhoods. What racism are you referring to in any case? I haven't violated anyone's God given rights or abused anyone because I consider him or her permanently incapacitated. You on the other hand exhibit intellectual and moral bias. Just refer to your earlier examples. Actually, the plight of Pakistan's "dark skinned" communities is the same as the others. In fact, some of the worst impacted communities of the country aren't even dark skinned. Nevertheless, the poor of the country aren't any more apparent to you either considering that you feel Pakistani kids should learn multiple ethnic languages like Switzerland. Are you serious? You do realize that learning minor languages is a waste of time, resources, and equates to a reinvention of the wheel? They would be better off allocating that time to mathematics, science, and information technology. So many poorer kids are unable to make it to school because of the need to labour with their families and adding irrelevant content to their educational burden further exacerbates their plight.

To conclude, languages aren't your area of expertise. I wouldn't say they are mine either, but you sorely lack the knowledge to discuss them. My initial post on this thread was to highlight how petty the dislike towards other IR tongues like Urdu was given that it branches off from the same source. Unless you've something meaningful to add, go waste someone else's time because you clearly aren't in the mood to learn. Put an end to the slanderous remarks that you frequently deploy as a weapon to avoid productive discourse.

Dude - i neither supported your theory nor condemned. I said it doesn't matter. No matter how many times i say it you keep coming back defending it more and more. Is there a single instance of a nation which voluntarily gave up mother tongue to foreign language and justified it as similar grouping so doesnt matter ? Nobody does it.

Not sure why you cannot see what an oddball you are. And yes i do have contempt for those who get their heads stuck in Aryan theory, sing praises of sanskrit. I know the people who do - almost all of them racist scumbags ranging from colonials to nazis to brahmins including your Sir William Jones who is another weirdo. I am not going to cut a special cookie for you because of your claims of innocence. You need to get over it. Examine the company you are in and accept the consequence.

No - dislike of Urdu among pusthuns or sindhis is not petty. As I said again no one really likes a foreign tongue over their others based on theories. Its you who are weird and just not getting it. maybe if you get your head out of those theories you will see the reality for what it is.
 
.
Back
Top Bottom