Here is another interesting view on the subject:
Story of Hindustani II
Razia Husain April 28, 2010
Tags: language , liguistics , urdu , hindi
My last article on Urdu-Hindi (U-H) dilemma, or digraphia as linguists put it, was to set the stage for making the case that the current Persian-Derived script of Urdu needs considerable revisions and Devnagari script of Hindi needs some minor adjustments so the U-H can be completely transliteratedin either script. However since Hindustani is not a recognized name of the U-H language, I will stick to U-H to refer to the language spoken in Northern subcontinent.
This issue of reforming Persian-Derived Script (PDS) of Urdu has been raised several times in the past. For this reason alone, we can deduct that there is at least a perceived problem with PDS. Throughout the article I will be referencing a book: Urdu zabaan aur adab (Urdu Language and Literature) by Dr. Farmaan Fatehpuri, 2005 edition.
DEFINITIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS
I am using U-H for Urdu-Hindi Language. I have used PDS for Persian Derived Script of U-H, and DNS for Deva Nagari Script of U-H, however convention seems to be that if U-H is written in PDS it is referred to as Urdu and if U-H is written in DNS it is referred to as Hindi. Of course my assumption that Urdu-Hindi is one language is not shared by all. If you take up any Urdu dictionary, it classifies many words as of Hindi origin, as if Hindi is another language.
The result is that there are very few Urdu words in Urdu dictionary
most of them are Hindi or Persian!! This fact alone makes it ridiculous to separate Hindi from Urdu. I have also used Farsi for Persian Language and Persian for anything belonging to Persia or Iran such as Persian people, Persian script etc. Another short form I am using is ARB for Araab which are tiny marks on letters depicting the short vowel sounds in PDS.
In this article I will discuss the following points:
1. PDS and U-H has no direct influence from Arabic
2. PDS of Urdu needs reform.
3. Reasons to reform PDS and to not reform it.
BACKGROUND
Let us first start with some basic understanding of the language parameters. Urdu-Hindi (U-H) is classified as Indo-European language. It has a SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) structure, meaning that sentences are formed where subject precedes object and verb is at the end of the sentence. The generic ending of the original verbs is na as in khana, pina and sona etc. The language has borrowed many words from Farsi, Sanskrit, English, Portugese , Turkish and limited number of words from other languages of the world. However majority of borrowed words are from Sanskrit based languages and Farsi. ( Later in the article, I will argue that there are very few DIRECT Arabic words in U-H. ) Majority of borrowed words are nouns, adjectives and adverbs. Original verbs are mostly derived from Sanskrit based indigenous languages of the subcontinent. Foreign words can be used as verbs with the addition of verb-makers such hona and karna etc. The sentence structure, verb ending and the fact that majority of verbs are from Sanskrit based languages, makes Sanskrit the parent language of U-H, and not Farsi.
U-H IS NOT INFLUENCED BY ARABIC
Relationship between U-H and Farsi
One thing to note is that Old Farsi and Sanskrit are sister languages and Farsi words end in an rather than na as in U-H. Incidentally, the very few original verbs that are borrowed by U-H, outside of Sanskrit family of languages, are from Farsi. However, once borrowed they end in na and therefore claimed by U-H for e.g khareedna and Nawaazna.
However, this borrowing is rare. For example there is khareedna from Farsi khareedan but there is no farokhtana from Farsi farokhtan. The word farokht is used in U-H as a noun with addition of karna, the U-H verb-maker. U-H users can make a verb out of any foreign word, as in log cheezaiN sell karte haiN..or people sell things. This sentence is not a proper sentence from language stand point but is perfectly intelligible to U-H speakers because the conjugation of the verb is supplied by the verb-maker in the form of karte haiN turning sell inot a U-H verb. Also a side note to this is Farsi itself makes verbs out of foreign words by using the verb maker kardan and shudan. Kardan is very similar to U-H karna..one of the evidences of similar origin of both modern Farsi and U-H.
Therefore if U-H is a daughter of Sanskrit, it is a niece of Farsi.
Urdu script: Arabic or Persian?
Linguists have used many names for script of Urdu ranging from Arabic script to Perso-Arabic to Persian script. I prefer using the Persian Derived script because this script is likely derived from Persian script by people who spoke Farsi well but were not well versed in Sanskrit based languages. I will come back to this point later in the article, and try to prove it through observed traits in PDS.
One must remember that the Persian script was derived from Arabic in 8th century. Very few people knew how to read and write and therefore the written word was for the learned eyes only. A lot of guess-work was left for the readers in Persian script and it was not a problem then, as readers already knew the words being written. Urdu script, on the other hand, was developed at least 900 years later and by that time literacy had been relatively wide spread. Whatever inadequacy Persian script had, to code Farsi, was brought in by the Farsi-speaking linguists who developed PDS of Urdu. No effort was made to remove the ambiguities of the script to make it easier for people to read their own language.
I am convinced that Urdu script is derived from Persian script alone and has no direct Arabic influence. Sure enough the Persian script is derived from Arabic script but there is a difference between derived from Arabic and derived from Persian. One evidence is that Urdu spells Arabic words with Farsi spelling (with h of Farsi rather than round t of Arabic). If Arabic spellings were this important (it seems that they were important to some extent that is why we have four z sound and three s sounds from Arabic) we would have used an Arabic t ending and not the Farsi h ending.
In fact we follow the Farsi tradition in using two dots on the h of Farsi to make Arabic composites such as maarkat-ul-aara, where maarka is Persian spelling of Arabic maarkat and when used alone, is written without the two dots, but when combined, two dots are added to h of Farsi to pronounce t of Arabic.
Also the short vowels of Arabic are Persianized in Farsi and PDS uses the Persianized pronunciation of zer, zabar and paish. In Arabic zer or kasra is a short i but in Farsi it is a short e and thats how Urdu reads it. Similarly paish or damma is a short oo in Arabic but a short o in Farsi and Urdu etc.
Indian Dowry given by Persians or Arabs?
Most all the Arabic words in U-H came to U-H from Farsi. There are few exceptions..such as the variants of word jhz which may have entered the local dialects long before Persians invaded Hindustan, thru sea-faring Arab merchants. jahaaz, jahaiz and tajheez are some of its variants used in U-H. However this word is of particular interest to me since the time I learned that the Hindi spelling (and pronunciation) of jahaiz is dahaij. This variance in pronunciation is a clue that this word existed in the local dialect before Persians because there is no z sound in Sanskrit based languages and is usually supplanted by j sound. Also when this word would have been heard by natives of sub-continent from Arabs, they would not have recognized the j sound because Arabs pronounce it djzh and so they probably approximated it with d. This is why jahaiz became dahaij in Hindi. However in Urdu it is spelt and pronounced jahaiz which is a Farsi (not Arabic) pronunciation. So the word jahaiz which could have come to India directly from Arabs still got Persianized in Urdu but stayed Arabic in Hindi with local pronunciation. Such is the influence of Farsi on U-H!!!
Proof is in the Pronunciation
Empirical evidence that most Arabic words in U-H came through Farsi, is in the pronunciation. U-H uses the z of Farsi to pronounce all four z sounds in Arabic: zay, zaal, zuaad and zuain. Now, Farsi has less sounds than U-H, in particular it does not have any aspirated sounds such as th, dh, Dh, gh etc. The zuaad of PDS, is pronounced by Arabs as something close to dh of U-H. Had the word zameer (conscience) come to us through Arabic sources, we would be still writing it with zuaad but we would be pronouncing it dhameer, (closer to the actual sound than z). Would be and could be are hard to prove, so let us take the example of the letter say in PDS. U-H users pronounce this letter as s in all Arabic words such as saabat (whole), saboot (proof) and behas (argument).
However this letter is pronounced th in Arabic, the same th sound as an Englishman pronounces thank you with. When U-H speakers heard the English pronouncing thank you, they quickly approximated the th sound with th of U-H (the th of English and th of U-H are distinctly different.) Had the words with say letter, come to U-H directly from Arabic sources, they would be pronounced thaabat and thaboot
no questions about it. So why dont U-H speakers pronounce Arabic words with the closest approximations of sounds in their own language? Simple. They did not borrow these words from Arabic, they borrowed it from Persians
and Persians dont have the th and dh sounds to approximate Arabic sounds with. So now all U-H speakers pronounce Arabic words with Farsi pronunciation!
I have done some basic research of looking up words in Urdu dictionary which were marked Arabic and then looking them up in Farsi dictionary. So far I havent found any word in U-H, of Arabic origin, which is in Urdu but NOT in Farsi. If readers find some, please let me know. Even if we find a few such words, the overwhelming evidence is that Arabic is not a direct influence on U-H, but has been filtered through Farsi.
Many English words originate from Latin, Greek and Old German. However when those words are used in U-H, the U-H dictionary lists them as English, because, as far as U-H is concerned, the words came through interaction with English speaking people. Similarly if an Arabic word enters U-H through interaction with Farsi speaking Persians, it should be entered into the dictionary as Farsi and not Arabic.
There have been few Arab-Indian interactions and certainly not to a point where major source of our languages vocabulary could be Arabic. However we had extensive interactions with Persians for thousands of years so we have a lot of Farsi words in our language. As an example the word falsafah came to Arabic from Greek philo (love) and sophy (wisdom). From Arabic it came to Farsi and from Farsi it came to U-H. Arabic dictionary should list it as originating from Greek, Farsi should list it as originating from Arabic and U-H should list it as originating from Farsi (Especially because the PDS spells it with h of Farsi rather than the t of Arabic.) Yet if you see an Urdu dictionary, you will find falsafah listed as an Arabic word. For Muslims of South Asia, there seems to be deep rooted desire of associating themselves with Arabs
as if by this association they will be more Islamic or otherwise better off than their non-Muslim counterparts. This is primarily the reason they hang on to PDS and insist on Urdu being a different language than Hindi.
PDS NEEDS REFORM
As stated before, PDS has been seriously reviewed by scholars several times in the past since the time of Maulvi Fazlul Haq. This alone points to the fact that scholars, and not just average users of the language, perceive a problem with PDS.
Aadmi koi hamara dam-e-tehreer bhi tha? (was our man
present at the time of writing?)
Although I have not researched the identities of linguists assigned to create the PDS for coding U-H, the script holds some clues as to their identities. These linguists either did not know Sanskrit or at least didnt hear the difference in pronunciation of Sanskrit based words (it is hard to differentiate the sounds of a language you dont know well.) Because of reasons given below, it seems that there was no one in the cabinet of PDS linguists who represented the local vernaculars.
Let us first examine the sounds of PDS. There is a sound zh as in zholeeda(harried). I bet most readers have not heard of this word that is because zh is seldom used. Yet PDS has a letter assigned to this sound. This sound could have been easily approximated with z and no one would have noticed! Now lets look at the RN sound (or as DNS would have it DN sound) in GaRNesha or RawaRN. This sound does not exist commonly in U-H, but Hindu speakers of U-H would have at least needed it to pronounce their religious terms
yet there is no letter assigned to it in PDS and it is approximated with n. Therefore PDS would have to write Ganesh and Rawan and pronounce them such as well. The creators of PDS thought it important to keep the zh sound but not the RN sound, either because they didnt know about the uses of RN, didnt hear the difference between N and RN or didnt care enough. Then there are other clues..
The book Urdu Language and Literature, while offering a rebuttal against the accusation on PDS for using too many forms of same letter (at the beginning, middle and end) cites an example on page 81 (2005 Edition). It explains how r is written differently in the several words in DNS: aadarsh, prakaash and sarkaar. While in PDS only one form of r is used to write all three, thereby proving that DNS also uses many shapes of same letter. At first I did not understand the argument, for me these were three different sounds : r making a conjunct after the vowel (aada-rsh), r making a conjunct before the vowel (pr-akash) and r making a pseudo-conjunct (sar-kaar, therefore written as a full r in DNS). But since the book is written by an authority on Urdu language, I looked at this example several times and finally realized that PDS readers would indeed pronounce aadarsh only if they have heard it before, otherwise theyd pronounce it aadarash, they will pronounce sarkaar correctly, as sar-kaar because it is not a true conjunct, and they would read prakaash as parkaash (conjunct moved to the middle). So for a PDS reader all three r are the same. Hence the example given in the book!!!
The problem is that Arabic language has no real conjuncts. All its letters automatically come with a short vowel a, u or i, sort of like Sanskrit whose words commonly end in a as in Rama. Arabic does allow halting of the sound of a letter (only in the middle of a word and not beginning or end,) with a ARB called saakin, producing a pseudo conjunct. For example the word qalbun has a pseudo conjunct in lb. The reason I call it a pseudo-conjunct (it is not a linguistic term) is because the word is not pronounced as qalb-un but rather qal-bun, where the reader halts the sound of l and pronounces the next b with the vowel u.
PDS and Persian script follow this rule of making conjuncts and have not invented a better method to write true conjuncts in the middle as well as each end of the word. Interestingly Farsi words use conjuncts at the end of words so it has developed an unwritten rule that if there is a saakin on the second last letter of a word and no ARB on the last letter, the last two letters will merge to form a true conjunct..such as the word bazm. In this word there is a saakin on z and no ARB on m and readers are supposed to merge zm into a conjunct sound. However since Farsi does not have conjuncts in the beginning of words, there is not even an unwritten rule as to how to write and read conjuncts in the beginning of words!!! For example one cannot really write kya and kyun in PDS because the conjunct is in the beginning. Another corollary to this rule is that there is no way to write two consecutive conjuncts as in Sa-nskr-it where nskr constitutes two consecutive conjuncts. So what do we do with such words in PDS? Glad you asked!
The Genius Script
How do we write conjuncts in PDS if they cannot be written? We dont! We just write the consonants together (which would be the case even if there was a vowel in between them) and we just know magically how to pronounce them! So kya (what) is written the same way as kaya would be written but PDS readers just know to pronounce the word as kya. This means that PDS readers develop intuition not only to provide vowels between consonants but also guess lack of vowels! They have to know where to merge the sounds into conjuncts and where to supply vowel and which vowel. In order for this intuitive scheme to work, readers must already be familiar with the words. No new words can be pronounced until they are first heard by the reader! The script can sound out some words but it cannot even sound out others no matter how many ARBs are used. This turns PDS into a semi-logotype. In which words have a picture and without having any rules to decode the words, reader just knows how to pronounce it and what it means because the picture is familiar.
On page 70 of the book by Dr. Fatehpuri, he commends PDS to have such unique quality that after a few years of practice readers dont need the short vowels or ARB and can read fluently all the words with just the consonants strung together. I personally think that this should be a credit to the readers and not PDS, for it is PDS readers who supply these vowels in their mind and, as we shall find later, they are not always correct!! Interestingly, on page 65, the author argues that English words cannot be written in PDS because main, man and mean would have the same spelling in PDS. I couldnt help but think that how can we, then, write both been (flute) and bayn (crying) in PDS .. they have the same spelling? and the genius readers of PDS simply pick the right pronunciation after going over the sentence twice. This brings me to the problems of vowels in PDS
Vowel trowel:
Readers of PDS can tell you that the letters a, yand w can be used for their sounds as well as vowels in PDS. English also uses a, both as a vowel and as a sound, as in afar. So why be so picky with PDS? The answer is that PDS does not have a clear method to sound its vowels. The most notorious case is with waw or w sound. In Arabic, waw with a saakin is always a vowel o and never a w sound.
However U-H has words where w has to be pronounced in the middle of the word with w sound halted as in avtaar. If we put a zabar (short a vowel) on a and saakin (halt) on waw, it converts the waw into a vowel o and therefore one cannot write avtaar in PDS, it changes to autaar and guess what, this is exactly how PDS readers pronounce avtaar as! Same issue with the word dev, which becomes deo in PDS! For the longest time I used to think that dev was god but deo was a being similar to jinn!! Then I realized it is the same word pronounced differently by PDS readers.
On page 88, PDS is lauded to have the unique quality of taking up less space by omitting (useless?) vowels and stringing all consonants together. The argument is that readers already know the pronunciation so when they see the word and the context of the sentence, they can easily make out what the word is. Ths s n rgmnt wrth ntcng fr rst f th wrld lnggs bcs t cn rvltnz th prntng prss! See! If you were a PDS reader, reading the preceding sentence would be a cinch because youd already know what each word is and no vowels would be needed!
REASONS FOR REFORM AND THOSE TO NOT REFORM THE SCRIPT
Classic complaints
The various arguments in favor of improving the script (taken as accusation by Dr. Fatehpuri in) are answered in his book. Note that these arguments dont include the issues I have raised above. I will write them down in a concise manner so readers are aware of what we are dealing with:
Arguments to reform Urdu Script according to Dr. Farmaan
Fatehpuri, are that the script :
1. Has too many alphabets.
2. Has too many redundant letters that sound the same.
3. Letters take too many shapes and are hard to comprehend.
4. Letters are not type friendly.
5. Has too many silent letters.
6. Has no vowels and therefore hard to pronounce.
Dr. Fatehpuri has counter argued all of these points, albeit with some confusion on guessing the vowels. It seems that the PDS cannot code English because vowels cannot be guessed but it can code U-H because vowels can be guessed? What is missing, though, is the problem that PDS, while making sure Arabic and Farsi words can be coded correctly, does not have a method to code all the sounds of the words borrowed from indigenous languages of South Asia.
PDS: Gateway to Islam?
The author seems to lament over the fact that Urdu speakers have a slave mentality towards their masters - the British (or the West). That people dont like their own heritage and yearn for greatness by associating themselves to cultures and languages they perceive as superior to their own. His arguments are valid. The only question is how do we define our culture. Who are we? Especially the Muslims of South Asia, are they Arab Indians? Or are they simply Muslim Indians?
For Muslims of the subcontinent, the greatest joy comes from the fact that as soon as they accept Islam they can trace their lineage to Arabs of glory days. This is a whole another argument on ummah and its definition, however suffice to say that Muslims of subcontinent are delusional about their relationship with Arabs. So while following the West is slave mentality, following the Arabs is glory to God. Romanizing a language of subcontinent is mindless mimicking but Arabizing the language is following the enlightened path. I have already discussed that PDS marginalizes the sounds of native languages and gives preference to the sounds of Farsi (not Arabic). I wouldnt assume that the linguists who created PDS were biased, maybe they were only humans and didnt know what they didnt know.
It is up to the speakers of language to reform the script so it can code sounds that were originally missed by the initial version. The reason that I spent so much time distancing PDS and U-H from Arabic was that Muslims of the subcontinent actually believe that PDS brings them closer to Arabs and therefore, Islam. This viewpoint is factually incorrect.
Religion seems to be the foremost reason people want to hang on to the Persian Script. There is a false impression that somehow if we keep the Arabic Derived script of Urdu, we will stay connected to Arabic and Islam. Pakistanis, in general, pride themselves in their ability to read Quran in Arabic, unlike their unfortunate counterparts who only know DNS and therefore are without the true blessings of recital of the Holy Book. While the fact is that when a South Asian reads Quran, he reads it the SAME way whether he is looking at the Arabic letters or Devnagari letters. First of all, he is quite oblivious of the meaning, second his pronunciation is local, third his stresses on the syllables are way off (because the stresses come with comprehension of the language.) So it really doesnt matter whether he reads Quran in Arabic, DNS, Roman or Japanese! Therefore the decision to keep PDS or not, should be taken based on its usefulness to the language and not on its usefulness to the religion.
The argument that a true religion cannot require the followers to learn a new language in order to receive salvation, is outside the scope of this article. The fact is that if Allah is not an Arabic God, learning Arabic and reading Quran in Arabic cannot be a requirement or even a preferred behavior. Therefore arguing in favor of a script that does not code ones language correctly, on the basis of religion, is a fallacy. This is especially disturbing to Malaysians, Chinese, Indonesians and other nations whose languages are NOT coded in Arabic-derived script and who are just as devout Muslims as people of the subcontinent hope or claim to be.
Script : skin or outfit?
Dr. Farman says in his book (page 62) that the script is not an outfit, rather the skin of the language. A dress can be changed, but skin, if taken off will render the person dead so a language will die if the script is changed. So in the light of this comment, can we deduce that both Swahili and Turkish are dead languages? (both used Arabic script and changed to Roman script recently.) Also, if this is correct, should we assume that the Indo-European lineage of Urdu separated and died when it was stripped of it native Brahmi script and forcefully given the garb of an afro-Asiatic script, totally unsuited to capture its sounds?
In my humble opinion, script doesnt make a language, language makes a script. There are many languages in the world that do not have a written script, yet they are spoken and passed on. Language doesnt need script to be spoken or else majority of world population would be mute! Languages only need script to survive, and survival methods can be altered based on the environment. Therefore, I believe script is just an outfit ..a coding mechanism which captures the sounds of the language. A code that does that without unnecessary complications and exceptions to the rule, is the best code for a language. So if script is not needed to speak the language, why so much fuss about coding sounds? Logotypes are just fine, as long as we know how to pronounce a word, it really shouldnt matter how it is written. It is okay to write words any which way, they will survive because people know how to say them! Well, yes and no.
What is better, movie or the book?
In most cases books are written and then movies are made on the main idea of the book. People often ask each other, what was better, movie or the book? The fact is that each medium affects the main idea that the author wants to convey. Books use only words, movies use words , graphics, sounds, music and other imaginative mediums. If a person reads the book and then watches the movie, the ideas in the book affect his grasp of the movie and the ideas in the movie change his perception of the book. In other words there is a complex interaction between perceptions of ideas when they reach you through different mediums.
A language doesnt need a script, just as a book doesnt need a movie made after it. However if a script is used for a language, it affects the language in the same way a movie affects the perception of a person who has previously read the book. If a script codes words incorrectly or inadequately, they are likely to be pronounced incorrectly.
Especially hard hit would be the words that are not in common use. So while PDS reader will still pronounce kya and not kaya and preet and not pareet, they will most definitely pronounce parkaash and not prakaash. So what is the big deal? People mispronounce and intentionally change pronunciation of words. This is a normal evolution of the language, is it not? Actually it would be acceptable if it was the preference of the speakers and not caused by inadequacies of the script.
CONCLUSION:
PDS needs reform because it does not do justice to the sounds of the language and pronunciation of the vowels is ambiguous to say the least. The language needs script to survive and it can be adversely affected if the script is not able to code the words adequately. Also, I believe that PDS, although not the only factor, has contributed towards distancing Urdu from vocabulary of Sanskrit based languages.
The only reason to not reform the language seems to be its connection with Arabic and therefore, Islam. I have already discussed the invalidity of this notion by proving that PDS neither has the script, nor vocabulary that is directly inherited from Arabic. Also a religion cannot have knowledge of a certain language to be required of its converts.
I am not posing to be naïve about the political and religious connotations attached to the Persian and Devnagari script of the Urdu-Hindi language. However the fact is that somehow, sometime we will HAVE to come to terms with the realities and do something that works for our language. There is strength in diversity..it is good that we have Sanskrit and Persian vocabulary in our language and through it we have words from other local languages and Turkish and Arabic. Also we have English vocabulary and through it we have Greek, Latin and other words. I am not a purist and I love the fact that we can benefit from rich vocabularies of the many languages of the world and make it our own. The key, however, is in the making it our own part. This means that we have to make sure that our script can faithfully code our language and its sounds that are native to it first..all other languages vocabulary can/will be absorbed after going through the filter of the sounds that we already have not by adding more alphabets to incorporate these sounds.
The idea of a script is to code a language as precisely as
possible without overburdening rules
guesses and inferences do not necessarily make the script concise, as much as they add ambiguity and confusion both in pronunciation and meaning. This article does NOT argue that Persian Script should be discarded and Urdu-Hindi should be written in a common script, nor does it argue against it. The premise of the discussion is that the Persian Script is inadequate to code Urdu-Hindi. The options available are either to reform the current script, create a whole new script or use existing Devnagari Script with slight modifications.
Footnote: I would like to clarify that this article is not written as a scholarly paper or even a research article. The research to write this piece was not done scientifically. I have tried to use layman terms wherever possible rather than linguistical terms for various reasons, foremost of which is I dont know them myself! Also the arguments presented in this article are from a language user point-of-view. My reason for writing this article is more to learn than to profess. I expect to generate interest and discussion on this matter and find more areas where the script needs/does not need reform. Also, please note that this article is entirely original. None of the observations, examples and arguments that I am making are borrowed from any work that I know of. Any resemblance to actual scholarly work on the subject will be purely accidental.
Chowk: Books Arts & Culture: Story of Hindustani II
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