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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Urdu and Hindi


The term Urdu came into use when Shah Jahan built the Red Fort in Delhi. The word Urdu itself comes from a Turkish word ''ordu'' or "army", from which English also gets the word "horde". Urdu is sometimes called "Lashkarizuban" or the language of the army. 


Because of their similarities of grammar and core vocabularies, many linguists do not distinguish between Hindi and Urdu as separate languages at least not in reference to the informal spoken registers. Ordinary informal Urdu and Hindi can be seen as the same language (Hindustani) with the difference being that Urdu is supplemented with a per so-Arabic vocabulary and Hindi a Sanskrit vocabulary. Additionally, there is the convention of Urdu being written in Perso-Arabic script, and Hindi in Devanagari.

 The most important difference at this level is in the script: if written in the Perso-Arabic script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in Devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi.

 The two standardized registers of Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu have become as separate languages that often nationalists, both Muslim and Hindu, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. It is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi" but the language used in most of them is almost the same as that of Urdu speakers. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India and in Pakistan.

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