Urdu Language (Variations)
- 1. Variations in Urdu Language Sociolinguistics Aspects
- 2. About Urdu • Urdu enjoys the status of being the mother tongue of 80 millions people of the world • Urdu language, by its very nature, is an accommodative language • Since its emergence, it has assimilated the linguistic features from all languages with which it came into contact • They differ only on the bases of script • According to Dr. Tariq Rehman (1996), these different scripts are used for political and ideological reasons • According to the popular myth, Urdu is a ‘camp language’ or ‘lashkari zaban’ • Behind the so-called theory is that Urdu is a mixture of words taken from different languages • English, being most ‘open’ of them all, has, according to David Crystal, borrowed from over 100 languages, but nobody has ever called English a mixture of different languages
- 3. Phenomenon of Language Change • The phenomenon of language-change is assumed to be a result of the interplay of various linguistic and non-linguistic factors • Sociolinguistics deals with linguistic variations such as dialect, idiolect, genderlect, register etc • The scholars of Urdu language usually lament the changes in Urdu and deem it as something corrupt that is a threat to the purity of Urdu • It is paradoxical that while the changes caused by Oriental languages are welcomed by the defenders of Urdu • For instance, in Urdu the plural form of word Ustad is also Ustad but under the influence of Persian grammar the correct plural form is often considered as Usatza • Similarly the rules for making feminine gender are predominantly Persio- Arabic
- 4. Englishization of Urdu • The current direction of changes in Urdu language is towards English • Social factor behind this linguistic phenomenon was that the Pakistanis who wanted Urdu as their national language have been surviving through the English language for the last hundred years • The following headlines from different Urdu newspapers show the influence of English language over Urdu -Chairman NAB ki appointment per hakoomat aur opposition main deadlock -Corrupt system ko badal kr behtareen health care system lain gay -Electronic media main 2015 tak 41 million rupaye ki investment • The text messaging is perhaps causing the most obvious changes in languages • Young people are not only using telegraphic expressions, they are also changing the spellings -Ppr main bzi ho ktnay bje end ho ga ppr? -Yr koi fit si buks to bta for geography -css ki registration ka kya procedure ha? Mean kab hoti ha n how? (Ramzan et al.,2014)
- 5. Grammatical categories • Nouns are borrowed from other languages when people come into contact with new things and do not have proper vocabulary • This is not always the matter of unavailability of words in first language • there is another reason, and that is prestige • Most of the nouns are related to either modern technology or modern style; these nouns do not have proper Urdu alternative for example: camera, Cinema, Mobile phone, biscuit, and sandwich • Alternative nouns but not used by speakers; -lawn (Baghicha), warning (ta(m)bih), road (sarrak), flight (parwaz), airport (hawai adda) • Many other English words are frequently used at the expense of their Urdu alternatives; -class fellow (hum jamaat), class (jamaat), bag (basta), paper (prcha), homework (ghar ka kam), pen (qalam), break (waqfa) (Asghar et al., 2013)
- 6. Variations • Urdu is a majorly spoken and national language of Pakistan but it varies with reference to the geographical changes • Karachi is known for its Urdu speaking population but the people here speak Urdu with a special accent which is very distinct • Secondly, they have their own words that you won’t find in other regions • Some of them include “Aray Mian” meaning “Oh respected person” and “Abay” which means “Oh you” • One of the distinct features of spoken Urdu in Lahore is that people sometimes omit vowels • Urdu of the KPK province in particular has most obvious changes; they often get the gender wrong while speaking Urdu • The word “weather” is masculine in Urdu but in Peshawari Urdu, weather is treated as feminine • The reason of all these variations are because of the influence of the regional languages on Urdu
- 7. Ghalib’s letters to observe the kind of changes Urdu language has undergone through the decades: Old Urdu Lexical Terms Jharaay Abr Kasad Hoos Sang Khak Dha Zoja Khabr Tarashoon Gustakhi Bay-adbiyan New Equivalent Lexical Terms khezaan Barish Irada Talaab Pather Matti Gira Biwi Sahafi Battamizi Bay-adbi Extinct Words Ibarat araeyaan Sehr sazi Sukhen parwazi Ruday neel Shunbay Azeemat Sitm paisha.
- 8. Conclusion • English vocabulary is increasing in Urdu with the passage of time • In written language, this code-mixing is observed at word level only, thus it is not marring the basic structure of Urdu language • This is not solely due to the non-availability of Urdu correlates; there are other issues involved, it may be prestige, social influence, phonological ease • It also shows that language-change is not something negative. It is not positive either • Simply it is neutral; a natural process which is adopted by language to adjust itself according to the linguistic needs of its speech community