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Something I've noticed about this forum:..

#61
Linguists usually take the spoken language as the form to be studied - scripts are very much considered a secondary aspect of language (we all learn to speak without being taught, be we have to be taught to use writing) - although from a sociolinguistic point of view, you'd have to take a lot of the wider context into consideration, too. But generally, if you can speak to each other, then you speak the same language.

This article seems to cover some of the history of Hindi-Urdu: Hindi

And here's a page on "pluricentric" languages:
Pluricentric language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
#62
onosson said:
But generally, if you can speak to each other, then you speak the same language.
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So would mutually intelligible languages be considered the same? If so, then Urdu and Hindi are same. The only frame of reference regarding the difference between Hindi and Urdu languages in the current social scenario, that I have, is that of India and Pakistan, so I'll have to use that here. I'll try to make an effort to remain as politically neutral as possible :p

Practically speaking, I expect to understand, say, 80-90% of what a common man in Pakistan would say to me and 90-100% of what a native Urdu speaker here in India would say to me. I think the statistic would be similar for a Pakistani talking to an Indian and as to how much he would understand of a common Indian's words, except the fact that there are very few native Hindi speakers in Pakistan compared to native Urdu speakers in India, so maybe their average lingo is less influenced by Hindi than ours is by Urdu. So, if anything, the percentage in Pakistan could be slightly lower .

Herein I'd like to mention the fact that there is a concept of 'Hindustani', which is basically an informal term for the spoken dialect which contains words from both the Hindi and Urdu camps and is commonly spoken in India and Pakistan (though, I expect Hindi, here in India to borrow more from Urdu than Urdu would borrow from Hindi in Pakistan, or elsewhere, for that matter).

Edit: just noticed that Hindustani is mentioned on the Pluricentric language page and by mentioning that it

is based on a Persianized register of the Khariboli dialect
Click to expand...

I think it reinforces the point I made in the last paragraph. Again, the article doesn't cite sources too well, but that's another matter.
 
#63
From what I've read, Hindustani is the older term of the three, and was popularized by the British - once they became unpopular, so did the term! The language itself goes back several centuries apparently, and from what I've seen the devanagari script for the Hindi version is relatively recent (relative being measured in decades and centuries in this case).

I wish I had more specific links to send you, but my studies always focused more on East Asian languages.
 
#64
onosson said:
From what I've read, Hindustani is the older term of the three, and was popularized by the British - once they became unpopular, so did the term!
Click to expand...

Don't know about the history of the terms, but Hindustani is a term that I still hear a fair few times. It could well be older, but the way I've hear it used, I felt that it described the Hindi we speak, at least in India, with a generous number of Urdu loanwords.

Edit: I'm absolutely positively sure Hindustani can't be an older term than Hindi and Urdu.

onosson said:
The language itself goes back several centuries apparently, and from what I've seen the devanagari script for the Hindi version is relatively recent (relative being measured in decades and centuries in this case).
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Apparently, (edit: some of) the first scriptures in the Devanagari script date back to 922 CE, and I'm sure the existence of Hindi was in the form of its dialects back then, which eventually contributed to Hindi as we know it today. So while I'm sure that a lot of the framework of Hindi was present back then, like all languages, Hindi has evolved.

I don't think this provides any conclusion regarding the equivalence of Hindi and Urdu. Both have similar syntactic structures but the vocabulary derives from very varied sources. The question is the word 'language' is considered to mean syntax exclusively? If not, then I don't see how they can be same. Similar, yes. Same, no. Sadly, my nationality will probably lead you to think that my views are politically biased. But, TBH, I couldn't care less if India and Pakistan were the one and the same country. I'm trying to describe this as I see it :)

Again, from a linguistic POV, are mutually intelligible languages the same? Asking this as I think you can provide an insight into the linguistic community's views on this.

Edit again: Wow. Way to derail a thread :p
 
#65
champbassist said:
Don't know about the history of the terms, but Hindustani is a term that I still hear a fair few times. It could well be older, but the way I've hear it used, I felt that it described the Hindi we speak, at least in India, with a generous number of Urdu loanwords.



Apparently, (edit: some of) the first scriptures in the Devanagari script date back to 922 CE, and I'm sure the existence of Hindi was in the form of its dialects back then, which eventually contributed to Hindi as we know it today. So while I'm sure that a lot of the framework of Hindi was present back then, like all languages, Hindi has evolved.

I don't think this provides any conclusion regarding the equivalence of Hindi and Urdu. Both have similar syntactic structures but the vocabulary derives from very varied sources. The question is the word 'language' is considered to mean syntax exclusively? If not, then I don't see how they can be same. Similar, yes. Same, no. Sadly, my nationality will probably lead you to think that my views are politically biased. But, TBH, I couldn't care less if India and Pakistan were the one and the same country. I'm trying to describe this as I see it :)

Again, from a linguistic POV, are mutually intelligible languages the same? Asking this as I think you can provide an insight into the linguistic community's views on this.
Click to expand...

I don't think there is any single "right answer" to the question "what is a language". In fact, that's why I was wondering about your opinion, as a speaker of Hindi, as to how linguists would tend to classify it. I wouldn't want to assume that, as a linguist, we are right and Hindi speakers are wrong! That's a rather silly position to take... but then again, most speakers of a language don't necessarily study their own language. As for political bias, I think we all have that - even linguists who take the political position of having no position, which is a political position whether we like or not! IMO... ;)

I would say, based on what I've read about it, that there was many centuries ago a language, probably only spoken, which may not have even had its own name initially, and was itself a dialect related to other languages spoken in the area which is now northwest India and Pakistan. Slowly over much time, this language has split into the dialects/languages now referred to as Hindi and Urdu. As is often the case, this splitting happens slowly, gradually, and incompletely. Perhaps in a few centuries Hindi and Urdu will no longer be mutually intelligible, and undeniably separate languages - but that hasn't happened yet (if it ever will). Complicating this process of change are issues of politics, empire building and collapsing, nation-building, ethnic identity, religion, etc. I won't pretend to know anything beyond the mere basics about any of that, though...

As far as linguists are concerned, it would not be syntax entirely but rather the totality of the *spoken* language, including syntax, vocabulary, phonology, etc. - mutually intelligibility is the criteria most often cited, as this would cover all of that. This leads linguists to classify Cantonese and Mandarin (same script, almost no mutual intelligibility) as different but related languages, while the gov't of China takes the view that because they use the same script they are simply dialects of one language. When it comes to Hindi and Urdu, it seems from your description that an "unbiased" linguist would have to classify them as very close dialects of the same language, since the average Hindi and Urdu speaker would have little trouble speaking to each other. Perhaps much less than speakers of certain dialects of Italian, or German, or certainly Chinese.

But, the question of where to draw the line between dialect and language, will probably never be definitively answered. A famous quote puts it this way: "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy".
 
#66
On devanagari: I was just referring to its use with Hindi, as the writing system was probably already in use for other languages long before it was used for Hindi (probably Sanskrit I would presume). This is similar to the use of the Roman alphabet, which was pretty much reserved for Latin for a long time before it was used to write colloquial languages such as French, Italian, Spanish that developed out of Latin - and only later used for barbaric languages such as English!
 
#67
onosson said:
I don't think there is any single "right answer" to the question "what is a language". In fact, that's why I was wondering about your opinion, as a speaker of Hindi, as to how linguists would tend to classify it. I wouldn't want to assume that, as a linguist, we are right and Hindi speakers are wrong! That's a rather silly position to take... but then again, most speakers of a language don't necessarily study their own language. As for political bias, I think we all have that - even linguists who take the political position of having no position, which is a political position whether we like or not! IMO... ;)

I would say, based on what I've read about it, that there was many centuries ago a language, probably only spoken, which may not have even had its own name initially, and was itself a dialect related to other languages spoken in the area which is now northwest India and Pakistan. Slowly over much time, this language has split into the dialects/languages now referred to as Hindi and Urdu. As is often the case, this splitting happens slowly, gradually, and incompletely. Perhaps in a few centuries Hindi and Urdu will no longer be mutually intelligible, and undeniably separate languages - but that hasn't happened yet (if it ever will). Complicating this process of change are issues of politics, empire building and collapsing, nation-building, ethnic identity, religion, etc. I won't pretend to know anything beyond the mere basics about any of that, though...

As far as linguists are concerned, it would not be syntax entirely but rather the totality of the *spoken* language, including syntax, vocabulary, phonology, etc. - mutually intelligibility is the criteria most often cited, as this would cover all of that. This leads linguists to classify Cantonese and Mandarin (same script, almost no mutual intelligibility) as different but related languages, while the gov't of China takes the view that because they use the same script they are simply dialects of one language. When it comes to Hindi and Urdu, it seems from your description that an "unbiased" linguist would have to classify them as very close dialects of the same language, since the average Hindi and Urdu speaker would have little trouble speaking to each other. Perhaps much less than speakers of certain dialects of Italian, or German, or certainly Chinese.
Click to expand...

The fact of the matter is that as much as Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible, that is just the case with colloquial Hindi/Urdu. Because of the fact that we were the one and the same country once, our colloquial dialects are far more similar to each other than languages that have come to be known as 'standard Hindi' and 'standard Urdu', i.e. the official forms of the languages. And those are definitely not mutually intelligible, for the simple fact that the vocabulary is vastly different.

The fact that would probably cause linguists to take a position on this matter that an Indian/Pakistani could consider incorrect is that colloquial Urdu and (to an even larger extent) colloquial Hindi differ very much from the standard, official forms: much more so than, say, official English differs from colloquial English.

Take a look into proper Urdu as well. I'm sure you'll spot a massive difference in the words used, as compared to Hindi.

I'd say that if anything, in the future, I expect Hindi and Urdu to get even closer, as the cultural intermingling increases.

Also, the fact that Wikipedia is a horrible source is further reinforced by the fact that you find lines such as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi-Urdu said:
Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi were synonymous;
Click to expand...

Apparently, the above statement is cited from The Oxford English Dictionary, but in the footnotes of the above page, it's stated that there's a "page needed". So much for citations :p There used to be bonafide Hindi and Urdu courses in universities well before the partition and literature from both languages was distinctly separate.

Again, I regret the thread derail.
 
#69
champbassist said:
The fact of the matter is that as much as Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible, that is just the case with colloquial Hindi/Urdu. Because of the fact that we were the one and the same country once, our colloquial dialects are far more similar to each other than languages that have come to be known as 'standard Hindi' and 'standard Urdu', i.e. the official forms of the languages. And those are definitely not mutually intelligible, for the simple fact that the vocabulary is vastly different.

The fact that would probably cause linguists to take a position on this matter that an Indian/Pakistani could consider incorrect is that colloquial Urdu and (to an even larger extent) colloquial Hindi differ very much from the standard, official forms: much more so than, say, official English differs from colloquial English.

Take a look into proper Urdu as well. I'm sure you'll spot a massive difference in the words used, as compared to Hindi.

I'd say that if anything, in the future, I expect Hindi and Urdu to get even closer, as the cultural intermingling increases.

Also, the fact that Wikipedia is a horrible source is further reinforced by the fact that you find lines such as:



Apparently, the above statement is cited from The Oxford English Dictionary, but in the footnotes of the above page, it's stated that there's a "page needed". So much for citations :p There used to be bonafide Hindi and Urdu courses in universities well before the partition and literature from both languages was distinctly separate.

Again, I regret the thread derail.
Click to expand...

One thing I must point out: the fact of the matter is that colloquial forms of language always exist long before there is a standard form. Spoken Hindi/Urdu, just like spoken English, existed and were used by many many people long before anyone thought of creating or elevating a standard form of the language. In fact, one has to doubt that there would ever be a standard form developed for a given language if there weren't already lots and lots of people speaking that language - there simply wouldn't be much reason to do so. Whatever else may be said, it is pretty clear that the creation/elevation of a "standard form" of any language is always politically driven.

I agree regarding wikipedia - those articles I referenced weren't meant to outline anything definitive, but more to put this discussion into some perspective (i.e. it's not an entirely unique situation, similar cases exist in many parts of the world).
 
#70
I think I've derailed this thread far enough already :p Just as Hindi being declared as the national language of India by the powers that be didn't make it a 'better' language than Urdu (or vice versa for Urdu and Hindi in Pakistan), the classification of Hindi as being the same or different to Urdu by the community of linguists doesn't affect the progress of either language :) I personally love the literary treasures of both languages.

Ah so where were we.... Yes there's a reason to why TB is the only forum site I'm an active member of. That's what is described in the OP.

Please forgive me, OP :(
 
#73
5StringBlues said:
मेरी बिल्ली सांस बिल्ली की तरह बदबू आ रही है खाना
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That actually means: My cat breath smelling a cat's odor is eating. You can keep your Google Translate back in your pocket, please :p
 
#75
onosson said:
Certainly not! It's been a fun and interesting discussion... thanks for sharing your views! I'm always interested in learning about other people's languages.
Click to expand...

The problem with saying all this over the internet through the textual medium is that my words will come off as far more biased in favor of what you'd expect me to say on this matter. Maybe if we were talking face to face, I wouldn't sound like a Hindi language fanatic ;) I do hope, though, that I don't sound like that here anyway, because that's my worst fear: being perceived as being something I'm totally against, here language/culture related extremism :p

Edit:

5StringBlues said:
Wow.Lame.It's supposed to say Link Removed :D
Click to expand...

I actually put your statement (in Hindi) back into Gtranslate and got that ;)
 
#78
champbassist said:
The problem with saying all this over the internet through the textual medium is that my words will come off as far more biased in favor of what you'd expect me to say on this matter. Maybe if we were talking face to face, I wouldn't sound like a Hindi language fanatic ;) I do hope, though, that I don't sound like that here anyway, because that's my worst fear: being perceived as being something I'm totally against, here language/culture related extremism :p
Click to expand...

Have no fear, I didn't take you that way at all. You seem like a great person to talk with anytime!
 
#79
I have enjoyed the discussion too, but to drag this thread more or less kicking and screaming back on topic - at least for a post or two! ;) I'd like to mention that it always amazes me on the more literary-oriented forums I belong to that so many posters can't be bothered to write correctly, and/or correct spelling and grammatical errors before (or even after) they post. This isn't a case of 'text type' or, in most cases, people for whom English is a second language, either.

What's really irritating is when the person in question seems to be making an interesting point, and they've written their post so badly that I can't really make out the details of what they're trying to say. Meh. :confused:
 

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