Tariq Rahman

Transcription

My talk is on who is afraid of Urdish and Urdi. And all the dinosaurs of whatever age are afraid of both. But first lets define what they are. Urdish is defined as the use of Urdu and English in utterances and written sentences. Technically this is called code switching And we keep saying you know, that either use English or use Urdu; don't use both. Well..I'm trying to give an idea that this is a prejudice. That in fact it is fine to use both. I hope it does not sound too much to the linguistic dinosaurs. And at any age we can all be linguistic dinosaurs. Urdi refers to two distinct phenomenons. The first is the use of words of Hindi and Urdu. Chinta...Kasht and so on. And Sundhar etc. And the other one is the use of the sounds. Phonemes. Of Hindi in Urdu. Such as Ga for Gha and so on. Now the first is seen as a problem in Pakistan The second is mostly seen as a problem in India. Let's see a little more The first problem which I am talking about; code switching, we've always been doing it. There is a historical record and let me just show you this record from England This is code switching between Norman French and Middle English. Chaucer's English. And this is Richard Kyngston, Dean of Winsdor, who wrote a letter to King Henry IV on 13 September 1403 in Norman French. In the middle of this letter, he switches to English. And he probably did this in his conversations also. So he says: "Please a vostre tresgraciouse Seignourie entendre que a-jourduy après noone" This is the French part And then he switches much later, three dots for that, "Warfore, for goddesake, thinketh on Zour beste frende" The first is "May please you most gracious Lordship to understand that today afternoon" Then he says "Wherefore for God's sake think of your best friend" So you see, when he gets emotional he switches to English which is probably just what he did in real life. Now here is a very famous verse attributed to Amir Khusro; although there is doubt whether he actually wrote it or not. But this is 1253 to 1325 "Zehaal-e miskin makul taghaaful" I dont want to burden you with the whole thing but just think of these lines here Shabaan-e hijraaN daraaz chun zulf Now this is Persian. "Shabaan-e hijraaN daraaz chun zulf wa roz-e waslat cho umr kotah" ."The night of separation is as long as your long tresses" This is for the girl beloved. And the other thing that the day of meeting is as short as life itself But then look at the next line The next line is: "Sakhii piyaa ko jo naiN naa dekhuuN to kaise kaTuuN andheri ratiyaaN" Not only did the other line is in Hindi-Urdu, The ancestors of these two languages It's the same language I would like to say But in the 18th century they were two languages Not only this but the first one is in the Persian tradition That is a male poet addressing a girl beloved or a boy beloved The second one, on the other hand is in Hindi tradition That is to say a girl talking to a girl about her male lover Or a girl talking about a male lover Let's go on the next one This is how it looked in Persian The red is in Persian and the blue is in Hindi-Urdu I dont, again, want to read this whole thing out. It's beautiful; whether it is Amir Khusro or not; just enjoy it sometime later Now this is another very unusual case Because this is in three languages And this is by 17th century peot, Pushtu poet And Moazullah Khan Mohmand: "sajjan zulfhon karam keh amshab leh ma gharib cheh khuapa khua deh" The blue one is in Hindi-Urdu; The red one is in Persian and the green in Pushtu "Kasam be muskhaf jo gham khushi son leh deray meenay na heer zama deh" My beloved, out of graciousness and favour, has bestowed her favours upon me "Khuapa Khua" is "side to side with me" is "lying with me" I swear on her radiant countenance! That in ecstasy I have forgotten sorrow This is in three languages. So code switching is not only in two It may be in three and there are several other countries that also have it in history Now Pakistani Indian English I am sure that everyone of you could provide examples of that The baby raat bhar rota raha (the baby cried all night) And "kharboozaz (watermelons)" and so on "we were having juicy watermelons". Something in which you would say illiterate which many people my age actually say illiterate. These kids cannot speak either English or Urdu That's not really true because code switching research says Rather than representing deviant behaviour is actually suggestive indicator of the degree of bilingual and trilingual and multilingual competence Because that's what research says now So it is people who do it in real life that's because they are at home in both languages It is not that they do it because they can't find words Next one. That's the Urdish part of it. Urdu and English part of it. The second part of which people are afraid are the Urdi part of it Which in India, the dimension is different; in Pakistan the dimension is different. In India it is that people switch to sounds in Hindi. In Pakistan sometimes some people use words of what is called Hindi But this used to be the same language. And it had different names. Hindi is one of its oldest names. Every one of them is associated with their associations Hindi, Dehelvi, Hindvī/ Hinduī, Gujri, Dakkanī or Dakhni, Indostan This language Khari Boli has been called all these names. Urdu comes much later It has been called all these names The associations as you can see. They're Hindi; associated with India., with the Hindus, Dehelvi with Delhi, Hindvī/ Hinduī again with India and the Hindus And Gujri. This language is called Gujri Although there is another language which is also called Gujri; spoken in Pakistan also but this language is also been called ..this language. It has been called Gujri All of them, including Dakkan, Dehkeni are associated with either an area or with an identity And there is an ideological bias If you dont want Indian-ness etc you would not like the name Hindi And if you dont want to be known by a region, you would not like the name Dekheni etc And these names mostly then are out of fashion In those times it was used by foreigners And it was English travelers in the 17th century who used to call it that But I haven't finished, there are other names One name for this language used to be; it used to be called moors. but that for a very short time. Of course the ideological bias Muslims identity but it was a kind of pidgin used by English officers when talking to their servants and they used to call it moors But the basic language was the same. Most English men used to call it Hindustani. It was the language of the army in India also But Hindustani is..the word has not been used only by the English. The word has been used; the first reference I have got is to Zahiruddin Muhammed Baber Tusk-e-Babri in Turkey. In Turkish language he uses this word And then there is Rekhta which assumes that Persian is the standard language in majority of India's local languages And Urdu comes in the 18th century Muslim identity. Pakistani identity. And it is associated with Mughal camps, with conquests and so on This language does not really have a name So what happened? In the 18th century two movements went on The first was the Persianisation and the Islamization of Khari Boli The second was the Hinduisation of the same Khari Boli So in the first one which is 1750 to 1900; this was a class movement by the way, Not a religious movement but a class movement Here was a class using Persian so it was persianizing Urdu to be a symbol of that class Sanskritic words were purged out. Words of local dialects were also purged out In place of the above words of Persian, Arabic were added. Literary and cultural allusions, metaphors and symbols would predominantly be Iranian and Islamic culture Allusions to Indian landscape were replaced by references to an idealized, conventionalized Iranian landscape So it is like this you know you're not talking about you're talking about the "bulbul"... you're talking about "bahar"..you're not talking about the "barsat" ...you're not talking about the "quail" And the amorous conventions of Indian poetry which I talked about earlier such as the girl ..the woman expressing love for the man were replaced by Iranian ones, i.e a man expressing love for either a boy or a girl beloved or indeterminate gender That is what happened. Next one The Hinduisation of Khari Boli This was in a sense; it was to consolidate an identity, The Hindu identity in India Started in 1803 although Rani Gaitri's story was written by Insha at the same time but that was a joke This one was Lalluji Lal Kavi wrote Prem Sagar and he took out the Persian words, the Arabic words etc and wrote it in the Devanagari script Prem Sagar became sort of a prototype for the kind of language which would be used so this is the Sanskritization of Khari Boli Ram Chandar Shukla after that, he gave a sort of a history and in that history he said that this Hindi and this is not Hindi and in that he removed all the Muslim poets Whereas earlier, you know "Aab e Hayat" does not have Hindu poets in it Women and Hindus are ignored. So it's not one sided It happened on both sides. Sanskritization is going on even now You add Sanskrit words instead of the commonly known words And now the Urdi part, the one which the Indian Muslims second generation is so worried about See Hindi does not have Hindi has /g/, /ph/, /kh/, /k/, /dӡ/ Urdu has /ɣ/, /f /, /x/, /q/, and four symbols; graphemes for the sound /z/ Now what happens? The first generation of speakers that's to say people of 60 years and above They would proudly use the Urdu /ɣ/, /f/, /x/, /q/ and other graphemes. That's to say the letters and the phonemes, that's to say the sounds Because they knew the Urdu alphabet Then the knowledge of the Alphabet slowly died. eroded So the second generation which is between 30 to 59 years old If they write Hindi Devanagari script which they very often do what happens is that they put bindis Bindis are dots. So the dots are that is to say /ɣ/ (ﻍ), As you can see the symbol of this (ﻍ) is this one. This is the phonetic symbol And what is happening? A dot is put below it And similarly you can see dots below /f /. If you put a dot below /ph/ it becomes /f/ if you put a dot below /x/ it becomes /kh/ and if you put a dot below /k/ it becomes /q/ and if you put a dot below /dӡ/ it becomes /z/ so "jula mu o haram". it becomes "zulum hua" (cruelty) and so on So that is how this is Now the third generation. This is the second generation very conscious of Muslim identity, Urdu identity And so they are putting the dots But the third generation. The third generation; this is somebody else's research by the way on the third generation in Delhi and Rizwan Ahmed who has written this says that actually the third generation Delhi live in slums and are not proud of Urdu They are not proud of the identity of Urdu because it is a subordinated identity Because they are poor and because they live in those poor areas So they do not use the /dӡ/ etc. They use the same Hindi phonemes, Hindi sounds /g/, /ph/, /kh/ and so on So to sum up in the poor areas of Delhi Muslim children avoid using the special phonemes of Urdu in order to assimilate with their Hindi-using peers and identity conscious Muslims use dots (bindis) under Devanagari graphemes to indicate their Muslim identity And the efforts to preserve features of Urdu are the articulation of the second generation, who believe that placing dots under graphemes is the best way to hand down Urdu in its “correct” form to the next generation However, for generation three dots cannot override the stigma attached to the phonemes that they are supposed to represent on paper So in Pakistan there's a lot of worry about the use of words like chinta (worry) and prem (love) etc First of all its not really a lot but this worry is groundless Languages change and as you know that it was the same language which became Persianised and became Sanskritised later in the 18th century So if somebody is using "chinta" it is a word that was deliberately thrown out Four thousand words were thrown out during the 18th & 19th centuries So if they are using that they are simply reclaiming a word that belongs to this land And the same would be true about India So the conclusion is Change, you see, we are always against change We're afraid of change. Linguistic change, the dinosaurs are all afraid of it Change has always been seen as threatening and linguistic change is not an exception at all Indeed linguistic change has always been considered more threatening than most other changes So in the end what I would suggest is that languages in which the change is not there they become classics alright but they don't remain living languages If you want to make Urdu; let Urdu remain a living language accept code switching and borrowing and substitution and Urdi and Urdish etc as part of things which we do So next time somebody says, well the, you know "baby raat ko roti rahi (cried all night)" dont reach out for something to hit the person. Thanks very much indeed