How do you find Urdu Writing Style?

[nikred]

My paternal grand parents are migrants from the NWFP. They spoke to each other in Pashto/Hindko. But being in Bombay, they spoke to their children in Urdu mainly. My mom is Bohri and speaks Gujarati at her home. Though she speaks only English to my dad, when he is listening that is. Which I admit is very rare.
 
At home and with extended family we speak mainly English, Urdu/Hindi and Gujarati.
 
Urdu (spoken) is common among Muslims in Mumbai. Readership however is not very high. For instance newspaper readership has fallen and ad rates on many of the Urdu newspapers are at an all time low. Bonanza season for mainline marketeers. Not much Urdu publication either in terms of books. That is mainly Delhi/ UP based.
 
PS: I don't count Hyderabadi Urdu as Urdu. It is slang majorly. Sorry [mention=5574]nikred[/mention]
 
 
 

Haha...I hardly speak dakkani urdu and most of the urdu words that seep into the hindi I speak is mostly from the Telangana dialect I speak. I do use the random nakko, hau, galeez but thats pretty much it.

My grandfather on the other hand would get offended as he did his education in urdu medium and takes great pride in his command over the language. He boasts he used to top in urdu inspite of being a hindu in a class full of Muslims.

One thing is for sure the new generation hindu community living outside the old city has more or less lost touch with the dakkani urdu when compared to the old generation.

Call what you want but I think both dakkani urdu at national level and Telangana dialect at regional level are made fun of in movies and social media but both are very endearing dialects and I love them.

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[PBN]

10 hours ago, Mariyam said:

My paternal grand parents are migrants from the NWFP. They spoke to each other in Pashto/Hindko. But being in Bombay, they spoke to their children in Urdu mainly.

Hindko is basically a dialect of Punjabi.  Mutually intelligible.

 

understood this easily

 

 

haha, considering hindko is basically punjabi, you might actually understand/speak a little of one of your ancestral language after all 

Edited May 28, 2019 by PBN

[PBN]

Was it the persians who popularized this calligraphic style of Nastaleeq script?  I think calligraphy of the script is quite an intriguing art style. For outsiders, ambiguity of nastaleeq by leaving out common diacritic marks can be quite confusing for beginners. 

[rkt.india]

10 hours ago, Mariyam said:

Glad you specify this. I mean after attending all those conferences and debating on state policy, only if there is some leisure time remaining then the 6 year old could doodle some Urdu.

Is urdu a script? I thought Urdu is written in farsi script. Like hindi is written in devnagri script. Hindi and Urdu themselves are not scripts.

[Mariyam]

@PBN

I'm afraid I can't speak any Punjabi whatsoever. Whatever little I follow is courtesy a few close friends, Bollywood (bad source, i know) and contemporary Punjabi musicians. The Hindko in your video sounds almost like Punjabi. If someone were to blind fold me and ask me to guess the language I'm sure Punjabi would be my guess. What I remember my grandparents speak (far too young to recall with any degree of precision) sounded a lot more Pashto/alien like. Or maybe there are different Hindko dialects depending on what region one hails from?

 

My observation of the migrant/partition afflicted communities in Mumbai; Among the current generation, it is only the Sikhs who still speak their mother tongue. Among the others ie Punjabi Hindus, Sindhis and Muslim migrants from the NWFP there are only a handful who still speak the language of their forefathers.

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2019 by Mariyam

[Alam_dar]

4 hours ago, PBN said:

Was it the persians who popularized this calligraphic style of Nastaleeq script? I think calligraphy of the script is quite an intriguing art style.

Yes, Persians started this Nastaleeq style, while Arabic is 99.99% written in Naskh style. 

 

Quote

For outsiders, ambiguity of nastaleeq by leaving out common diacritic marks can be quite confusing for beginners. 

Yes, it is a problem, but only for the foreigners (who cannot understand spoken Urdu). But children, who can already understand spoken Urdu, they have no problems. That is why, North Indian could easily learn reading Urdu. 

 

This is also one reason that Persian/Urdu could be written so quickly (like short hand) while they have left the diacritic marks. 

 

[Muloghonto]

Tried learning it a very long time ago, gave up. 
It may look pretty, but its an inferior writing style to most Indian scripts and Hangol ( Korean).

To me, the prime function of a script, is to accurately depict sound. Urdu is nowhere phoenetic enough, nor is it unique writing enough to qualify. 

[Alam_dar]

I find there is one basic problems in Urdu.

There are multiple letters for same sound. Look at the chart. 

 

 

Arabs and Iranians are able to differentiate between the sounds of these letters. Urdu inherited these letters from Arabic/Farsi, but Urdu speakers themselves are not able to differentiate between the sounds of these letters. 

 

I don't know if such funny fundamental issue exists with any other language, where native speakers are themselves unable to understand the difference in sounds of the letters. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Alam_dar

[PBN]

3 hours ago, Muloghonto said:

Tried learning it a very long time ago, gave up. 
It may look pretty, but its an inferior writing style to most Indian scripts and Hangol ( Korean).

To me, the prime function of a script, is to accurately depict sound. Urdu is nowhere phoenetic enough, nor is it unique writing enough to qualify. 

What makes it inferior to other indic scripts though?  AFAIK, urdu script has all the vowels/sounds covered for the language. Other native experts of Urdu can chime in here but it is basically a derivation and extension of Arabic which I think is phonetic script as well. Farsi script added sounded native to farsi and Urdu script further added indic sounds.  The only ambiguity that may arise is from not including diacritic marks but experienced natives understand it and to avoid confusion, one can place them if really required. 

 

 

[Alam_dar]

28 minutes ago, PBN said:

What makes it inferior to other indic scripts though?  AFAIK, urdu script has all the vowels/sounds covered for the language. Other native experts of Urdu can chime in here but it is basically a derivation and extension of Arabic which I think is phonetic script as well. Farsi script added sounded native to farsi and Urdu script further added indic sounds. 

Yes, as compared to Arabic, Urdu has all the sounds covered through more letters than both Arabic and Farsi (Arabic does not even has sound of letter P, and thus it is Bakistan for them). 

 

There are more letters included to Arabic Script to make it perfect for Urdu, and then many more letters included in Urdu script to make it compatible for Sindhi and other regional languages. 

 

I think Urdu also has all the sounds that Hindi has. 

 

 

And here are Hindi vowels, which are also covered in Urdu

 

 

One Hindi vowel seems to be missing in Urdu, and that is “ऋ”

 

Quote

The only ambiguity that may arise is from not including diacritic marks but experienced natives understand it and to avoid confusion, one can place them if really required. 

Exactly.

 

Neither the native speakers of Urdu, nor of Arabic, nor of Farsi are using these diacritic marks, while they could easily read the writings without it. 

 

The non usage of diacritic marks makes Urdu very compressed one, and thus it could be written much faster than English. Another reason of faster typing of Urdu is this that while joining letters, they take their short forms. Thus all in all, Urdu is written even more faster.