Oxford Essays: Urdu Language

Urdu Language

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URDU LANGUAGE

Urdu is the name of one of the languages spoken in South Asia. It is the national language of Pakistan. It is spoken in Pakistan and Indian-administered Kashmir and is the official language of the country. It is also an official language in India. It is spoken all over India, particularly in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh.

History

The origin of the Urdu language is the Mughal Empire's word for army, Urdu. However, contrary to popular belief, Urdu was not created in the army camps of the Mughal Army. Urdu is spoken the same as present-day Hindi, but Hindi uses the traditional Devanagari script (a decedent of Sanskrit), where as Urdu uses the Arabic alphabet. The poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi coined the term Urdu for this language in 1780. However, this began to alienate the two major cultures in India/Pakistan, the Muslims and Hindus. Hindus began to speak and write Hindi, whereas Muslims would begin to speak Urdu. This also lead to a need to "cleanse" Urdu of all its Sanskrit words and lead Hindi speakers to want to be rid of Persian words that remained in their language.

Relations to Persian
Differences
The letters in Urdu are derived from the Persian language which is derived from the Arabic language. The additional letters that are found in Urdu include ٹ ,ڈ ,ڑ (ṫ, ḋ, ṙ). Also to make the language more enriched two letters were created for sounds ه (h) and ی (y). By adding these alphabets to the existing Persian alphabets the Urdu language became more suitable for the people of North India and Pakistan.

Similarities
Urdu is written right to left like the Persian script. More specifically, Urdu is also written in the Nasta’ liq style of Persian Calligraphy. Nastaliq style is a cursive script invented by Mīr ʿAlī of Tabrīz, a very famous calligrapher during the Timurid period (1402–1502).

Politeness
Urdu is supposed to be a well formed language; many of words are used in it to show respect and politeness. This emphasis on politeness, which comes from the vocabulary, is known as adab and to sometimes as takalluf in Urdu. These words are mostly used when addressing elders, or people with whom one is not met yet.