Hindustāni meiṅ Absṭraikṭ (Abstract in Hindustani)
Āj bhī jab Pākistān aur Bhārat ke log ek dūsre ko jab bolte huye sunte haiṅ to vo ek dūsre ki zubān samajhte haiṅ. Aur ye sirf ek dhokhā he ke Hindī aur Urdū do alag-alag bhāshā he. Is kā sabūt ye he ke Urdū meiṅ gāne Bhārat meiṅ kāfī pasand kiye jāte haiṅ aur Hindī meiṅ filmeiṅ Pākistān meiṅ bahut caltī hai. Is ārṭikal meiṅ yahī batāne kī koshish kar rahā hūṅ.
Resumo en Esperanto (Abstract in Esperanto)
Kiam personoj el Pakistano kaj Barato renkontiĝas kaj parolas inter si, ili facile komprenas unu la alian. Estas nur iluzio, ke ekzistas du malsimilaj lingvoj - hinda kaj urdua. La kantoj en urdua estas popularaj en Barato kaj televidprogramoj en hinda estas famaj en Pakistano. Se hinda kaj uruda estus apartaj lingvoj, ĝi ne estus eble.
The Article
It's been more than 60 years since we gained political independence from Britain. The freedom came at a huge cost: the country, originally known as Hindustan was parted into a Muslim majority Pakistan and a Hindu majority India.
The partition was far from being a calm affair - it resulted in the displacement of more than ten million people across the newly drawn border and approximately a million people were killed in religious riots between fanatic Muslims on the one side and zealot Hindus-Sikhs on the other.
The partition not only resulted in the division of territory, the common language of country, Hindustani, also fell a victim.
The fundamentalists started promoting Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hindus, in India and Arabic, the language revered by the Muslims, in Pakistan. But because they could not convince or force their populations to speak in Sanskrit or Arabic, they played a game.
In India, religious gurus littered Hindustani with words from Sanskrit and started calling it Hindi. The fundamentalists from Pakistan reciprocated in the same manner by borrowing unnecessarily from Arabic and Persian and declared Urdu (along with English) the official language of Pakistan. And thus, almost overnight, two new official languages - Hindi and Urdu - were born.
To give an illusion of two separate languages the Indian government encouraged the use of Devanagri (a Sanskrit based script) to write the langauge and Government in Pakistan adopted Nastaleeq (a script based on Arabic-Persian characters). And the official stand, regarding to the writing systems used in both countries, is still the same.
Though people in both countries don't write it in the same script the colloquial spoken language is only as different as British and American English or Castilian and Latin American Spanish.
To cite you an example, here is a song I've been listening to a lot in the past few days. It is sung by Atif Aslam from Pakistan for an Indian movie. Ask any one from Pakistan or India to listen to it and then tell you if it's in Hindi or Urdu.
An Indian will swear to God that 'it's in Hindi'. In contrast, a common man in Pakistan would laugh at you if you suggested it's not in Urdu! As a result of decades of propaganda, people here are afraid of Urdu and consider it an "enemy language." Many here don't even have an idea about what Urdu is like or how close it is to Hindi. The same, I believe, must be true of Pakistan too.
That song by Atif Aslam is more of a rule than an exception. Indian movies and television serials (in Hindi) are popular in Pakistan and the shaer-o-shaeri (in Urdu) is widely appreciated in India.
Incomprehensibly occurs only when you swap to your everyday vocabulary in favor of more Sanskrit or Arabic (or Persian) words. And that's what the textbooks do in both countries. It's easier for a Pakistani to read a newspaper in Hindi and for an Indian to do the same than reading each others' textbooks.
To conclude, I'd say that the masses in both countries continue to use the pre-partition-language in daily life, the name Hindustani has been completely erased from their memories and there is only an illusion of two different languages.
This reminds me of something that happened to me when I was 20 and didn't know about other languages besides Japanese and some Korean. I was at a convenience store and heard some music playing, and when I went to pay for my purchase I asked him whether the music was in Hindi (just a guess on my part). He frowned and said "No, it's Urdu." The way he looked at me it seemed like it must have been the most obvious thing in the world that it wasn't Hindi, and it wasn't until much later on that I found out they are more or less one and the same. Ten years later (now) I suppose I would just roll my eyes at someone saying that. It's the radio after all, no script to look at to make it easy to guess.
ReplyDeleteOh by the way, I found your blog through Joy of Languages. As an Indian I'm curious how Sambahsa looks and feels to you. In a visceral or intuitive way, that is.
ReplyDeleteThe very name of the language evokes a sense of familiarity. Here, we call a language bhāshā .
ReplyDeleteAs far as the texts are concerned, take out the familiar vocabulary and it feels totally alien.
I'm thinking of "giving it a try!"
And, are you the author of Page F30? If yes, how are your fingers? I've been coming to your website for quite some time and I really really enjoy reading your blogs!!! :)
Yep, that's me. I'm writing to you with all my fingers except the right and left index fingers. Shouldn't take more than a few days though to get back to normal.
ReplyDeleteI'm always curious about what people think of Sambahsa, even if they don't end up learning it. It feels to me a little bit like German and French, sometimes slightly Bulgarian, with a layer of Arabic and a bit of other things too. So far nobody has learned it to fluency except its creator, and I'd love to do so but I can't really invest the time in that. Real life always keeps me from spending more time with auxlangs. Cosmoglotta.blogspot.com is working out quite nicely though, about one or two issues a day.
Sellamat !
ReplyDeleteThis post about Hindi-Urdu is interesting, since finally, Sambahsa may use more words found in Urdu (because of the Arabic-Parsi background) than in Hindi. Sambahsa is a "nephew" of Sanskrit, but the roots are now so altered in Hindi that they can't b recognize at first sight. Ex: "kwehr" = "karna" (to do). Likewise "poh" = "to drink" and "dah" = "to give" are not so obvious.
Indeed Steve Rice has learnt a fair amount of Sambahsa and can sometimes write perfect sentences, but he never published them.
Apart from the "Sambahsa primer" on the wiki (with some recordings by Dave !), I have developped (and nearly ended) a series of audio-videos in Sambahsa on Youtube with English subtitles, just for pronounciation. (lesson SL2 to SL41). Here is an example that Dmitry, who is Russian, found nearly at-sight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3NaHXZPcjg
I am also working on a "sambahsa conjugator", a list with models of conjugation. Though it may never be complete, this shall be already a good help when I'll release it.
Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/
@cafaristeir: Given the difficulty in finding fluent speakers, I was just wondering, Dr. Olivier, how far the help would be in case I've a question? I'm asking this because I've never ever succeeded in learning any language (if you count out my smattering knowledge of Esperanto) besides the ones I'm speaking since I was a child.
ReplyDelete:)
Sellamat Eto !
ReplyDeleteI'm jobless, that means that I am often very disponible but I'm really not sure how long it will last; I only live day by day. However, I think I'll still be available during the next days and the next week. If you want, you can join the Sambahsa yahoo-group:
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/sambahsa-mundialect/
This group is not lively at all, but Steve Rice is here too, who is the best knower of Sambahsa with Dave.
If you want, I can give you on this group, for a few days, some small Sambahsa exercises, i.e. some sentences to translate to see if you can cope with Sambahsa's basic rules (declension of pronouns, conjugations).
The grammar is not to be learnt by heart, I just recommend to have a look at it and to remember where each thing is to be found. Apart from my pbworks, the last edition of the grammar can be downloaded there:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34500642/Sambahsa-Grammar
And the last dictionary is here : http://www.scribd.com/doc/39063111/Sambahsa-English-Dictionary
As I made it from the French version, using Google Translation, it still contains errors; however, given the number of entries (12000), this is valuable instrument that few other auxlangs have. To find an English word, you just have to use the search function of Word or Scribd.
(I have many other textes in Sambahsa on Scribd)
As for natlangs, the best method to attain a good level in Sambahsa is to make daily translations (even just one sentence a day).
Apparently, you're not bad in foreign languages. I see you can write fluent English, and your Esperanto looks right !
Khauris juma !
Olivier
Tio estas vere multe malĝoja, ĉiam la politiko laboranta por malunuigi la homojn!
ReplyDelete