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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Urdū
Urdu
An
example of typical calligraphic
Urdu book art (Nizam-e-nau “A
New
World
Order” by
Hadrat Mirza
Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad,
1942)
shows why
it is
difficult to produce
this script
style
by means of
typesetting
and computer
fonts.
Language
information: In its narrowest definition, Urdu is one of two Standard Hindustani (“Khariboli”) varieties,
the other one being Standard Hindi. In its most extensive definition, the name “Urdu” covers all non-standard Hindustani varieties. Another, somewhat simplified,
definition is that Urdu represents Hindustani varieties used predominantly by
Muslims. Of the currently about 337 million speakers of Hindustani, over 60
million speak Urdu (used predominantly by
Muslims), with about eleven million are Pakistani and close to 50 million are
Indian. Sizeable communities of Urdu speakers are also found in Afghanistan,
Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Guyana,
Italy, Japan,
Malawi,
Mauritius, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,
Spain,
Sweden,
Thailand,
the United
Arab
Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Zambia. Especially in Pakistan, Urdu is used by numerous non-native speakers as well, such as Brahui, Balochi,
Gujarati, Hazarvi, Hindko, Kashmiri, Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tajik, Turkmen,
Siraiki and
Uzbek.
Hindustani came
under
the
influence of
Persian when under the Muslim-led rule of the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526), the Mughal Empire (1526–1857) and their successor states this language enjoyed official
dominance
within much of the area that covered most
of
today’s Pakistan
and
India. Further influences came directly from Turkic varieties, Pashto and Arabic. Most of these influences are shared by Urdu and Hindi, as well as by neighboring Indo-Aryan
language. However, due to continuing connections with the Muslim world, they
are
more
prevalent
in
the
varieties
of
Muslim-dominated
communities, namely those commonly referred to as Urdu.
Urdu is one of the
official languages of both Pakistan and India.*
There are four officially
recognized Urdu dialects: Dakhini, Pinjari, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu
(based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). There is also a group of South Indian Urdu. These varieties show strong Hindi
influences as well as influences from various non-Indo-Aryan, mostly Dravidian,
languages
of
the region. Being parts of the
same Hindustani language, Urdu and Hindi varieties are for the most part mutually
intelligible, and a type of Hindustani cross variety tends to be used in reaching
speakers of all of them, such as in India’s enormous and growing motion picture industry (“Bollywood”). Such cross varieties tend to use fewer Perso-Arabic loanwords than in Urdu
and
fewer
Sanskrit
loanwords than in Hindi, more Perso-Arabic loanwords than in Hindi and more
Sanskrit
loanwords than in Urdu.
The major distinctive
features
are in the area of writing.
While Hindi uses the ancient Indic Devanāgarī script, Urdu mostly uses a moderated Perso-Arabic script, preferably in the graceful “hanging” Nasta‘līq style of the Persian school of calligraphy, whose complexity until the
recent
advent
of
computer-assisted typesetting required newspapers and even books to be handwritten
by calligraphers. (For the Urdu translation presented here we used a computer
font
version of the Urdu Nasta‘līq style.)
Most
languages of the Indian subcontinent have a dental and
a retroflex consonant series where European languages have
only one. Most Germanic and Slavonic languages have only
an alveolar series for t, d,
n, r and l, most Romance and
Celtic languages only a dental one.
Like
closely related languages, Urdu has two noteworthy phonological features:
aspiration of both voiceless and voiced plosives and, probably owing to an
ancient Munda or Dravidian substrate, a retroflex series of consonants. Furthermore,
it has two contrastive series of consonants where European languages have only
one. It has a dental series (in which the tip of the tongue touches the front
teeth) and a retroflex series (in which the tip of the tongue is bend back
or upward to touch an area behind the alveolar ridge). They lack a corresponding
alveolar series, which is the default in Germanic languages. In rendering loanwords
and names from English and other Germanic languages, speakers of Urdu and
related languages thus must choose dental or retroflex substitution. Interestingly,
they tend to choose the retroflex series since it sounds more closely related
to them. This is why retroflexion is a striking characteristic of South Asian “accents” in English.
__________
* Pakistan’s official languages: Urdu and
English; India’s official languages: Assamese,
Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam,
Maithili, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu. (Underlined names are those of Indo-Aryan and thus Indo-European languages.)
Genealogy: Indo-European > Indo-Iranian > Indo-Aryan > Central > Hindustani
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