interesting experience

[Naseem Hines]

At conversational level, depending where you are geographically located,
Urdu and Hindi are almost the same languages. Only when literature is
concerned, Urdu has a great number of vocabulary words that come from the
Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages and Hindi has a great number of
Sanskrit words. This is the simplest way, I think, to understand the point
of view of your friend.

There are a number of volumes written addressing this issue, taking into
consideration the historical, social, and political background concerning
the development of Urdu and Hindi as two separate languages.

Please let me know if you need further information.

Naseem Hines.
____________________________
On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Lambodara wrote:

> Friends;
>
> As an amatuer indologist (and now a laboring sanskrit student) i always pay close attention to all my encounters with Indian culture.  This past weekend i was at my local convenience store where the clerk has become a good aquaintence over the past year.( he was born and raised in India)  I was telling him of my travel plans for this fall and my intention of learning rudimentary hindi so that i could communicate better when in major cities in the north.  His response was immediatly shocking to me.  He told me at great length how though most people believe they are speaking hindi, they are actually speaking Urduu.  This seems a bit of a rediculous claim considering that none of the hindi liturature i have seen displays an arabic alphabet. so my question is this: is there any value to this claim? Also, is this a reletively common claim?
>
> Namaskar
>
> Stephen J Brown
> University of Rochester.
>