interesting experience

[Dr Anthony P Stone]

On 30 Aug 2000, Stephen J Brown wrote:

> none of the hindi liturature i have seen displays an arabic alphabet.

As a footnote, there is some historical information about the representation of
Perso-Arabic characters in Devanagari and Bengali at:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/tr8.htm

------------
> 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?

Regards,   Tony Stone
Dr Anthony P. Stone