Sanskrit/Udru/Hindi (Re: Did you hear this?)

[Robert Zydenbos]

I hope I won't disturb Aditya's cheerfulness, or maybe I am a bit
tired and fail to grasp the point, but there are a few things that I
cannot follow, e.g.:

Am 1 Feb 2001, um 23:21 schrieb Aditya, the Cheerful Hindu Sk:

> Urdu was as elitist as Sanskrit during muslim rule since it contained
> words from Farsi that was language of the rulers.

If this is a criterion for being élitist, then I fear the vast majority of
the world's languages are just that. It is in the nature of languages
to borrow, also from élite languages.

> It unfortunately became a symbol of Islam in India and Pakistan. It
> is not the language of masses in either country

No language is.

> Except Pakistan and India muslims use the local language regardless
> of their religion.

(a) Muslims in Kerala speak Malayalam, those in Tamilnadu speak
Tamil; (b) what is 'local'? Urdu is basically northwest Indian and
well rooted there, as Rohit Chopra already mentioned. My own
experience is that it is better to speak Urdu in Delhi than Hindi
(i.e., to say ";suruu karanaa" and "istemaal k." rather than
"praarambha karanaa" and "prayoga k."), because everybody
understands the former, irrespective of whether Persian / Arabic
once upon a time was / were élitist or not. Urdu was not at all local
in East Pakistan, but was local somewhere else, and so much so
that it is not a "Muslim" language there; (c) maybe localness does
not matter so much, as in:

> At one time English was also associated with the language of the
> British rulers but somehow it got de linked with the Raj

There you go.

> but even to this day the English written in India is still the
> British version

More or less; like in Canada or New Zealand. And why not?

> when the rest of the world and internet uses the American version.

Then I do not belong to the rest of the world. :-)

> Have a peaceful and joyous day.

You too. Sorry if there is some kind of misunderstanding in the
above.

RZ


Robert Zydenbos
Institut für Indologie und Iranistik
Universität München