Sunday, June 19, 2005

Urdu: Our National Language

The other day I was travelling in the bus and there was this Afghan teenager sitting beside me. He was the usual poke-my-nose-in-everything kid. As we approached Schon circle where the underpass construction is in full swing, he asked me in the meekiest voice possible: "Bhai jaan yeh kya ban raha hai?" I immediately started to say "Underpass...", but realised that he might not know what exactly is an underpass, so I had to explain him what exactly was going to be built there. It dawned on me that although Urdu is our national language, we often willingly neglect it, and that I didnt see any board depicting what exactly was going on there in Urdu. There are two huge boards displaying the plan of the "ramps" and the "underpass", but one is at a loss of words when it comes to explaining these things in Urdu to a thirteen-year-old Afghan kid. I remembered reading the words "Balai Guzargah" on some flyover construction, and my immediate instinct was that these people should put up a board proclaiming: "Yeh rasta balai guzargah ki tameer ki wajah say band hai, please mutabadil rasta ikhtiar karain. Zehmat kay liye ma'azrat khuwa" But there is a board that proclaims it in English: "Sorry for Inconvenience" Where do we live? Have we forgotten that our language is Urdu, not English? That more than sixty percent of the population couldnt read English? Treat Urdu as the step-language, and we perhaps can never achieve greatness. Our uniqueness is gone. And I remembered that perhaps Balai Guzargah wont work, the underpass should be called "Nashebi Guzargah"!

7 comments:

Teeth Maestro said...

I would have to agree the angrezi language has slowly eaten us away - heck now quite a few words are completely in english and we have no alternatives in urdu for it = Balai or Nashebi ;) I can understand your dilemma

Anonymous said...

The underpass is near Defence/Clifton areas - where people would find it easier to understand "Underpass & Ramps" than "balai guzargah etc" :)

Anonymous said...

Most of the traffic at Schon Circle is public transport, and then almost 60% of the private transport is driven by illiterate/semi-literate drivers. And then the boards are so complicated that their effectiveness is not evident at a first glance.

tdh: ofcourse a language is progressive if it is adaptive, but what if the speakers of the language completely dump it for some other? And it isn't that there are no alternatives. Atleast try to use Urdu, alternatives can be accepted.

TeethUncle: Nashebi Guzargah is the word for it, I am dead sure!

Jon: Its not a matter of comprehension, its a matter of feeling proud of our language. I know it might feel odd since I am advocating us to feel proud of our national language while expressing myself in a foreign language, but still, the message is clear. At the Iranian Embassy there is a banner that proclaims their Election Day proceedings in Urdu (and perhaps Persian). Iranian Embassy is a little distance away from Schon. People that pass through that are the same that can understand Underpass and Ramps. Or that we should say the Iranian people are naive?

JonyBr said...

I think the two major reasons why a language fades away & eventually die are : 1. As uXuf mentioned no sense of pride, 2. Not enough scientific research.

We often claim we r proud of our national language but is it so? I once had a conversation with a friend about urdu not having enough words, turned out it does, but i never knew, do u know that actual word 'saas' means a blood sucking insect? later was used for mother-in-law, the actual urdu word for her is 'khush-daman'

Hold let me find one of my post on the forums i go to, let me post those line, can u translate them into urdu?

1. Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever is one of the most severe human viral diseases. The causative agent, (CCHFV), is the type species of the genus Nairovirus in the Bunyaviridae family. The virus is transmitted to humans by the bite of Ixodid ticks (mostly of the Hyalomma genus)

2. An asteroid or comets may hit earth some day, although NEO comets r no danger to us according to space sceintists.

3. My Computer had a virus when i tryed to copy multimedia file from my PDA, the same file even worked in my cell phone.

Since we never had a research & when there r plenty of new findings we r not the ones who name them, & we r not proud enough on outr language to give them an alternative name....sigh

Personally i dont see urdu has a future as it should have, but we can make ir survive with lots of flexibility to adopt new words, maybe Urdu the Next Generation :)

Anonymous said...

JonyDada, you're damn right. But when Arabic can survive and fit nicely with all the modern languages, why cant we do it with Urdu?

For example, this is what I saw written at the Saudi Arabian Airlines' Office at Regent Plaza (beside the English Text) "Al-khutoot al-jawiya al-arabia al-saudia". You see, translating it very literally, "Khutoot" is arabic/persian/urdu for "lines". "Jawiya" is something air. When they can do it literally then why cant we. Similar is thing with the Persian people, if you see their airline's office at Mehran (I think!), they also have the Persian version of their airline's name. And here in Pakistan, we feel proud of writing "Pee Ayee Aye" in Urdu.

Fifty years are enough for a nation to get mature, to find its roots, to end the state of confusion. But here we are, always on square one, because we never wanted to step forward.

Anonymous said...

"There are fifty seven languages spoken in Pakistan, and English is understood by about 5% of this population", this is stated in a research work done by a fastian. We have Urdu research centers all around, when we can have an Urdu University (Karachi) we dont need other centers. What we need is the nurturing of love for Urdu in our hearts.

English is not the epitome of learnedness, the director of the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) at FAST-NU, Lahore, is a very learned guy. And you'll seldom find him talking in English. His English is beautiful, but his Urdu is absolutely breath-taking. Maybe we can say that he wouldnt want to flaunt his achievements, but still.

When he can feel proud of Urdu then so can we.

JonyBr said...

I m more inclined to uXuf's perception. In Urdu confrence, Ahmed Faraz mentioned the reason why our local languages have survived is bcoz we have valued them as one of the important cultural entity. Although those languages some time lack more than Urdu when it comes on moderen vocabulary. Arabic is valued by all the muslims & perhaps the reason of its existence too.

But we used Urdu just as a barrier language, something to communicate & when its only a matter of communication we find english better. We need to develop a tad bit of love & sense of proudness for urdu. If 3 ppl r talking in english, u dont wana say what u want to say in urdu bcos its a shame :)