Sindhi language:

Most Sindhi speakers in Pakistan are concentrated in Sindh. The remaining speakers are found spread throughout the many areas of the world (mainly other parts of India) to which members of an ethnic group migrated when Sindh became a part of Pakistan during the partition of British India in 1947. The language can be written using the Devanagari or Arabic scripts.
Geographical distribution:
Sindhi is taught as a first language in the schools of south-east Pakistan, except in large metropolises like Karachi. Sindhi language has a vast vocabulary; this has made it a favourite of many writers and so a lot of literature and poetry has been written in Sindhi.

In India:

Sindhi is one of the major literary languages of India recognized in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. It is spoken by a large number of people who, after migration from Sindhi due to partition of the country in 1947 have settled mainly in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Significant number of Sindhi speaking people reside in South India and in some other regions of the country. Among the modern Indian language, Sindhi is the only language which is not an official language of any particular state. Hence being a stateless language, special efforts are required for its growth and preservation of its literary heritage.

Sindhi speech is generally classified into six major dialects:
i. Siraiki, spoken in Siro, i.e. Upper Sindh
ii. Vicholi, in Vicholo, Central Sindh

iii. Lari, in Laru, i.e. Lower Sindh

iv. Lasi, in Lasa B’elo, a part of Kohistan in Baluchistan on the western side of Sindh

v. Thari or Thareli, in Tharu, the desert region on the southeast border of Sindh and a part of the Jaisalmer district in Rajasthan

vi. Kachhi, in the Kutch region and in a part of Kathiawar in Gujarat, on the southern side of Sindh.

Vicholi is considered as the standard dialect by all Sindhi speakers. It is commonly used among the educated class and is accepted as the language of literature and education (also for administration in Sindh, Pakistan). The largest Sindhi-speaking city is Hyderabad, Pakistan.

Sounds:

Sindhi has a very rich sound inventory. It has 46 distinctive consonant phonemes (more than all the phonemes of English combined) and a further 10 vowels. All plosives, affricates, nasals, the retroflex flap and the lateral approximant /l/ have aspirated or breathy voiced counterparts. The language also features four seperate implosives.

Punjabi

History

Punjab is a region straddling the border between India and Pakistan. Punjab has a long history and rich cultural heritage. The people of the Punjab are called Punjabis and they speak a language called Punjabi. Punjabi is an ancient language, but like Punjabi, started its literary career pretty late. The script is Gurmukhi based on Devanagri.

Punjabi is an ancient language, but like Punjabi, started its literary career pretty late. The script is Gurmukhi based on Devanagri. This Eastern Punjab dialect developed into a literary language around the beginning of the 17th century whereas Hindki still remains a group of dialects. During medieval times, Punjab repeatedly bore the brunt of Afghan invaders and internal battles, and these warring times were not exactly feasible for any sort of literary or cultural expansion. Punjabi literature as such came into existence only from the end of the 16th century when Punjabi was already in its Middle Period. In Indian Punjab, Gurmukhi script, created from the Nagari script, is the official script for Punjabi and in Pakistani Punjab, Shahmukhi is the official script. Punjabi was evolving and Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, gave a new lease of life to the language although it was still not in its pure form. The fifth Guru, Arjun Dev compiled the Sikh scripture, the Adi Grantha or Guru Granth Sahib, but this again was not strictly in Punjabi. Guru Govind Singh (1666-1708), the tenth and last Guru, wrote a number of religious works mainly in Old Hindi with the exception of Chandi di Var which is in Punjabi.

Major Punjabi dialects

Majhi
It spans the Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Narowal, Gujrat and some parts of Jhelum in Pakistani Punjab and Amritsar District and Gurdaspur District of the Indian State of Punjab.

Jhangochi or Rachnavi
It is the oldest dialect of the Punjabi which is spoken throughout the area, starting from Khanewal and Jhang at both ends of Ravi and Chenab to Gujranwala district. It then goes down to Bahawalnagar and Chishtian araes, on the banks of river Sutlej.

Shahpuri
This dialect is spoken in Pakistani Punjab. This language has been spoken by the people of District Sargodha including Dera Chanpeer Shah, Khushab, Jhang, Mianwali, Attock, parts of Faisalabad (formerly Lyallpur), parts of Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalnagar, Chakwal, Mianwali, Sargodha, Khushab and Mandi Bahauddin districts.

Pothowari
This dialect is spoken in north Pakistani Punjab. The area extends in the north from Muzaffarabad to as far south as Jhelum, Gujar Khan, Chakwal and Rawalpindi.

Hindko
This dialect is spoken in north-west Pakistani Punjab and NWFP. This dialect is mainly spoken in districts of Peshawar, Attock, Nowshehra, Mansehra, Balakot, Abbotabad and Murree and the lower half of Neelum District and Muzafarabad.

Malwi
This is spoken in the eastern part of Indian Punjab. Main areas are Ludhiana, Ambala, Bathinda, Ganganagar, Malerkotla, Fazilka, Ferozepur. It also includes the Punjabi speaking northern areas of Haryana like Ambala, Hissar, Sirsa, Kurukshetra etc.

Doabi
Doabi spoken in Indian Punjab between the rivers of Beas and Sutlej. It includes Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur districts.

Pwadhi
Kharar, Kurali, Ropar, Nurpurbedi, Morinda, Pail, Rajpura and Samrala are the areas where the Pwadhi language is spoken.

ORIGIN:

Parsi or Persian was the language of the Parsa people who ruled Iran between 550 – 330 BCE. It belongs to what scholars call the Indo-Iranian group of languages. It became the language of the Persian Empire and was widely spoken in the ancient days ranging from the borders of India in the east, Russian in the north, the southern shores of the Persian Gulf to Egypt and the  Mediterraneanin the west.Over the centuries Parsi has changed to its modern form and today Persian is spoken primarily in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and parts
of Uzbekistan. It was the language of the court of many of the Indian kings till the British banned its use, after occupying India in the 18
century. The Mogul kings of India had made Persian their court language. Engraved and filled with gold on walls of Delhi’s Red Fort is
the sentence “Agar Ferdows dar jahan ast hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast”; – ‘If there is a paradise on earth it is here it is here it is here.’

Although the name of the language has been maintained as Persian or Parsi or its Arabic form Farsi (because in Arabic they do not have the letter P) the language has undergone great changes and can be categorized into the following groups.
Old Persian
Middle Persian
Classical Persian
Modern Persian

Old Persian is what the original Parsa tribe of the Hakahmaneshinian (Achaemenid) era spoke and they have left for us samples carved on stone in cuneiform script.Middle Persian is the language spoken during the Sasanian era also known as Pahlavi. We have plenty of writings from that era in the
form of religious writings of the Zarathushti religion, namely the Bundahish, Arda Viraf nameh, Mainu Khared, Pandnameh Adorbad Mehresfand etc.

Classical Persian the origin of this language is not very clear. Words have their roots in different languages spoken in various parts of the country but the majority of the words have their roots in Old Persian, Pahlavi and Avesta. They are represented in classical writings and poems.

It is noteworthy that every country that the Arabs conquered lost its civilization, culture and language and adopted the Arabic language
and way of life. For example Egypt whose people could build Pyramids, were good astronomers and possessed the art of mummification
lost their culture and language to the Arabs and started living like them. It was only Iran that broke the trend and stood against the Arabs and preserved its culture and language and even adopted their own version of Islam by creating Shiaism. Later when the Moguls invaded Iran the Iranians converted them into ambassadors of Iranian language, culture and art. The Moguls made Parsi their court language in India.

[Even to this day the Zoroastrian Mobeds in India memorize the whole Avesta, which runs into volumes as part of their training to become Mobeds and as for a living example of a language without script, the Zarathushties of Iran have been speaking the Dari language for centuries without writing it.]After the Persian came to power and with the expansion of the Empire and the inclusion within their realm, of various cultures that used writing to communicate, the need for communication by writing arose. The scribes of Elam and Babylon were recruited and for the first time the language of the Persians were written in the Cuneiform script. Had they had their own script we would have some proof of it by way of archeological evidence.

Using their mind and using it in a good way -VohuMana- was their principle in life. This fact has been recognized even in the Bible by always calling the Persian ‘Wise’. Even the act of predicting the time and location of the birth of Jesus Christ is not considered a prophecy but an act of wisdom.So when the Iranians entered the business of writing they used their wisdom and started improving on existing methods and forms of writing.

Initially they used the clay tablets, as was the practice among the scribes, like the ones found at Sush (Susa), which contains the Old Persian text of the foundation charter of the palace of Dariush (Darius). Although the scribes were using cuneiform script for centuries it, never occurred to them before, and it was under the Iranians that it was developed into an alphabet denoting sound. Thus the second generation of Old Persian was written in forty-three signs or alphabet and wrting became easy and less tedious.The Assyrian scribes used the Aramaic script. An Assyrian bas-relief shows two scribes, one of whom holds a tablet and stylus for writing in cuneiform and the other a papyrus for writing Aramaic in Ink.

The Aramaic script written with ink on papyrus and skin was, gradually adopted by the Iranians. A few records in the Armanic script have been found to prove its use from Egypt to India. One of the versions, on the tomb of Dariush is drawn up in the Old Persian and written in the Armanic script.

The use of Papyrus, skin and ink made writing, storing and transportation of written material more practical, compared to the wet clay on which the cuneiform script was to be written and then dried. The extent of the Empire, the need for messages and records of trade and commerce to be taken from one place to another, all this weighed in favour of the Armanic script on papyrus or skin.We know from the Bible that records were well maintained by the Iranians in those days. (Ezra 6: 1-3)
‘Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasure were laid up in Babylon. And there was found in Achmetha (Hamadan) in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written.

The most remarkable achievement of that era was the innovation by Pir Roshan that made the writing of Pashto easy. He realized that Pashto could not be written in Arabic script owing to some of its peculiar sounds. He therefore, invented 13 alphabets to represent those sounds. Some of these alphabets patched up vocal differences between the hard and soft dialects of Pashto as well.

Subsequently, Khushal Khan Khattak came to be known “The father of Pashto”. Apart from his unsurpassed works in verse and prose on various topics including hunting, falconry, medicine and religion, he compiled a deal of information on the history of Pashtoon.

Then comes Syed Rahmatullah alias Rahat Zakheli(1884-1963),the harbinger of modern Pashto prose. He introduced or revived almost every genre of the time in Pashto. He wrote the first imaginary novel, published in 1912 under the title of “Mah Rukh”.His short story “Konda Jeenae” was published in the newspaper AFGHAN in 1917.It was the first but a perfect short story. He compiled history and grammar as well in Pashto.

In the political arena, Bacha Khan gave due attention to the renaissance of the Pashto language, literature and culture. He encouraged and sponsored Pashto poets and writers. Professor Hafiz Mohd Idrees wrote a novel “Peghla” which is considered the first comprehensive novel in Pashto. Said Rasul Rasa, Abdul Rahim Majzoob and Fazal Haq Shida modernized Pashto literature by introducing odes and some other genres of English literature. At this juncture, Pashto took a sharp turn to change its oriental style into a European style. Said Rasul Rasa was a good poet but he is best known for his five novels “Mafroor, Shamae, Khund Kushi, Maimunae and Maikhana”.

By that time Pashto received momentum in Afghanistan also with the emergence of a number of good writers, Saleh Mohd Hotak, Abul Haye Habibi, Gul Pacha Ulfat,Qiamuddin Khadim, Siddiq Ullah Rishtin, Zelmay Hiwadmal, Abdul Rauf Benawa and many others. Abdul Mahak wrote “Zamararudda” in three volumes on the post revolutionary situation in Afghanistan.

A great number of Afghan writers are busy nowadays in almost every field of literature. In the field of research, the PhD holders, whose thesis have been published include Iqbal Naseem Khattak, Rajwali Shah Khattak and Mohd Azam.

Some writers work on the religious matters also. The outstanding in this field is Faqir Mohd Abbas Qadria whose work in various sizes from 10 to 1000 (One thousand) pages-have been published in more than 3000 (Three thousand) books.

Pashto language was popularised by the print and electronic media. The poets and writers widened the vision and mental horizons of the Pashto. About 18 radio stations, including those from India, USA, England, Germany, Russia and China, are now broadcasting literary programs in Pashto which now enjoys the 41st position among the languages of the world.

Animals often make use of signs, which point to what they represent, but they don’t use symbols, which are arbitrary and conventional. Examples of signs include sniffles as a sign of an on-coming cold, clouds as a sign of rain, or a scent as a sign of territory. Symbols include things like the words we use. Dog, Hund, chien, cane, perro — these are symbols that refer to the creature so named, yet each one contains nothing in it that in anyway indicates that creature.

In addition, language is a system of symbols, with several levels of organization (at least phonetics, syntax, and semantics). As man started researching and working on these signs and symbols, languages slowly came into its shape.
Here are the following languages telling about how it all began.

* Urdu
* Persian
* Arabic

As a result, the people of Sindh developed their own exclusive artistic tradition. Their arts and craft, music and literature, games and sports have retained their original flavor. Sindh is rich in exquisite pottery, variegated glazed tiles, lacquer-work, leather and straw products, needlework, quilts, embroidery, hand print making and textile design. According to renowned European historian H.T. Sorelay, Sindhis had not only contributed to literature but also to astronomy, medicine, philosophy, dialectics and similar subjects.

Genuine love for fellow beings, large heartedness and hospitality constitute the very spirit of Sindhi culture and it is the association of the cultural elements that elevate it and keep aloft its banner among the contemporary cultures of South-Asia. Having lived for centuries under the changing sway of various dynasties i.e. the Arabs, Mughals, Arghuns, Turkhans and Soomras, Sammahs, Kalhoras and Talpurs, Sindhi culture is a fusion of multiple culture patterns.

Origins

>Sindhi language has evolved over a period of two millennia; with many waves of invasions by Greeks, Arabs, Arghuns, Tarkhans, Seythians, Turks, Mughals and so on. Sindh, on the north west of undivided India, had always been the first to bear the onslaught of the never-ending invaders, and as such absorbed Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English and even Portuguese. The language of the people of Sindh has a solid base of Prakrit and Sanskrit, showing great susceptibility towards borrowings from Arabic, Persian, and Dravidian (such as Brahui in Baluchistan).

Sindh was the seat of the ancient Indus valley civilization during the third millennium BC as discovered from the Moen-jo-Daro excavation. The pictographic seals and clay tablets obtained from these excavations still await proper decipherment by epigraphists.

The Sindhi parlance has witnessed a transition over the years and there are varying theories related to the ancestry of the language. Historians working hard to fathom the origin of the language have varying conclusions to offer.

Facts and discoveries of Sindhi parlances over the years have launched a debate about the Sindhi language being a derivative of the ancient Sanskrit dialect and there a few historians who believe that it’s the other way round. Dr Ernest Trumpp was the pioneer of the theory that Sindhi is a derivative of Sanskrit language. Judging from its vocabulary and roots of verbs, Dr Trumpp came to the conclusion that “Sindhi is a pure Sanskritical language, more free from foreign elements than any of the North Indian vernaculars.”

Literature

Sindh is where Persian and Indian cultures blended, for the area was introduced to Islam in 712AD. Thus, very little of Sindhi literature of the earlier period has survived. The Summara and Summa periods are virtually blank except for the few poems of Hamad, Raju and Isack. The heroic ballads of this period set to music by Shah Abdul Karim (1538-1625) are the earliest records of the Sindhi language.

Real flourish of Sindhi poetic talent came during the last stages of the 18th century. Although the time was not appropriate for cultural developments as invaders repeatedly plundered the country during this period. Several works like Shah Abdul Latif’s Shah-Jo-Rasalo, the magnum opus of Sindhi literature, were produced.

It describes the life of a common man, the sorrows and sufferings of the ill-starred heroes of ancient folklore. Sachal, another eminent, poet closely followed Shah Abdul Karim. He was a Sufi rebel poet who did not adhere to any religion and denounced religious radicals. The poet Saami was a complete contrast to Kari, more pious than poetical, yet possessing a charm of his own. There was an excess of songsters in Sindhi who recited similar ideas and themes in varied tones. The notables among them are Bedil, his son Bekas, and Dalpat. Gul Mohamad introduced Persian forms of poetry replacing the native baits and Kafees. Mirza Kaleech Beg who composed on the same lines contributed a lot to Sindhi literature.

Dayaram Gidumal and Mirza Kaleech were two of the early prose writers. The former was a great scholar and he was famous mainly for his metaphysical writings. The noted lexicographer and essayist Parmanand Mewaram wrote essays that educated and instructed both the young and the old. This peer group also comprised of Bherumal Meherchand, Lalchand Amardinomal and Jethmal Parsram, and Acharya Gidwani, N. R. Malkani and Dr H. M. Gurbuxani.

The languages of northern India, Turkey, Iran, Portugal, and Spain are full of words of Arabic origin. Modern arabic varies a good deal from country to country, differing as much as, say Spanish and Portuguese. However, the classical written arabic has changed little over the centuries.

Origin

The Arabic script evolved from the Nabataean Aramaic script. It has been used since the 4th century AD, but the earliest document, an inscription in Arabic, Syriac and Greek, dates from 512 AD. The Aramaic language has fewer consonants than Arabic, so during the 7th century new Arabic letters were created by adding dots to existing letters in order to avoid ambiguities. Further diacritics indicating short vowels were introduced, but are only generally used to ensure the Qur’an was read aloud without mistakes.

There are two main types of written Arabic:

• Classical Arabic – the language of the Qur’an and classical literature. It differs from Modern Standard Arabic mainly in style and vocabulary, some of which is archaic. All Muslims are expected to recite the Qur’an in the original language, however many rely on translations in order to understand the text.
• Modern Standard Arabic – the universal language of the Arabic-speaking world which is understood by all Arabic speakers. It is the language of the vast majority of written material and of formal TV shows, lectures, etc.

Each Arabic speaking country or region also has its own variety of colloquial spoken Arabic. These colloquial varieties of Arabic appear in written form in some poetry, cartoons and comics, plays and personal letters. There are also translations of the bible into most varieties of colloquial Arabic.
Arabic has also been written with the Hebrew, Syriac and Latin scripts.

Arabic and Islam

The Qur’an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are used by all Muslims, whatever their mother tongue. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah, prayer), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans.

A majority of the world’s Muslims do not speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of the language, such as those used in Islamic prayer, without necessarily knowing their meaning. However, learning Arabic is an essential part of the curriculum for anyone attempting to become an Islamic religious scholar.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (Nabataean), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.

The influence of Arabic on other languages

Main article: Influence of Arabic on other Languages
The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, Kurdish, Persian, Swahili, Urdu, Hindi (especially the spoken variety), Bengali, Turkish, Malay, and Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example the Arabic word for book /kita:b/ is used in all the languages listed, apart from Malay and Indonesian (where it specifically means “religious book”). In addition, Spanish and Portuguese both have large numbers of Arabic loan words.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit “prayer” < salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq “logic”), economic items (like English “sugar”) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano “so and so”) and everyday conjunctions (like Urdu lekin “but”.) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most religious terms used by Muslims around the world are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat ‘prayer’ and imam ‘prayer leader’. In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often mediated by other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic; for example, most Arabic loanwords in Urdu entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.

In common with other European languages, many English words are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly-used words like “sugar” (sukkar), “cotton” (quṭn) and “magazine” (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include “algebra”, “alcohol”, “alchemy”, “alkali” and “zenith

Urdu refers to a standardised register of Hindustani termed khaṛībolī, that emerged as a standard dialect The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Urdū. In general, the term “Urdū” can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions.
Urdū is often contrasted with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani. The main difference between the two is that Standard Urdū is written in Nastaliq calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic loanwords, while Standard Hindi is written in Devanāgarī and has inherited significant vocabulary from Sanskrit. Linguists therefore consider Urdū and Hindi to be two standardized forms of the same language.
Speakers and geographic distribution

The phrase Zaban-e Urdu-e Mualla written in Nasta’liq.
There are between 60 and 80 million native speakers of standard Urdū (Khari Boli).Overall, besides the more than 160 million who speak Urdū in Pakistan, there is a considerable Indian population who communicate in Urdū every day. According to the SIL ethnologue (1999 data), Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world. According to Comerie (1998 data), Hindi-Urdu is the second most spoken language in the world, with 330 million native speakers, after Mandarin and possibly English.

Because of Urdū’s similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can usually understand one another, if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. Indeed, linguists sometimes count them as being part of the same language diasystem. However, Urdū and Hindi are socio-politically different, and people who self-describe as being speakers of Hindi would question their being counted as native speakers of Urdū, and vice-versa.

In Pakistan, Urdū is spoken and understood by a majority of urban dwellers in such cities as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Abbottabad, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Multan, Peshawar, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sukkur and Sargodha. Urdū is used as the official language in all provinces of Pakistan. It is also taught as a compulsory language up to high school in both the English and Urdū medium school systems. This has produced millions of Urdū speakers whose mother tongue is one of the regional languages of Pakistan such as Punjabi, Hindko, Sindhi, Pashto, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Balochi, Siraiki, and Brahui. Urdū is the lingua franca of Pakistan and is absorbing many words from regional languages of Pakistan. The regional languages are also being influenced by Urdū vocabulary. Most of the nearly five million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pakhtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazarvi, and Turkmen) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdū.

In India, Urdū is spoken in places where there are large Muslim majorities or cities which were bases for Muslim Empires in the past. These include parts of Uttar Pradesh (namely Lucknow), Delhi, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mysore. Some Indian schools teach Urdū as a first language and have their own syllabus and exams. Indian madrasahs also teach Arabic as well as Urdū. India has more than 2,900 daily Urdū newspapers. Newspapers such as Daily Salar, Daily Pasban, Siasat Daily, Munsif Daily and Inqilab are published and distributed in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.
Urdū is the national language of Pakistan and is spoken and understood throughout the country. It shares official language status with English. It is used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions. It holds in itself a repository of the cultural, religious and social heritage of the country. Although English is used in most elite circles, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers, Urdū is the lingua franca and is expected to prevail. Urdū is also one of the officially recognized state languages in India and has official language status in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh, and the national capital, Delhi. Urdū has been the premier language of poetry in South Asia for two centuries, and has developed a rich tradition in a variety of poetic genres. The ‘Ghazal’ in Urdū represents the most popular form of subjective poetry, while the ‘Nazm’ exemplifies the objective kind, often reserved for narrative, descriptive, didactic or satirical purposes. Under the broad head of the Nazm we may also include the classical forms of poems known by specific names such as ‘Masnavi’ (a long narrative poem in rhyming couplets on any theme: romantic, religious, or didactic), ‘Marsia’ (an elegy traditionally meant to commemorate the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain, grandson of Prophet Muhammad, and his comrades of the Karbala fame), or ‘Qasida’ (a panegyric written in praise of a king or a nobleman), for all these poems have a single presiding subject, logically developed and concluded. However, these poetic species have an old world aura about their subject and style, and are different from the modern Nazm, supposed to have come into vogue in the later part of the nineteenth century.
History

Urdū developed as local Indo-Aryan dialects came under the influence of the Muslim courts that ruled South Asia from the early thirteenth century. The official language of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature, was Persian, while the language of religion was Arabic. Most of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkish as their mother tongue. The Mughals were also from Central Asia and spoke Turkish as their first language; however the Mughals later adopted Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of north India before the Mughals entered the scene. Babur’s mother tongue was Turkish and he wrote exclusively in Turkish. His son and successor Humayun also spoke and wrote in Turkish. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The mingling of these languages led to a vernacular that is the ancestor of today’s Urdū. Dialects of this vernacular are spoken today in cities and villages throughout Pakistan and northern India. Cities with a particularly strong tradition of Urdū include Hyderabad, Karachi, Lucknow and Lahore.
The name Urdu

The term Urdu came into use when Shahjehan built the Red Fort in Delhi. The word Urdu itself comes from the Turkish word ordu, “tent” or “army”, from which we get the word “horde”. Hence Urdu is sometimes called “Lashkar zaban” or the language of the army. Furthermore, armies of India often contained soldiers with various native tongues. Hence, Urdu was the chosen language to address the soldiers as it abridged several languages.

Wherever Muslim soldiers and officials settled, they carried Urdu with them. Urdu enjoyed commanding status in the literary courts of late Muslim rulers and Nawabs, and flourished under their patronage, partially displacing Farsi as the language of elite in the then Indian society.

Urdu continued as one of many languages in Northwest India. In 1947, Urdu was established as the national language of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the hope that this move would unite and homogenise the various ethnic groups of the new nation. Urdu suddenly went from a language of a minority to the language of the majority. Today, Urdu is taught throughout Pakistani schools and spoken in government positions, and it is also common in much of Northern India. Urdu’s sister language, Hindi, is the official language of India.