Urdu, Urdlish
or Unglish?
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
It seems that a new English
word creeps into modern Urdu usage every week.
This happens in India and Pakistan, where some
250 million regard Urdu (and Hindi) as their primary
language. Interestingly, the people who are indulging
in the Anglicization of Urdu are not just those
who studied in English medium schools but also
those who studied in Urdu medium schools.
The fact that there are foreign words in Urdu
is by itself not a cause for concern. Every language
including English has some so why should Urdu
be an exception. Even its name reflects the origin
of the language as a lingua franca during the
Delhi Sultanate.
But what is of concern is the increasing rate
at which Urdu is being Anglicized. The English
words that are creeping into street (and even
literary) Urdu are not new or technical words
for which there is no equivalent in Urdu. They
are common words with well-established Urdu equivalents.
Thus, as English words are wantonly introduced
into Urdu, they don’t enrich it. Indeed,
such a lexical invasion if left unchecked will
result in the death of Urdu in this century.
There are of course several English words for
which ready Urdu substitutes do not exist and
that enrich Urdu by their introduction. Examples
include technical words such as doctor, dynamo,
machine, hospital and surgeon. Other examples
can be found from sports such as cricket that
have been imported into the subcontinent.
The problem arises when common English words displace
Urdu words. This phenomenon occurs in several
classes of words having to do with education (e.g.,
blackboard, chalk, class, college, lecture, school,
test, time and university), cooking (chicken,
fish, meat, mutton, restaurant), entertainment
(club, film, hero, hotel, movies, TV), interjections
(bye, hello, hi, OK, please, thank you) and other
uses (bus, car, market, MNA, plane, politics,
president, ship, train). These English words are
routinely encountered in every day conversation
and heard on the radio and TV. They have found
their way onto billboards, degree certificates,
and menus where they are written incongruously
in Urdu script.
Why is this happening? What can be done about
it? I decided to pose these questions on Writers
Forum, a moderated web-based group run by Munir
Pervaiz out of Toronto, Canada, that has a global
membership of more than two thousand members including
several prominent writers, journalist and professionals.
The initial response was that and this infusion
of English is a normal part of linguistic development.
After all, all languages grow with time and there
is little to be gained by taking a pedantic stance
on the purity of Urdu.
But then others expressed a concern that such
linguistic “development” was happening
much faster in Urdu than in other languages. Some
asked how could displacement of native word s
by foreign words be regarded as development? At
issue is the rate of assimilation of English words
into Urdu compared to the rate of assimilation
of English words into languages such as Arabic,
Japanese, Mandarin, Persian and Turkish. And Turkish,
while it is now written in the Roman script, has
preserved its vocabulary.
In my travels, I often encounter situations where
my counterparts in Asia or the Middle East will
resort to speaking among themselves in their own
language. Rarely do I hear them use any English
words in such conversations. It may be that they
are studiously avoiding English words to protect
the privacy of the conversation. But the same
phenomenon is observed when watching foreign films
with English subtitles. English words are rarely
used in the original dialogue between the characters.
Some will attribute the phenomenon to globalization
and to the primacy of America. But then why are
the British still continuing to speak their version
of English? It may well be that they take pride
in the purity of their native language. In fact,
in his celebrated work on modern English usage,
H. W. Fowler regards Americanisms as foreign words,
subject to the usual rules of context-specific
and therefore sparing use.
Another argument that is often put forth by those
who believe that English enriches Urdu is that
Urdu too enriches English. They cite words such
as bazaar, caravan, cummerbund, curry, khaki,
jungle, juggernaut, kismet, lemon, shikar, sultan
and pistachio. But except for spices, all such
words have made their way into English because
they convey some exotic concept that was discovered
in India by the colonizing British. They are rarely
going to be used unless a specific cultural and
geographical milieu is being invoked. Only in
the Middle East does anyone hear of Sultan Bush.
Moreover, most of these words came into English
a long time ago, courtesy of writers such as Richard
Burton and Rudyard Kipling. The only new words
that have made their way into English recently
are unfortunately associated with the war on terror,
such as jihad, mujahideen and Taliban or the few
words that Salman Rushdie has tried, without success,
to inject into mainstream English. The balance
of trade is squarely in favor of English.
To sum it up, there are two factors at work in
the Anglicization of Urdu. One is colonial overhang
and the other is globalization. Globalization
affects all language in varying degrees and cannot
be stopped. Even the French have accepted terms
such as Internet and computer. Perhaps a century
or two from now, English will have become a global
language. But there is no reason to speed up the
process in Pakistan.
It is time to cut off the colonial overhang. Insidiously,
it leads to laziness in picking words. If Urdu
words are not used, they will be forgotten. The
adage, “if you don’t use it, you will
lose it,” applies to one’s native
language as much as to a foreign language. And,
more perniciously, it essentially endorses Lord
Macaulay’s racist views. Around the year
1835, he had concluded that among the natives,
there was not one “who could deny that a
single shelf of a good European library was worth
the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
Thus, it is not surprising that 66 percent of
the British population have absolutely no knowledge
of any language other than English while those
in the continent of Europe often speak two or
three languages.
When taken together with Hindi, Urdu is the fourth
most populous language in the world. The number
of its native speakers is about the same as those
for Italian or Turkish. They should take pride
in their native language and protect its purity.
Ways to do that will be discussed in a future
column.
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