We Can’t Take Urdu for Granted
“Urdu has a proud heritage as a mixed language, with its wide ranging literary and poetic tradition reflective of centuries of intercultural contact.”
This post is written by APF Blog Writer Noah Usman, an undergraduate student majoring in Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.
As a half-Pakistani American, I constantly caught snippets of Urdu through conversations with extended family, but never became fluent. Consequently, when I visited my relatives in Pakistan for the first time at the age of eighteen, I was looking forward to finding myself immersed in a sea of Urdu words and expressions. I experienced quite the opposite…
Although Urdu was used in informal conversations and introductions, all discussions relating to technical matters (employment, education, social media) took place completely in English. Surprised (and slightly devastated), I bought an Urdu dictionary and petitioned my relatives to use words that, in retrospect, would have sounded awkward even to a semi-proficient speaker such as myself (e.g. ‘mustateel’) for ‘rectangle.’ As could be expected, almost all were dismissive, with most people describing the words as “archaic,” or the more-to-the-point “no one will understand,” and its sister remark “just use English.”
“We are so obsessed with English that we let go of Urdu.”
This begged the question: how could a single language be both intuitive to its speakers, and yet so foreign?
The Urdu language developed during the 13th and 14th centuries from dialects spoken by Muslims in Delhi, which borrowed words mainly from Arabic, Turkish and Persian. Urdu has also borrowed terms from a variety of other languages, including Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The language’s name comes from the Turkish 'ordu' (‘army’) in reference to the theory that it developed in the multinational army camps of the Mughal Empire.
Due to this origin story, Urdu has a proud heritage as a mixed language, with its wide ranging literary and poetic tradition reflective of centuries of intercultural contact. Due to the importance of English in business and politics (from the colonial era onward), English loanwords have become increasingly common in Urdu.
English loanwords have become increasingly common in Urdu.
In modern Pakistani society, English, thanks to its long-established prestige, continues to penetrate nearly every sphere of discourse. School-age children usually learn to read the English alphabet before Urdu, and most university courses are only offered through the medium of English, as are almost all government documents. Even the Government of Pakistan’s official website is only offered in English, occasionally with Urdu subtitles.
As a result, most Pakistani professionals, especially those in technical fields, will simply switch from Urdu to English when discussing work-related topics, not only because of the lack of appropriate vocabulary in common Urdu usage, but also, more significantly, due to the prestige gained through the use of English.
I recently discussed this topic with Arifa Nayyer, an English instructor in Islamabad, and her response was startling: “Sadly, here one is not considered human enough if he isn't able to converse in English properly. We are so obsessed with English that we let go of Urdu.”
Kya ye Urdu ka jumla hai?
While the importance of English in international business and politics cannot (and should not) be overstated, the imbalance of privilege comes with the persistence of a colonialist mentality regarding language.
We now find ourselves in an ominous feedback loop: Urdu speakers, frustrated by the lack of an adequate lexicon, are effectively forced to switch to English, the latter thus becoming — or rather, remaining — the hallmark of the highly educated. The next generation internalizes this stereotype at a younger age and becomes even more eager to achieve English fluency. The English language has thus become even further entrenched in Pakistani society as the ultimate status symbol.
This feedback loop is further perpetuated through social media, where the vast majority of posts by Pakistanis are made in English, with a significant minority in ‘Roman Urdu’, or Urdu written in Latin script. If left unchecked, this situation will further distance younger Pakistanis from their own linguistic identity.
Virtually all aspects of Pakistani life remain built to steer discourse away from Urdu and toward English. In order to counter this continued linguistic imperialism, we must acknowledge that the Urdu language, in its current state, is structurally unfit for twenty-first century communication. Urdu speakers cannot afford to continue to rely on English to supply technical vocabulary, or else they will continue to perpetuate the latter’s dominance. Instead, we must make a concerted effort to revive the dormant technical vocabulary that exists in Urdu, and construct new terms for as yet undefined concepts. In doing so, we can properly usher the Urdu language into all spheres of Pakistani society.
Learn More
The English/Urdu-Medium Divide in Pakistan - Fauzia Shamim & Uzma Rashid
Realities and Myths of Linguistic Imperialism - Robert Phillipson