Talk:Hindustani language/Archive 2

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Proposal

We have the same kind of content here, at Urdu and one or two other places. In my opinion, actually, the note at Urdu is clearer and more detailed than the first para of this page.

I would like to propose that we copy/move a lot of the content under Urdu to this page and either replace that heading (and other instances of the content) with a Main entry link to this page, or copy the final text in both places.--iFaqeer 01:54, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

That would great. --LordSuryaofShropshire 16:20, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

TITLE OF THE PAGE: Should it not be called 'Urdu-Hindi' rather than 'Hindi-Urdu' as Urdu is a much older standardization of Hindustani and Hindi is a younger one? I think it will also clears the mis-perception that people have that Hindi is an ancient language.... Thanks, NV 84.103.103.207 (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Notes on Kaurvi

Worth capturing succinctly, and though I won't create an article on it right now (might later), I may well modify articles that use it inaccurately -

(a) The term is not in popular use. No one says "I am speaking Kaurvi."
(b) The term Khari continues to be used by linguists and speakers for the broad region ranging from Bijnor to Yamunanagar. Sankrityayan's proposal has been almost universally rejected in this regard.
(c) Kaurvi has caught-on as a reference by some linguists to the dialect of a part of this broad region, i.e. the western parts of it, including the area that was popularly called Saharanpuri. One characteristic of Kaurvi most certainly is consonant overgermination (e.g. jutti instead of jooti). Sankrityayan's proposal has received some traction in this regard.
(d) The word is not, however, in universal or even near-universal use among linguists. There are thousands more references to Khari in linguistic literature than to Kaurvi.

Maqua/Kwami/others, I will be using this approach to article modification. Let me know if you disagree here. --Hunnjazal (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I requested a discussion on moving Khariboli → Delhi dialect (or Delhavi), in case that would help clarify anything. IMO it would probably be a good idea anyway, as Khariboli is obscure in the extreme in English, whereas everyone knows where Delhi is. — kwami (talk) 17:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
It's a terrible idea and OR. Masica flags the mistake in the conflation and makes this exact point. You could create an article on Dehlavi, but let me ask you this: how is it different from MS-HU? I totally doubt you know this, so your article would be about two lines long ("Dehlavi is the dialect of Hindi-Urdu originally spoken in the old urban areas of Delhi, and almost identical to MS-HU; It is closest to Khari, but not the same as it because it lacks overgemination and a few other things that the latter has"). The stuff in Khariboli is *wrong* for Dehlavi. Non-native MS-HU speakers would understand Dehlavi completely, but not Khari. Also, to be honest, I think Dehlavi might be extinct already for anyone below, say, 60 years of age. Dehlavi is/was subtly different from MS-HU but very, very close - way too close to survive with all the immigration Delhi has had. --Hunnjazal (talk) 06:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Relationship between Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani

This article presents an inaccurate relationship between these dialects/languages. Hindustani is not a "blend" or "mixture" of Hindi and Urdu. Rather, Hindi and Urdu are two versions of Hindustani. Hindustani (or Hindi-Urdu) is a language that is spoken in dozens of dialects across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. The vast majority of these dialects are nonstandard dialects, and many of them are mutually unintelligible. These dialects include Khari-Boli, Marwari, Bhojpuri, Eastern Hindi, Western Hindi, etc. There are two principle standard dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu, these being Hindi and Urdu. Urdu is based on the dialect of the Delhi area and is heavily influenced by Persian. Hindi is based on the Khari-Boli dialect and is heavily influenced by Sanskrit. Another important dialect of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu is the dialect spoken in Hindi films, which is largely based on the Bombaiya (Mumbai) dialect, which is heavily influenced by Marathi, Gujarati, and English. Acsenray 21:16, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. "Non-standard" might be what academics call them, but they are often what a person will speak all their lives. And Urdu and Hindi, in my opinion are now beyond where they can be considered just dialects. Again, I understand that a formal linguist might disagree, and that is partly why I don't fight to the death that characterization.
And personally, I think that considering "Hindustani" a real language or dialect is a misnomer. It is however, a useful construct in describing reality—but that's what I think it is, a construct that is useful in describing/capturing a rather fluid reality.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 21:25, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
"Nonstandard" simply means that it is not associated with a formal infrastructure, such as a published grammar and formal literature and government mandates that it be taught in schools. The phrase "just dialects" reflects a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "dialect." You can't speak (or write) a language without employing a dialect of that language. Right now, we are writing in a standard dialect of English. That is, a formalized dialect of English that is supported by schools and textbooks. This might be overly scholarly analysis, but without it, you can't properly understand the relationship between Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani.
By describing Hindustani as a "mixture" or "blend" of Hindi and Urdu implies that you had Hindi in one place and Urdu in another and they met at some point and began mixing. (First of all, they both mostly began in the same general area of north central India, not far apart.) This is not the case. This view also implies that the dialects spoken across the subcontinent just combine various aspects of Hindi and Urdu to varying degrees. They do not. Each dialect of Hindustani is in and of itself a complete system of communication, with its own vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. For the most part, all these aspects are similar enough to call them dialects of the same language, but there are plenty of differences that make several of these dialects mutually unintelligible.
There are a series of related dialects across the subcontinent. All these taken together comprise the Hindustani language. Hindi and Urdu are formal, scholarly, literate versions of this language that are supported by infrastructures. Acsenray 21:46, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This text from the Hindi article, I think, lends support to what I'm arguing here:

Linguists think of Hindi and Urdu as the same language, the difference being that Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Arabic script and draws on Persian and Arabic. The separation is largely a political one; before the partition of India into India and Pakistan, spoken Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language, Hindustani. Hindi and Urdu presently have four standard literary forms: Standard Hindi, Urdu, Dakkhini (Dakhini), and Rehkta. Dakhini is a dialect of Urdu from the Deccan region of south-central India, chiefly from Hyderabad, that uses fewer Persian or Arabic words. Rehkta is a form of Urdu used chiefly for poetry.

Acsenray 18:39, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That text was written in the late 20th/early 21st century and most probbaly by someone who either has never read any Urdu poetry or has an agenda. Or both. I have never heard "Rekhta" described as "a form of Urdu used chiefly for poetry" for example. And I am very involved with Urdu poetry. And I would love for someone to provide any documentation for "before the partition of India into India and Pakistan, spoken Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language, Hindustani". I know this might be a question from a non-linguist, but who considered it so? Did the natives say "I am speaking Hindustani?" Who? When? Where? Did Ghalib say "I write poetry in Urdu, but at home I speak Hindustani?" or "I write poetry in Urdu, but at home I speak Hindustani?"
On the other hand, if this is just a way for linguists to classify the "diasystem" or mix of languages and/or dialects, then let us say so. My own choice would be to say "Hindustani" is a word used by linguists and many Indians to describe ..."—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 19:43, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
before the partition of India into India and Pakistan, spoken Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language, Hindustani
Let me put this in a better way. Not just "before partition", but in fact the further you go back, the terms Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani were used for the same language. Even I am also a beginner in this area, but there are two things I know for sure- one, that Bengalis refer, generally, to both as 'Hindustani', or at least did so quite generally in the past. The term was also used for the set of people speaking that language. The second, Allama Iqbal uses the word "Hindi" in one of his poems where there is absolutely no chance he could have referred to the modern Sanskritised standard of Hindi, so that proves that Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani were all used for the same language in different times in the past. Maquahuitl —Preceding comment was added at 22:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

TITLE OF THE PAGE: Should it not be called 'Urdu-Hindi' rather than 'Hindi-Urdu' as Urdu is a much older standardization of Hindustani and Hindi is a younger one? I think it will also clears the mis-perception that people have that Hindi is an ancient language.... Thanks, NV 84.103.103.207 (talk) 12:58, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like that is arranged in an alphabetical order as H comes before U for the sake of flow rather than chronological order.

For the record, Allama Iqbal did live in modern age, and could have used the word Hindi or Urdu as necessary. Although there's no denying that Hindi & Urdu evolved in semi merged cultures, Urdu mainly refers to the 'lashkari' (military camp) language which started to become a developed culture where as Hindi has its own specialized words (unlike Urdu, which has all its words either from different languages or merged/developed new words). --lTopGunl (talk) 14:20, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Three languages

I think there are now three languages.One Hindustani -This is amixed (hybrid) language of public.Second is Hindi .It is a litrary or Indian official language with Sanskrit words and Urdu is an other litrary or pakistani official language with the huge burden of Arabic and persian language.--Rasoolpuri (talk) 07:52, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Not three languages but three standards. Maquahuitltalk! 05:03, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Actually, there is one parent tongue, Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu. That is the original language. Hindi is a subset of it and Urdu is another subset of it. Getting people to speak Hindi or Urdu is mostly about telling them which words NOT to use rather than which words to use. Getting to these standards is more about censorship than about creativity. Of course, having people speaking the standards is like telling English-speakers not to use Saxon or Norman words, i.e. basically impossible, which is why Hindi-Urdu isn't going away despite the billions of government dollars and ideological straining that has been put into it. Watch this video from TED Pakistan (Who's afraid of Urdish and Urdi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl4xppek2gY). Tariq Rehman explains it well. It also explains why the Hindi and Urdu sections of Wikipedia are stunted. They follow the standards. If it was in natural Hindi-Urdu, the content would explode in size. This is also why anyone that actually needs a commercial audience or wants to make money in North India or Pakistan uses Hindi-Urdu, not Standard Hindi or Standard Urdu. --Hunnjazal (talk) 23:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
Urdu is historically a synonym for Hindustani, is it not? Wouldn't only Modern Standard Urdu be a subset? — kwami (talk) 01:29, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Accurately speaking, that is absolutely correct. Zealots use Hindi as shorthand for "Standard Hindi" ("Shuddh Hindi") and Urdu for "Standard Urdu". --Hunnjazal (talk) 03:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Getting people to speak Hindi or Urdu is mostly about telling them which words NOT to use rather than which words to use.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am going to reuse that line (GPL, baby! ;) and shout it from the rooftops. —Wiki Wikardo 05:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Per the previous discussion, I tagged Khariboli as needing expert attention. Are there two lects called Khariboli, Kauravi and Hindustani, or just one?--perhaps, was Hindustani/Urdu based first on Braj Bhasa, and then on Kauravi, without ever completely merging with Kauravi/Khariboli, so that the two lects remain distinct? If so, the line in the lede "the basis of the officially approved versions of Hindi (Standard Hindi) and Urdu, which are grammatically identical to Khariboli" would seem to be inaccurate.

The Masica chapter clarifies a lot, but I get the feeling I'm still missing something. Should we maybe create a separate article for Kauravi, so that we're clear when we're speaking of Khariboli = High Hindi/Urdu, and when we mean Khariboli = Kauravi/Country Hindi? — kwami (talk) 01:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Khariboli usually refers to a country dialect. The lede's assertion of "identical grammar" is definitely incorrect. In standard-HU you would say "Main nahin jaaoonga" while in Khariboli you would say "Main jaane ka na hoon." Khari is not completely intelligible to non-HU natives who otherwise speak HU, while HU natives experience it to be a dialectical variation. Something akin to Southern American English for non-English natives who otherwise comprehend Standard American English. Kaurvi should have a page to itself as it is yet a distinct dialect afaik - it's a halfway between Khari and Haryanvi. Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu usually refer to High HU, and are distinct from any of these dialects. All major languages of N India & Pakistan (and probably most other places) are like this, eg Punjabi whose high version is based closely on Majhi but isn't identical to it. People who speak Ambarsaria-Lahori, which is really what Majhi is have variances from standard Punjabi. Kashmiri has Maraz, Kamraz and Yamraz (plus a host of others like Kishtawari, etc). Literary/standard Kashmiri is Yamraz influences, but Yamraz isn't identical to it. In all these cases it is a "based most closely on, but not identical to" relationship. BTW Punjabi natives don't even blink when they hear Hindko, for instance - they perceive it as a completely comprehensible regional variant. For non-Punjabis who speak/understand standard Punjabi, it can feel like an unknown tongue. HU, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi speakers raised outside the subcontinent who have learned the standard versions run into the same issue. Braj Bhasha is also a distinct dialect. Khusro used it a lot. It's part of the HU-continuum and comprehensible but definitely distinct from standard HU. I have no analysis on this handy, but standard HU feels closer to Khari than to Braj. Example -
Braj - "Main nahin maakhan khayo"
Khari - "Maine makkhan na khaya"
HU/Hindustani - "Maine makkhan nahin khaya"
Haryanvi - "Manne makkhan na khaya"
That's just a small example. You can easily tell the difference in recordings. --Hunnjazal (talk) 04:09, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
So there are two Khari Bolis, then: upper-crust Delhi dialect, and country dialect ... or maybe three, since Khari Boli is also Kaurvi? Maybe we shouldn't use the name at all, if it's that ambiguous? — kwami (talk) 10:10, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Confused by this. Kaurvi, Khari Boli and Modern H-U are three different things. Khari Boli is the name of a specific dialect ("Boli" means dialect in Hindi-Urdu). Kaurvi afaik is a recently coined name for the Saharanpur-Meerut dialect (used to just be called Saharanpuri, don't know what the specific reasons are to coin this new name but it seems to have taken hold in linguistics). The coverage of HU or Punjabi or Kashmiri dialects on Wikipedia is a complete hash, so I don't even know where (or if) to start.
Not just responding to your question, but flagging the need to discuss evolution better in this article: It is a forensic activity for linguists to figure out how modern HU got to be what it is. What was the base dialect? Kaurvi? Khari? Braj? Was there no one base dialect? There are arguments each way that should be captured somewhere. In old Hindi-Urdu writings, you see significant dialectical differences between writers. The past 800 years seem to have been a process of ever-increasing standardization. Modern HU seems to have congealed pretty completely about 300 odd years ago. Think the wildly varying spellings in English of 1650 and the convergence over time and you'll get a sense of this. Today, Khari, Kaurvi, Haryanvi, Rajasthani, etc speakers take pride in their dialects and produce some works in them - but all acknowledge the common modern standard. The one big exception was Maithili, which really is poorly intelligible to many native-HUs. The 2001 census (http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement5.htm) excludes them from Hindi. There are 422M Hindi + 51M Urdu speakers in India as of 2001, that split driven pretty much by religious affiliation more than anything else (it tracks percentages by region, actually). As far as standard Hindi and standard Urdu go, the number (not tracked by the census) will be a tiny fraction of this. Maybe a few thousand people for each. Similar to the few thousand for Sanskrit. --Hunnjazal (talk) 15:40, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
One of our refs above notes that Kaurvi speakers call their dialect Khari Boli, but that the author prefers to reserve that term for the upper-class Delhi lect of which MSHindi and Urdu arose as literary styles. So by his usage, Hindustani = MSHindi = Urdu = Khari Boli(1) as one dialect/language, and Kaurvi = Khari Boli(2) as another. And wasn't Braj also called Khari Boli when it was the standard? I'm not sure it's wise to call any lect "Standard Dialect" unless usage is completely ossified, and in this case it would appear that it's not. — kwami (talk) 00:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Sources are all over the place because definitions have been evolving over time. Braj is distinct. If it was called Khari also that must have been a long time ago. Khari was considered to prevail between Awadhi and Haryanvi, i.e. Bijnor, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Yamunanagar. No longer. Linguists broke this zone into two. Now, the western part of this zone is called Kaurvi-speaking. They used to say "the Khari of Saharanpur is different." Now they say "Saharanpur speaks Kaurvi, not Khari." MS H-U has been ossified for 200 years and been different from Khari and Braj both for that period. MS H-U is identical in all urban areas across the HU-zone, whether it is Jaipur in Rajasthan or Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh or Delhi or Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh or Karachi in Pakistan. It is actually the only H-U dialect taught in schools and has been for 150-200 years. No one learns Khari at school anymore than they learn Appalachian English or Yorkshire English in school, although all HU-speakers learn samples of many of these dialects in classic poetry pieces at school (Surdas for Braj, Kanhaiyalal for Rajasthani, Tulsidas for Awadhi, Maithilisharan Gupt for Khari, etc).
Unfortunately, I myself don't feel the inclination to go in and clean all this up because I intend to focus on some other articles I have in mind for a while. A good article on Kaurvi would note "xyz are the characteristics of this dialect; xyz is the reason linguists are treating it as distinct; xyz are some linguists disputing that it is distinct from Khari; xyz are the reasons that some linguists are saying MS H-U is closer to Kaurvi than to Khari; xyz are some sample texts in Kaurvi." Ditto for Braj, Khari, Kannauji, Awadhi, etc. Part of the reason this is all seeing lack of progress on Wikipedia is that this is literally a zero-emotion issue for HU-speakers. Dialects are just uninteresting to the vast majority of them. They are viewed as quaint and archaic things that people get rid of as soon as they are educated. They are frequently mocked in HindiUrdu-TV in both India and Pakistan. They are also slowly shrinking and dying - I was going to say "as MS HU replaces them" but that is not accurate, because actually English is replacing them for literate people. Kids of Khari background in Bijnor frequently speak no Khari. They parents speak Khari to them and they speak MS HU back. Ditto for Kaurvi/Saharanpuri. The parents are in a sense bilingual (dialect + MS-HU) and come from many generations of such bilingualism. The kids are bilingual in MS-HU and English. --Hunnjazal (talk) 03:08, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the observation "English is replacing ... ", this is not happening to dialects but to entire languages (espicially in Metros and commercial hubs), e.g. in Bangalore you will find kids replying in English in response to Kannada/Dakhini conversation, same is the case at other places also. But that does'nt means languages/dialect are going to be completely dead any soon. There are people (aged 20s & 30s) who are quite fluent in their dialects in urban space and most of the peoplee in small cities, towns, villages, etc still speak their dialect and are not that fluent in MS-H-U, atleast in my native region of Awadh, Lucknow is different because it is capital and has now a blended linguo-cultural heritage bit as soon as you leave city to suburbs you'll feel the difference, people rarely will be speaking MS-H-U and a person speaking MS-H-U may be well understood but will not be replied back in same standard as locals do not use MS-H-U in day-t-day use and are not conversant in it. --Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 03:29, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Kwami, afaik, in short the history of Hindi/Urdu goes as follows - it was born somewhere in the region North of Delhi about 800 years ago, and at that time the differences between Khariboli and Punjabi wouldn't have been as much as they are today. This is exactly the reason why the linguistic core of HU is still considered to be this region. However, the important point to be noted is that the rural dialects kept on evolving till today's date, whilst Hindi was being groomed in the urban areas and then later in the courts. That led to its divergence from the country lects. It was stabilised in Delhi and Agra. Here, it probably lost the geminating tendencies of Khariboli and Haryanvi ('Upar' for 'above' instead of 'uppar'; 'pIchE' for 'behind', instead of 'picchE'). These tendencies are no doubt not native to Khariboli and are typical only of Braj Bhasha and Awadhi. And Kauravi is nothing but a term used by the linguist Rahul Sankrityayan and probably a few others to emphasise this divergence of Standard HU from the native Khariboli by referring to the latter by this name. It's not a third entity as suggested by Hunnjazal. And Braj was never called Khariboli, and in fact, Braj residents used this very term 'Khariboli' to emphasise the difference between their own language and those of the Muslims (in those times).
I believe that the articles Standard Hindi, Urdu, Hindi-Urdu, Khariboli and Hindi languages are all fine. The article Hindi serves no purpose though, and is best redirected to MSH. The alternative term 'Kauravi' as discussed in the article on Khariboli is totally okay. The differences between rural Khariboli (Kauravi) and standardised Khariboli (MSH or MSU) can be discussed in that article.
And yes, it seems that our friend Hunnjazal is totally ignorant of the dynamism of dialects and the challenge that dynamic cultural identities, globalisation, and regional diaspora (within India) is putting up in front of Standard Hindi. The Bhojpuri diaspora in India from Eastern UP and Bihar has almost set the stage for Bhojpuri to be recognised. In Rajasthan, Marwari speakers have long been campaigning for their language to be recognised but have been held back by people of other regions who feel that they would be dominated by Marwaris. Haryanvi folk music is hugely popular. In fact, the availability of technology has boosted the cause of folk singers and made the folk songs available to the public.
Having said this, I still don't disagree with what Hunnjazal has said, because what he has described are the dynamics opposite to these. English is taking over Indian languages including Hindi, Hindi is taking over other Indian languages and its so-called 'dialects' in such a complicated manner that all aspects need to be discussed. Any single view would give a unidimensional and over-simplified picture of the changes currently occuring. Maquahuitltalk! 18:02, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Merged. — kwami (talk) 01:14, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I am fine with the outcome. However, I do want to respond to Maquahuitl. First, please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that Braj and Khari were the same, so I don't know who you're debating on that point, but it ain't me. In fact, I was saying the very opposite. They are, and sound, totally different. The fact though is that these terms evolve over time. It could be that, in some linguistic works, Braj was once lumped with Khari as a form of country Western Hindi and the blob called Khari. All I said was that, if this was the case, that hasn't been true for a long time (exact words: Braj is distinct. If it was called Khari also that must have been a long time ago).
Second, I think you are more sanguine about dialects than I am. I know there is greater media coverage of them - but there is actually evolution in these dialect-speakers. Their dialects sound more and more like MS H-U. This is definitely true of Haryanvi and Marwari. A terminology has evolved to discuss this: the notion of Theth language. Some people speak theth Marwari or Khari or Haryanvi and others do not. Take an example: Khari has a certain lilt to it. Younger people no longer employ that lilt. Specific words are disappearing. "This side" used to be "urli taraf" and now it is "iss taraf." This gradual standardization of words, rhythm and idiom is relentless and, if anything, accelerating. Forecasting is a tricky business, but I am not at all optimistic on the survival of these dialects as living things, say, 50 years from now. Anyway, this is my opinion - I haven't put any of this in any article. Your opinion on "the dynamism of dialects and the challenge that dynamic cultural identities, globalisation, and regional diaspora (within India) is putting up in front of Standard Hindi" of which I am supposedly so ignorant is also just that - an opinion (feels tinged with ideology, but I have no issues with that) about implied outcomes. Official recognition isn't that big an achievement at all. Sindhi is a recognized language in India. Indian Sindhi has diehard supporters. Indian Sindhi has also been shrinking. These three things are all simultaneously true, whether your worldview permits it or not. The life and death of these dialects will not be determined based on articles in Wikipedia. The commercial and cultural forces arrayed against these dialects are formidable, to say the least. Again, don't get me wrong. I don't want the annihilation of dialects by MS H-U. All I am saying is - it is exceedingly likely to happen, the process is underway already, and there's very little the government or dialect champions can do to stop it. Among other things, MS H-U has a powerful prestige phenomenon at work. The common image is that illiterate/poor rural peasants speak dialects and rich/educated city dwellers speak MS H-U. Do you disagree with this?
Third, you're missing one big fact: the Kauravi-Khari division is simply not used in the sense that Sankrityayan proposed it by linguists at large, e.g. SK Gambhir ("... Western Hindi, mainly Bundeli, Kannauji, Kauravi, Braj, Khariboli and Standard Hindi (HU) ..."). Which of two of these are you saying is identical: Khari Boli, MS H-U, Kaurvi? I don't think any of them is identical to any other and they *are* three distinct things. The language of the Bijnor to Delhi region continues to be called Khari Boli by many linguists. A specific part of this was identified with historic Kuru and the word "Kauravi" was coined for it. The term has caught on, but the initial usage of Khari has not gone away. Read [Encyclopaedic dictionary of Urdu literature] for a take on this. This is precisely what I was saying "Sources are all over the place because definitions have been evolving over time." You're taking a cherry-picked view, but the articles should actually reflect these ambiguities in definitions. I'll be honest: I'll participate and it's one thing to talk here at length, but I don't care about this enough right now to go through that process of constructing an article here which will withstand the test of time. BTW agree with the germination (overgermination) point. The exact process of disappearance of this from MS H-U is not completely understood afaik - there are hypotheses. --Hunnjazal (talk) 03:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
My friend, I think that we are not here to discuss about social issues. What you've mentioned about Hindi "dialects" dying out holds for Indian languages at large as well. If you're not interested in contributing to the dialects, don't. What's the issue here?
Kauravi being distinct from Khari is something new. This was my first reference w.r.t the two being different. Thanks. Maquahuitltalk! 16:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
That's a bit disingenuous, don't you think? This "global struggle against dialect domination" was your thought, not mine. I am not recusing myself from dialect articles for all time to come - just standing aside "right now." You've totally dodged the question of which of Kauravi, Khari and MS H-U is redundant. My contention, and the fact, is that none is. They are distinct things. --Hunnjazal (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment Wouldn't it have been better to redirect Standard Hindi to Hindi? Seems like a much more common name. Now you search "Hindi", and it takes you to "Standard Hindi", so you wonder what happened to the other Hindi's. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 08:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

"Hindi" is ambiguous. It is more common, but could mean MSH, Hindustani, or the Hindi languages. We saw that with the mismatch between population and definition: if we move MSH to 'Hindi', we're going to be constantly fighting people claiming that it has 400M speakers. For that, it should be Hindi languages that is moved to that name. — kwami (talk) 17:19, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Is it that much more ambiguous that "Urdu"? Seems strange to have one as the standard and one as a register. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind moving Urdu to 'Modern Standard Urdu'. But that term isn't nearly as ambiguous, as it only refers to Hindustani. — kwami (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Transliteration issues

So it seems that the transliteration for the sample text is rather strange: neither follow any one standard, established transliteration convention, even though the Urdu claims to follow ALA, which it actually does not. I know a key issue we want to preserve is that the same phoneme in Hindi and Urdu don't get transliterated differently, which is a result of pretty much all transliteration schemes of Hindi-Urdu; Platt's dictionary on the DDSA website, the ALA, etc. How should we proceed in making Hindi transliteration and Urdu transliteration consistent with each other? ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 09:41, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I cleaned up the transliterations to conform to established standards (IAST for Hindi, ALA-LC for Urdu). The way I see it, the use of the transliteration is by far for the script and not for the actual underlying sounds. IPA should be enough for it; however, if someone wants to propose a more unified transliteration that's one-to-one from source grapheme to Roman grapheme, I'd be all for it. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 10:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Basawala, this makes no sense because IAST is wrong for Hindi. It is like using an key to Polish pronunciation and applying it to English words. Makes no sense. A totally analogous example: translating for script will turn "Enough" to एनुघ ("ai-nu-ggh"). Hindi does not use Devanagari purely phonetically whereas classical Sanskrit does. Just to take a tiny example: ṣ does not even *exist* in Hindi as a sound. The same deal with ṃ for anusvar. Following IAST here makes zero sense so I am reversing it. Please allow some time for discussion before making these changes. My recommendation if you really want to use a ref for this is to simply resort to using a Hindi dictionary that romanizes pronunciations. Should be easy enough. Could just use Chaturvedi which is online at Chicago, e.g. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:5437.caturvedi (मनुष्य mānushy). --Hunnjazal (talk) 15:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
First of all, some speakers do maintain a phonemic difference with retroflex sh, and dotted m is used to indicate nasality. And, you completely missed my point. I'm not talking about phonemic representation of the language but transliteration of the script. IAST makes perfect sense for transliteration Devanagari script, just as ALA-LC in transliterating Perso-Arabic script. Differentiating graphemes that may be the same underlying phoneme is appropriate in transliterations; you're confusing this with phonemic transcriptions. IPA is enough for phonemic/phonetic representation. For now, I'm removing the transliteration- it needs to be either academic and consistent, or not be there at all. We simply can't use an OR transcription that has no basis in standardized conventions, nor a specific dictionary's idiosyncratic transliteration that may not represent each grapheme. Let's get more input before we add back the transliteration. Thanks, ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 19:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
I agree w Basawala. Pronunciation is irrelevant: transliteration is about the alphabet. — kwami (talk) 21:31, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
I disagree for one simple reason. This article is about Hindi and Urdu, not Sanskritic Nagri and Perso-Arabic. The purpose of the section is to take two formalized Hindi and Urdu texts and contrast their vocabularies, not the alphabet. Your statement that "transliteration is about the alphabet" supports my position completely. This section is NOT about the alphabet. It is explicitly about the vocabulary. It would totally serve its purpose even if both sentences were written purely in Roman script. However, even if it were for the alphabet, you are still totally wrong because the alphabet transliteration with IAST itself is wrong. IAST is the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, not Hindi. Therefore it does bizarre things like taking an identical word like bhaichara and represent it as bhai-cara in Hindi vs bhai-chara in Urdu in the same section. Basically, either delete the section or transliterate like it would be spoken by actual Hindi and Urdu speakers *and* transliterated by actual Hindi and Urdu sources, not some Sanskrit conversion. It is not convention to indicate nasality with dotted m in Hindi. I am yet to see a single Hindi-English dictionary do this. Also, which Hindi speakers (not Sanskrit) maintain this distinction of retroflex sh? This is patently and provably untrue (important: not saying you're deliberately stating untruth and no disrespect to you is implied by this statement): Allied Chambers transliterated Hindi-Hindi-English dictionary: "The retroflex sibilant ष has lost its identity in modern Hindi and is invariably pronounced as the palatal sibilant श." Also please do not misapprehend my objection here. I have zero objection to grapheme transliteration, but use a Hindi transliteration scheme for Hindi (actually you will most likely oppose a grapheme transliteration scheme, especially with nasals, but we may get to that later :-). You cannot use a Polish transliteration scheme for English, and you cannot use Sanskrit for Hindi. IAST is invalid. I am fine to leave IPA there, but not fine to put in things which are just plain wrong in both practice and convention for both transliteration and pronunciation. Additionally, you're way off on your OR contention. In fact precisely the reverse is provably true. using IAST for Hindi is a clear violation of WP:SYNTH => Hindi uses Devanagri. Sanskrit uses Devanagri. Sanskrit uses IAST. Synthesis: Hindi uses IAST. It is precisely for stuff like this that WP:SYNTH exists. If anything, this is OR on your part. Transliterating a word based on a solid Hindi-English dictionary absolutely is *not* OR.
In summary and directly but politely: you're proved wrong on transliteration and you're proved wrong on pronunciation. I hate to say it but you're putting in incorrect stuff on a topic that is clearly beyond your zone of expertise, based on concepts imported from a different area that do not apply here. Moreover your level of confidence clearly exceeds your scope of knowledge here. That is a recipe for inadvertent WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. I recommend you recuse yourself. However, this is only an appeal to your own better judgment based on what I am seeing here. If you continue to participate, of course, I will engage with you. --Hunnjazal (talk) 07:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Separately, I also realize that there should be an article on Hindi-Urdu transliteration in Wikipedia. I'll put it on my list to work on. --Hunnjazal (talk) 08:08, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Hunnjazal, please assume good faith. No one needs to "recuse themself". First of all, IAST (or if you prefer a more modern scheme that is basically the same such as NLK or ISO 15919) is meant to be a transliteration for "all Indic scripts." Devanagari is an Indic script. As I have said before, IPA is for phonetic/phonemic transcription, and IAST/NLK/ISO 15919/ALA-LC for script transliteration, which does not need to have anything to do with the underlying phonemes and does not have to be consistent for Hindi in Devanagari and Urdu in Perso-Arabic, whatever consistent means. Let's get more input on this. I would like to see the academic transliteration added back on; it's important to have those alongside non-Latin scripts. (Also, "Hindi-Urdu transliteration" is problematic because transliteration is defined for writing systems, not languages.) ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 08:49, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
I *am* assuming good faith - I do not doubt your intent to do the right thing for a second. All I was pointed out is that I am seeing a risk of you unwittingly sliding into OR/SYNTH. In which reliable ref does it say that IAST is a good mechanism for Hindi transliteration? ISO 15919 itself says "IAST is not a standard as no formally approved document exists for it but a convention developed in Europe for the transliteration of Sanskrit rather than that of Indic scripts." First, this section is a discussion of *vocabulary* (i.e. language) and not script. You're missing the entire point of the section. If an identical word is rendered one way in the Hindi transliteration and a different way in the Urdu transliteration, it looks like a different word. That creates an incorrect impression of vocabulary difference when in fact there is none. So, what this should be is transcription and not transliteration: this is what will permit genuine vocabulary comparison. You said it best yourself: "Hindi-Urdu transliteration" is problematic because transliteration is defined for writing systems, not languages. Precisely. This section of the article is about comparing the languages, not the writing systems. Second, even with transliteration, you're still wrong: the Hunterian system is the system used by the Government of India and the Central Hindi Directorate, the body that defines Standard Hindi. It is the nationally approved system and if we are going to be dogmatic about transliteration, that is the system we must follow. I will substantiate with references if you want. Even the UN itself says it - "(on ISO 15919) There is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products ... The Hunterian system is the actually used national system of romanization in India." I noticed that you didnt respond to the ष/श issue. On nasals, the reason Hunterian works is obvious. Labial and dental nasals are distinct, but Hindi doesn't require writers to make the distinction in notation. So, संबंध mixes them. It is saṃbaṇdh. If you don't do this, you end up with sambamdh or sanbandh, which are both wrong. Note that संबन्ध, सम्बंध and सम्बन्ध are all legitimate ways to write this word. Your proposal would take the same word written in perfectly legit ways in Hindi using the same script and render it unpredictably in Roman. This doesn't appear nutty to you at all? It is one of the reasons Sanskrit transliteration is DOA in Hindi. Devnagri used by Hindi is a distinct script in some ways than Devnagri used by Sanskrit. You cannot apply the same transliteration rules to both. This automatically means that if a transliteration scheme is complete and works for Sanskrit, it is guaranteed not to work for Hindi without a solid set of Hindi-specific exceptions. BTW you're already violating grapheme equivalence with schwa syncope. --Hunnjazal (talk) 09:40, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Addition: I looked deeper into ISO 15919 and it correctly disambiguates the nasals too in its strict option:
a) Anusvara before a stop or class nasal is transliterated as the class nasal: n before k, kh, g, gh, ṅ; ñ before c, ch, j, jh, ñ; ṇ before ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh, ṇ; n before t, th, d, dh, n; m before p, ph, b, bh, m.
b) Anusvara and candrabindu representing vowel nasalization are transliterated as a tilde above the transliterated vowel. In the case of the digraphs ai, au, the tilde is attached to the second vowel (aĩ, aũ). Note that candrabindu reduces to a dot after a vowel extending above the line.
Even in ALA/LC -
Anusvara is transliterated ṃ in Hindi and ◌̃ in Marathi, except ṅ before k, kh, g, gh, ṅ; n̄ before c, ch, j, jh, ñ; ṇ before ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh, ṇ, ṛa, ṛha; n before t, th, d, dh, n; m before p, ph, b, bh, m.
Candrabindu is transliterated m̐ , except n̐ before ka, kha, ga, gha, ṅa, ca, cha, ja, jha, ña, ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, ṇa, ṛa, ṛha, ta, tha, da, dha, na.
Both *exactly* in line with what I want. However, because of the possibility of false consensus between us leading to unnecessary debate down the line, I want to hew pretty closely to the standards-based approach, which can be backed by the official entity that defines Standard Hindi. We must use the official Hunterian method if you're insistent on transliterating without using good refs (ie dictionaries). This kind of thing is precisely why I was suggesting, with great respect, that you recuse yourself in this one case. It appears that you have good knowledge in one sphere and are somehow confident it applies to another sphere. Even for the best-meaning person, this opens real possibilities for inadvertent SYNTH and OR. It is leading you to make assertions like "some speakers do maintain a phonemic difference with retroflex sh." I have no doubt that you can build up knowledge here and contribute effectively, but it will take some educating yourself about Hindi. You're hi-2 and I am at hi-5, so there is a gap here, which I am constantly substantiating with refs (not simply my word). Why don't you take that time and come back when you're ready? Wikipedia isn't going anywhere, and I am not going anywhere. We'll all still be here. Please do not take any of this to imply personal disparagement. I value your involvement in Wikipedia and even our interaction here. --Hunnjazal (talk) 20:11, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Please be a bit more civil. First of all, please don't boast your Hindi-5 template my Hindi-2; these are personal claims on our respective UPs and don't mean much. Our discussion is about transliteration, not about retroflex s versus postalveolar sh, which isn't quite the topic in question. (I never disagreed with you that they are pronounced the same and treated as one phoneme by most Standard Hindi speakers, the argument was about transliterating it according to the script distinction.) I have said all I have to say on the topic of transliteration, and can only furthermore point you to my previous comments on the matter and WP:MOSIN#Formal_transliteration / WP:Indic transliteration scheme. As before, we're just waiting for other users to add their inputs, if possible. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 23:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I am being civil & I didn't flag 2 vs 5 to boast in any way but to make an entirely different point. I don't see any feedback from anyone there. I agree with WP:Indic transliteration scheme totally - use primary transliteration - the primary transliteration scheme for Hindi is Hunterian and for every single word I will show you three-fourths more refs that agree with my version than with yours. Every Hindi-English dictionary will agree with me and the vast majority of literature references will agree with me. Let's use it by all means. Agreed? This could be a very easy resolution indeed. --Hunnjazal (talk) 06:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Again, let's be civil. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 07:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Mystifying and very unfair. Is it your definition of civil that I must agree with you? We have a disagreement. You pointed at an article that lays down guidelines for transliteration. I delved into it and it completely backs my approach. When I looked into ISO 15919 details, that backed my approach on nasals as well. I looked into transliteration standards for Hindi and Hunterian, and that backed my approach too. I flagged a systemic pattern I saw in your approach: application of Sanskrit rules to Hindi (retroflex sh, etc), which is quite common actually. There is nothing evil about it: Sanskrit phonology and script use is much better covered in English-language literature than Hindi. Because they share a script which is assumed to create a grapheme-phoneme equivalence (i.e. be phonetic), some folks graft the script portions of Sanskrit on to Hindi and it works 80% of the time, but fails 20% of the time. It's like Dutch being taught with a German orientation. It happens, but someone who knows Dutch will see errors in it. Flagging them is important. This isn't some ego-trip for me - it is just a side-effect of me knowing more in this one area. BTW I have already said that with time anyone can get there, there is nothing magical about it - and I even told you I am willing to wait while you look into this more and come back better armed with info. You called this boasting. I think I have to ask you at this point to assume good faith. --Hunnjazal (talk) 16:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

My opinion: Pronunciation is irrelevant, because we already provide that. No need to do it twice IMO. That is, it doesn't matter that Hindi nagari is less phonemic than Sanskrit. We do want to convey how the scripts are composed, and the way to do that is transliteration. But we have two different scripts for parallel texts, so the way to illustrate them is to transliterate them consistently. Thus IMO we should have transliteration schemes that use the same values for equivalent Nagari and Urdu letters. We don't seem to have much info on Urdu transliteration on WP. Why, exactly, would s.t. like ISO 15919 not be appropriate for Urdu? (I don't see the extra Urdu consonants in there, but then that would mean it's not sufficient for Hindi either.) — kwami (talk) 01:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This would work fine too. I am okay with using ISO 15919 properly with matching transliteration for Urdu. It makes sense. --Hunnjazal (talk) 06:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Any transliteration for Hindi automatically doesn't work for Urdu when there are Perso-Arabic loanword-specific graphemes. If we're having an orthographic transliteration for Hindi in Devanagari that differentiates <श>, <ष> we then need an orthographic transliteration for Urdu that differentiates the multiple orthographic variants of /z/, /t/, /s/, etc, which ALA-LC achieves to do. ISO 15919 doesn't work for Urdu because it's defined for "Indic" scripts and explicitly excludes Perso-Arabic derived scripts. My reasoning is that providing non-Latin orthography necessitates a precise and scientific Romanization of that text, although I'm open to other opinions. Either we have grapheme-preserving transliterations, or simply phonemic/phonetic transcription, in IPA and possibly another system. If so, this is something that can be elaborated for future purposes in a Manual of Style for a combined Hindi-Urdu phonemic transcription. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 03:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Then it is not appropriate to use to compare the languages. This section compares languages, not scripts. The point of this section would work even if you wrote the Urdu in Nagri. The point is that formalized vocabulary in the two languages diverges. If you use different transliteration schemes, you create an apples vs oranges comparison and defeat the point of the section. I oppose it. Can you explain why transliteration of graphemes is crucial in comparing word vocabulary? It is mystifying. --Hunnjazal (talk) 06:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Of course we need to distinguish all of the letters of the Urdu alphabet. That goes without saying. We could just go with the IPA, and that would suffice for comparing the languages. However, we do generally provide transliteration for foreign scripts. It would be nice if the two transliterations were comparable. Perhaps that's not possible, but if it is, it may be a good idea for Hindi and Urdu transliteration in general. — kwami (talk) 07:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Attempting to "transliterate" Urdu directly using ISO15919 would be impossible, as the scheme specifically excludes non-Indic scripts. However, transliterating the Urdu written in Nagari would be fine for the sake of comparison, but not for the sake of transliteration a foreign script in itself. We need a script-faithful transliteration like in Bengali language#Sample_text for sure (whether or not it has anything to do with phonemicity, and Bengali transliteration sure doesn't), and we can also have another Romanization that serves to compare the Hindi and Urdu text, if you don't think IPA is enough. However, I think the issue of NPOV arises if we have the Urdu text's various transliterations depend on conventions for Indic scripts, while not vice versa for the Hindi text. If comparison were the goal, we should transliterate both the sample Hindi and Urdu into the opposite language's script, and provide two transliterations using both conventions. (I have a slight problem with the sample text section providing a Nagari transcription of Urdu but not vice versa, but that's a different matter.) The compromise solution, IMO, would be to do things along the lines of what has been done for Bengali on Wikipedia; on most Bengali-language related articles (like above) and such as Jana gana mana, there exists both a script-faithful transliteration and a phonemic transcription that was agreed upon in Wikipedia. We could do the same with Hindi-Urdu; use an established script-faithful transliteration and agree upon a standard phonemic transcription ourselves, if we can't find an existing one. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 22:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, both texts should be presented in both scripts. I'll do that right now. In fact this is exactly how cross-script books are presented in Hindi and Urdu. It is simply rendered in the original script on one side of the page and the transliterated word is on the other side of the page. Identical text & wording on the two sides in the two different scripts. Asking again: why is transliteration of graphemes is crucial in comparing word vocabulary? --Hunnjazal (talk) 03:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more formal transliteration seems like a totally incorrect thing to do in comparing (or even just discussing) Hindi-Urdu vocabulary. It has a distorting effect. Here's another word - معملا - it is Arabic-origin (and is ironically present in the Formal Hindi declaration and not the Formal Urdu one). Hindi-Urdu speakers pronounce it two different ways with equal validity. Mamla or Mu'amla. Because Nagri renders this two different ways, both spellings are common in Nagri: मामला and मुआमला. A grapheme mapping will show معملا as something like ma'amla, which is wrong because the pesh has simply been customarily skipped. The Nagri would become māmalā (Sanskrit style) or māmlā (with correct schwa deletion) or muāmlā. A perfectly normal word, identical in both registers, shows up differently. Formal transcription makes zero sense here and actually presents falsehood to readers for vocabulary comparison. Based on this approach, you could take Hindi written in Nagri and Hindi written in Roman and compare their vocabulary and say, hey these are distinct languages. I now oppose the use of differing transcription techniques applied to Indic situations to compare languages. You can use them to compare scripts but it is the wrong tool for comparing languages. I am going to propose modifying WP:Indic transliteration scheme to ensure this doesn't happen. --Hunnjazal (talk) 03:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you've understood, but the point of transliteration as well as the definition is for the purposes of representing orthography. WP:Indic transliteration scheme will never serve to represent transcription of languages. I'll restate my example with Bengali; look at Bengali language#Sample text. The transliteration has nothing to do with the actual language's sounds. I understand why you're opposed to script-faithful transliteration, but it follows that if you present a non-Latin script, no matter if your main goal is to present a language (because you can do so only using IPA or another phonemic transcription standard), it makes sense to give a faithful presentation of what the script actually maps to, using Latin script. I think that's a statement most would agree on, in general; however, it can't be a statement that rules with an iron fist. In addition, I'm trying to create a standard Hindi-Urdu unified phonemic transcription at User:Basawala/Sandbox (without yet discussing where it should be used, for now); any input is welcome. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 07:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I actually do understand your point, but it doesn't apply here. The purpose of this section is to compare vocabulary and not orthography. Everyone knows the orthography of Perso-Arabic and Nagri is completely different. What's the point there? What I am proposing in WP:Indic transliteration scheme is that anytime two Indic languages like Hindi and Urdu are compared for vocabulary differences, a transcription scheme that covers both be employed. Hunterian, with diacritic additions perhaps, does this nicely. This is true for transcription as well. I am actually not opposed to script-faithful transliteration. It has its place but this isn't it unless it is applicable to both renderings of a language such that the goal of the section isn't defeated. Definitely happy to participate in your attempt to define a unified standard, but need to put aside some time for it. The Bengali transliteration is fine but is non-analogous because you aren't comparing Bengali to anything. What if we were comparing Bengali and Sylheti but used ISO for Bengali and Hunterian for Sylheti to compare words in Bengali and Sylheti? That would make no sense because the languages would look much more divergent than they actually are. It would confound that section. Same deal here. --Hunnjazal (talk) 07:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

"Hindostee"?

I have redirected "Hindostee" here (an archaic rendering?) Please alter if incorrect. --Mais oui! (talk) 18:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I’m certain that’s supposed to be Hindostanee. —Wiki Wikardo 20:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. I will redirect that here. And although it's usually used for the language, there are occasional other uses (Hindostanee clubs, women). — kwami (talk) 20:47, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Updating the number of total speakers of Hindi-Urdu

The source (BBC) which gives the total number of Hindi-Urdu speakers 490 million is outdated: it is from 2006 and it is a dead link. If you go to the same BBC source and check their website on Hindi (1) it gives you 545 million speakers, and 100 million speakers for Urdu (2). So the total number of Hindi-Urdu speakers now (2012) is about 645 million people, which makes sense as both India's and Pakistan's population has grown rapidly recently and more people has learnt the language as the popular second language. 64.189.101.117 (talk) 09:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

That's the wrong Hindi. Rajasthani isn't a dialect of Hindustani. — kwami (talk) 10:56, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
That's not the 'wrong' Hindi. The source doesn't say that Rajasthani is a dialect of Hindi; the source says that Hindi is also spoken in Rajasthan in India. 64.189.101.117 (talk) 00:04, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Lots of people say Rajasthani is a dialect of Hindi. The source says Hindi is the "main language" of Rajasthan. That means Rajasthani. — kwami (talk) 00:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
The total number of speakers of Rajasthani is about 20 million. Rajasthan's population is about 70 million. It's not the main language of Rajasthan. 64.189.101.46 (talk) 08:59, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
I read through the whole source of BBC and it says that "Hindi has hundreds of dialects...". Now, this makes it clear that the source talks about Hindi in the broader sense, and not about Standard Hindi. You were right.
What makes the issue confusing is that many sources - including BBC and the Indian Government - use the word 'Hindi' to refer to all the varieties of Hindi and not specifically to Standard Hindi. To avoid ambiguity and further confusions I suggest renaming the article to "Standard Hindi-Urdu" or "Standard Hindi and Urdu". 64.189.101.46 (talk) 12:47, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
There's no such thing. There are two standards for Hindustani, Standard Urdu and Manak Hindi.
BTW, the numbers in the UCLA ref make no sense. There are 180M speakers of "Hindi" in India, and 500M world-wide. So there are 320M outside India? Where? I suspect that they confused numbers for Khari Boli and for Central Zone Indic, which means whoever wrote that page didn't know what they were doing. Better just to use their refs directly. — kwami (talk) 19:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
I checked the UCLA source, and I agree, 320M native speakers outside of India just doesn't make sense.
As for the move, I would support it to "Hindustani". As others pointed it out before, it would be a more appropriate name. As you said it is commonly used in the context of Bollywood movies and other sources. In contrast to Taivo, I do not feel it has a colonial feel at all. The term Hindustani is actually in common usage by reliable sources Oxford Dictionary (Hindi-Urdu is not even defined), and even the sources currently used in this article refer to Hindustani and not Hindi-Urdu. Plus, the term Hindustani avoids the ambiguity that 'Hindi' many times used to refer to all the varieties of Hindi, and not only to standard Hindi. 64.189.101.99 (talk) 03:17, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

To be fair, "Hindustani" sometimes shares in that ambiguity, though much less commonly. If you want to propose the move, I'll support it, though I suspect the opposition might be vociferous. — kwami (talk) 05:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Hindustani

Shouldn't the name be Hindustani not Hindi-Urdu. Hindi & Urdu are dialects of Hindustani not Hindi-Urdu, it would actually make more sense if the name is Hindustani, if you check most of the other wikipedia languages the name is Hindustani, the same should also happen here. Rani Patel (talk) 15:12, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I think "Hindi-Urdu" is more common usage. — kwami (talk) 18:29, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Though there is this:

The court said that the Constituent Assembly while discussing the Language Formula noticed the recommendation of the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights, which recommended the formula as per which, “Hindustani, written either in Devanagari or the Persian script at the option of the citizen, shall, as the national language, be the first official language of the Union. English shall be the second official language for such period as the Union may, by law, determine.”[1]

— kwami (talk) 09:49, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

But the most common name (indeed the almost universally used name) in linguistic literature in English is "Hindi-Urdu". "Hindustani" has a colonial feel to it. In all my linguistic reading, I don't believe I ever even saw "Hindustani" until I got to Wikipedia. I was somewhat shocked to see that colonial usage here. Per WP:COMMONNAME this is "Hindi-Urdu". --Taivo (talk) 12:47, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
The name is commonly used in the context of Bollywood films, since those are intended to bridge the divide, and are as popular in Pakistan as they are in India. — kwami (talk) 17:12, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

How is "Hindi-Urdu" the name you are giving to the language that Hindi and Urdu register from? Hindi-Urdu is the term used when cant decide between both the languages so we call it "Hindi-Urdu" but that is not what Hindustani is. I don't believe I ever even saw that "Hindi-Urdu" is a language until I got to Wikipedia. How can you deny this even when most of the other languages have Hindustani? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SoniaSingh04 (talk • contribs) 18:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

You don't know what you are talking about. "Hindi-Urdu" is the most commonly used name for this language in scientific linguistic texts. Hindi-Urdu is therefore the term we use in Wikipedia for this node, and "Hindustani" redirects to Hindi-Urdu. --Taivo (talk) 20:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, some people never saw 'Hindustani' until coming here, and some never saw 'Hind-Urdu'. It depends on what you read. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2006) has articles on Hindustani, Hindi, and Urdu. The latter two are the modern standards; the former the language across its history. They mention that Kelkar (1968) feels that Hindustani went out with the establishment of the standardized registers, but themselves describe "Hindustani proper" (as a third variety) as basic Khari Boli with only those Persian and Sanskrit words which have been fully assimilated; the say that "in its spoken colloquial form, it is used for communication by a large number of speakers in India, Pakistan, and other parts of the world. It may therefore be considered, according to Chatterji (1960), as one of the great languages of the world." There are then three other forms: local Hindustani of NW India that is influenced by Haryani, Rajasthani, etc.; Bazaar Hindustani in markets across India; and Dakhini. (The author of the Hindustani and Urdu articles, BTW, is Indian, at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore.[2] He evidently does not feel it's a colonial term.) "Hindi-Urdu" tends to refer to the two standards taken together, though that varies too, sometimes meaning all of the Hindi languages. It may be the more common term, but I think in a case like the info-box classification, where we wish to be clear that we don't mean Standard Hindi + Standard Urdu and that we're covering the entire history of the language, then "Hindustani" may be the more felicitous term. — kwami (talk) 04:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

According to the sources I've looked at today, "Hindi-Urdu" refers to the language that comprises the two standards and "Hindustani" is broader in scope. That seems to be the implication of your comment as well. --Taivo (talk) 05:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --regentspark (comment) 03:02, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Hindi-Urdu → Hindustani language – This page should be named "Hindustani language" as reliable sources have been provided on this page, I do not see how there is a "colonial feel" towards Hindustani and I do not see how "Hindi-Urdu" can be the name of the language which they are registers of. The most practical name is "Hindustani" and it should be used here in the English Wikipedia too as you can see most of the interwiki languages have it as "Hindustani". --SoniaSingh04 (talk) 17:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

  • Support Per comments above, "Hindi-Urdu" is specifically the collective name of the two national standards. "Hindustani" includes the entire history of the language (that's where the colonial feel comes in, from before the modern standards were established, though it's older than the colonial era) as well as the modern colloquial. — kwami (talk) 19:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - George Abraham Grierson in his book Western Hindi, Linguistic Survey of India. says,
pg. 3, "The earliest date which Yule gives of the use of the word ' Hindostani ' is 1616 ..."
pg. 44, 45 & 46, "It (literary Hindostani) has several recognised varieties, amongst which may be mentioned Urdu, Rekhta, Dakhini, and Hindi.
pg. 46 & 47,"We may now define the three main varieties of Hindustani as follows :— Hindostani primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, is also the lingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Deva-nagari characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name ' Urdu ' can then be confined to that special variety of Hindostani in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, ' Hindi ' can be confined to the form of Hindustani in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only bo written in the Deva-nagari character. These are the definitions which were proposed by the late Mr. Growse, and they have the advantage of being intelligible, while at the same time they do not overlap. Hitherto, all the three words have been very loosely employed. Finally, I use ' Eastern Hindi ' to connote the group of intermediate dialects of which Awadhi is the chief, and ' Western Hindi ' to connote the group of dialects of which Braj Bhakha and Hindustani (in its different phases) are the best known."
"As a literary language, the earliest specimens of Hindustani are in Urdu, or rather Rekhta, for they were poetical works."
So, Hindusatni is older & is superset of Hindi-Urdu.--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 08:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Reply to Comment. Fijian Hindustani is not the same language as what is being described as "Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu" here. Fijian Hindustani is a variety of Awadhi. So your comment is baseless, Faizhaider. --Taivo (talk) 22:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Reply - The constitution of Fiji nowhere says 'Fijian Hindustani' it just mentions 'Hindustani', the term 'Fiji Hindi' too is not mentioned in it.--Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haidertcs 10:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
That would be relevant if Fiji had introduced Hindustani as a foreign language in Fiji, but they haven't. They obviously mean the Hindustani in Fiji, which is not Hindustani. — kwami (talk) 10:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
"Fijian Hindustani" is what linguists call the language to distinguish it from "Indian" Hindustani. On Fiji, they only say "Hindustani", which is not Hindi, but Awadhi. --Taivo (talk) 16:11, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Hindustani, Hindi, Urdu

The medieval language was historically called Hindavi, Urdu, Hindi, and Hindustani by the people of that time period, with the term Urdu being the last to come to prominence (around 1780). The terms Urdu and Hindi both need to be mentioned in order to avoid confusion with the present day standardized forms of each, and because Hindustani is and was an umbrella term encompassing both since the 19th century. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 05:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

He's talking about the hat note at the top. This article covers medieval Urdu, whereas Modern Standard Urdu is at Urdu. Do we need to extend the hat note for medieval Doabi Hindi vs Modern Standard Hindi?

(@ Foreverknowledge, I reverted you again. This article is not about the historical language, but about the language as a whole. Also, while it's been a while since I reviewed the sources, I don't recall "Hindi" as being historically prominent, and your source for it doesn't seem very reliable, as they get their history mixed up.) — kwami (talk) 08:42, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Instead of claiming a source doesn't seem reliable, you should substantiate your claim instead of randomly reverting edits without any proof of your own. Since you don't seem interested in doing your own research, I can refer you to many other sources that corroborate my statements, but I feel that it will be of no use to you. In any case, please don't revert my edits about the transliteration. You've already done that twice without any rhyme or reason. There is nothing debatable about it. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 11:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I must admit I'm a tad befuddled by this article. For example, the article says "commonly known as Hindi-Urdu". Never having heard that term being commonly used, I looked for references in the article and find that there are only two that use the term. One is a dead link [3] to something that looks like a personal non-peer reviewed web page. The second is to a generic book on languages that can hardly claim to know what any particular language is commonly known as (I'll check the book itself in a bit). My suggestion is to remove the Hindu-Urdu term entirely from the article. About linking to Hindi from the hat note, this is what Britannica says "However, the religious difference proved intractable, and with partition Hindustani was split into two distinct (if closely related) official languages, Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan. Despite this division, many basic terms, such as the names of the parts of the human body and of relatives, pronouns, numerals, postpositions, and verbs, are the same in both Sanskritized Hindi and Persianized Urdu." Seems reasonable to me. --regentspark (comment) 14:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the Dua references, it appears that the author is using the term Hindi-Urdu to indicate the divergence of Hindustanti/Hindawi into Hindi and Urdu, rather than as a synonym for Hindustani. I'm going to remove the commonly referred to as "Hindi-Urdu" unless there is a citation to that commonality or reference. --regentspark (comment) 18:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I've commonly seen "the Hindi-Urdu language" for Hindustani (though, as with most languages, it's hard to tell if they mean just the official registers or not, and in some cases it clearly does mean just that: see my comment in the move discussion above), and we used to have this article at that name. I do think we need "Hindi-Urdu" bolded somewhere in the lead. — kwami (talk) 02:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that Hindi should be linked in the hat note. When I first read the hat note, my initial reaction was: "Doesn't Hindustani most commonly refer to the middle form of speech between Hindi and Urdu?" I'm sure it could be confusing to other readers too. The British themselves used the term inconsistently. Although many used Hindustani to simply mean Urdu, there were others (e.g. the famed John Gilchrist) who used Hindustani as an all-encompassing term to mean Persianized Khari Boli (i.e. Urdu), non-Persianized Khari Boli (i.e. Hindi), and the preferred middle form of speech. There were others still (e.g. Grierson) who defined it specifically as the middle form of speech, distinct from Urdu and Hindi. This latter usage was also used by Indian nationalists such as Gandhi and Nehru, who advocated the use of Hindustani in speech and writing instead of Urdu and Hindi, and this is the meaning by which Hindustani is still known today by native speakers. Then there were some Indian writers who used Hindustani to specifically mean Hindi (presumably because both terms mean "Indian")and not Urdu or a middle form of speech. Keep in mind all of these different uses of Hindustani were in vogue before independence and thus are "historical" definitions. Based on the inconsistent, imprecise, and often confusing usage of Hindustani, I think it would be best to also include Hindi in the hat note. Otherwise, readers may consider it a confusing oddity if only Urdu is mentioned. --BallerY2K (talk) 06:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

How's that? — kwami (talk) 06:32, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean? --BallerY2K (talk) 06:48, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Nevermind, I see it. --BallerY2K (talk) 06:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Delete this article

This article should be deleted and the relevant information should be transferred to the Hindi and Urdu articles. Not for political reasons either. Hindustani is an archaic term, which Colin Masica in one of the links posted here mentions that it's seldom used. And that was in 1991, so imagine how uncommon it is now. Most people in India just say they are speaking Hindi. Partition pretty much killed the use of Hindustani in a linguistic sense. Notably, the census of India stopped recording Hindustani as an actual language after 1971 because of only a handful of people using the term to refer to their language. Its mainly used in India in a national sense as a synonym to Bhaaratiya or Indian. In Pakistan the term is not used at all for language and is only used in reference to India or Indians. Most of the links quoted in this talk page use Hindustani in quotes indicating they are following Grierson's definition. Otherwise they generally use Hindi-Urdu. I propose Hindustani language should just go to the disambiguation page which would have a note saying this was a historic name for the Hindi-Urdu language and is not current anymore and refer readers to the Hindi and Urdu articles. Use of Hindustani in a language sense in other Wikipedia articles should be changed to Hindi or Urdu whichever is more appropriate for the situation. I think it is irresponsible that Wikipedia uses Hindustani so rampantly when no one else uses it even a fraction of the amount. I'm concerned that readers will go up to Indians or Pakistanis and ask them how they say such and such term in Hindustani, especially if they are visiting either country. Most Indians would chuckle and think the person is being too old-fashioned or politically correct, while Pakistanis would be outraged. --ShahDuniya (talk) 03:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Bullshit. Articles are not about terms or names, but about concepts. What term natives use is utterly irrelevant. --JorisvS (talk) 09:07, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure this concept can be illustrated in better ways that are more consistent with academic usage and linguistics rather than the use of the imprecise Hindustani, which by all accounts is outdated. By the way, I don't appreciate your rude response. --ShahDuniya (talk) 09:42, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
It is blatant POV to refer people either Hindi or Urdu, because structurally these constitute a single language, which is the topic of this article. The lead describes the differences between the terms as well as usage of the term. --JorisvS (talk) 09:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Why not just change the article's name to Hindi-Urdu? That would better reflect the usage in academia and alleviate concerns about the misuse of Hindustani. It seems the article was called Hindi-Urdu at one time but was changed to Hindustani for some reason. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 12:05, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Okay, now we're talking. Hindi and Urdu are two standardized registers of the same language. From the lead: taking Hindi and Urdu together gives "Hindi-Urdu", which does not necessarily mean the entire language of which Hindi and Urdu are part. There are also dialects that differ somewhat from Hindi and Urdu in their own way (and then I'm not talking about the Hindi languages, which are not part of the language that subsumes Hindi and Urdu). So what to call it? Hindi-Urdu? But that neglects the non-standard dialects. What's so wrong with "Hindustani"? --JorisvS (talk) 12:34, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Removal of Devanagari from lede

@Foreverknowledge: I have no grudge against Devanagari... The link I gave you was a revert of my addition of Devanagari in the lede of a non-film article by another user. Please improve your judging qualities to decide on relevance. The established consensus is removal of Indic scripts from ALL ledes. —ШαмıQ✍ @ 08:23, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

That article had nothing to do with language. It was about India's independence day. India has many official languages, thus I understand the concern of only giving giving Hindi in the lede of that article. This article is about Hindustani, which pertains to both Hindi and Urdu. Thus both scripts should be given in the lead. I see no "consensus" that you speak of. Let's see what the opinions of others are about this. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 08:31, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)The reason for that decision was the petty fights of everybody trying add their own language to the lead, until it becomes a mess. That's not generally a problem with language articles themselves, as it's obvious which language is relevant. Take a look, and you'll see that most major Indic languages have the autonym in its script in the lead. The worst it gets is Punjabi language, and that's not too bad. — kwami (talk) 08:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it looks like Nagri should be deleted from the Punjabi article. — kwami (talk) 09:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
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