Hindi & Urdu: Commonalities & Overview
नमस्ते/Namaste = multipurpose salutation = hello, goodbye, good
night, thank you, & even excuse me.
Namashkar = formal version.
Introduction: Hindi is the primary language of India: national and coofficial—Eng. being the other official lang.
It is also spoken by
Indians and others in Fiji and diaspora communities, including E.
Africa (primarily), the U.S., U.K., and the Carribean. Hindi is a very
musical language with a lot of rhyme, captured in the words chat-pat,
mirch-masal (chili/pepper-spice) and chata-meetha (sour-sweet), the
flavors of this bhasha (i.e., language). This is not surprising, since it
was used in one of the words oldest and most revered oral traditions.
Hindi & Urdu Have Much in Common
Hindi is virtually identical to Urdu, the national language of Pakistan.
The two are often referred to as Hindustani or Hindu-Urdu and used
interchangeably by most speakers of both languages (i.e., it’s hard to
say whether some terms are Hindi or Urdu).
The differences between them are most apparent in formal
conversation (Urdu uses z where Hindi uses j as in zameen vs.
jameen for earth, and Urdu uses more formal vocabulary—given its
long oral poetry tradition during the 300-year Moghul period), as well
as in writing.
Urdu is written in Arabic script, Hindi is written left to right in a script
called Devangari, the oldest recorded script in the world (3,000 B.C.).
The necklace-like line on top of a word signals sound blending.
Furthermore, Urdu vocabulary derives from Persian and/or Arabic,
while Sanskrit is the primary source of Hindi words.
Alphabet: The Devangari script employed by Hindi contains both
vowels (10 basic ones and the borrowed /ri/) and consonants (40
basic ones) and is characterized by bars on top of the symbols. Hindi
is highly phonetic; i.e. the pronunciation of new words can be
scientifically predicted from their written form. This is in strong
contrast to English, with the result that Hindi learners may struggle
with English spelling.
Phonology: In comparison with Englis,h Hindi has approximately half
as many vowels and twice as many consonants. This leads to several
problems of pronunciation. One difficulty is distinguishing phonemes
in words such as said / sad; par / paw; vet / wet, etc. Words
containing the letters th (this, thing, months) might cause Hindi
learners the same kind of problems that they cause most other
learners of English. The phoneme /
/ as exemplified by the s in
pleasure is missing in Hindi and so some might pronounce it as
“pleajure.” Consonants clusters at the beginning or end of words are
more common in English than Hindi. This leads to errors in many
Hindi speakers’ pronunciation of words such as straight (istraight), fly
(faly), film (filam).
Compared to English Hindi has weak but predictable word stress.
Learners therefore have considerable difficulty with the irregular
stress patterns of words such as photograph / photographer. Hindi
learners are disinclined to 'swallow' unstressed syllables such as the
first syllables in the words tomorrow, intelligent, remember, etc., and
will often try to clearly articulate short, common words that are usually
weakly stressed in English: has, and, was, to, etc.
Indian English is heavily Hindi-flavored. It uses a mix of Hindi and
English. We’ll see examples throughout this course.
Grammar - Verb/Tense: Hindi has tenses that similar those used in
English: present simple, past continuous, etc., but there is a lack of
correspondence in their use to express various meanings. This leads
to the very common overuse by Hindi learners of the present
continuous when in English the present simple is required: I am
always playing golf on Sundays. / I am not knowing the answer.
Since Hindi does not have the auxiliary do, learners are prone to
asking questions by means of intonation alone: She has a brother?
and to making mistakes such as When you got married? or She not
eat meat?
There is no definite article (i.e., the) in Hindi, and the number one is
commonly used where English uses the indefinite article. As to be
expected, these differences make it difficult for many Hindi learners to
uses articles in English.
There are two aspects of word order that are different in Hindi and
English. Firstly, the standard word order is in Hindi Subject-ObjectVerb as against Subject-Verb-Object in English. Secondly, in Hindi
the preposition comes after the noun or pronoun it qualifies (i.e., it is
more correctly called a 'postposition'. There does not seem to be
undue interference between the two languages in these areas.
However, in common with most learners of English, Hindi nativespeakers have problems with the correct choice of the English
preposition itself. Mistakes such as They were sitting on (at) the table
are typical.
Vocabulary: Hindi has borrowed many English words, which is a
help to the beginner who quickly wants to acquire a large vocabulary.
However, the pronunciation of many of the loan words has changed
in Hindi. The interference this causes can lead to Hindi learners not
being comprehensible when they use the words in oral English.
The Indian Influence in (Old) English
English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, the largest,
and Sanskrit (the mother of Hindi) is the source
bhaksha/भाषा/language.
Sanskrit loanwords in English include almost all the words for family
(e.g., ma(ma)/mother from mata, father/pa(pa) from pita), reflecting a
communal culture, and many others, including the (Arabic) numbers
(0 to 10), nam for name, and nama for named--emphasizing identity,
belonging, and kinship. While some, like bazaar, shampoo, jungle,
bhaloo (bear) and cheatah have retained their original sounds, many
have been anglicized (e.g., Cashmere vs. Kashmir(i), eight vs. aath;
grass vs. ghass, cona vs. corner, and sabun/soap vs. savon and
sabon, in French and Spanish, respectively).