What's The Difference Between Hindi And Urdu? | History Forum
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- Thread starter Niki86
- Start date Dec 7, 2011
- Tags difference hindi urdu
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Niki86
Joined Jan 2011 1,190 Posts | 0+ Balkans Does anyone here speak both?
Shaheen
Joined May 2011 2,744 Posts | 283+ Sweden I am an Urdu speaker and If i am to generalize basically there are two levels of both Hindi and Urdu, that is informal and formal. The informal versions of the two languages are quite similar, in fact so similar that they can really be called dialects of a same language (usually refereed to as Hindustani). Loose examples would be how a Spanish speaker could comprehend Portuguese or Swedish speaker could comprehend Norwegian. However the formal version of the two languages will be much more different as Urdu vocabulary is influenced heavily from Persian, Arabic and Turkish whilst the emphasis in Hindi is on Sanskrit. So for example the word for mother in formal (known as "Khalis") Urdu is Valida which obviously has Turkish roots whilst in formal Hindi it would be Mata. In the informal versions of the two languages however words like ma or amma would be used by both so that they understand each other. Similarly the word for welcome in Urdu is Khoshamdeed from Farsi and in Hindi is Swagat. And so forth i can give many examples. Then there is the script difference. Urdu uses the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq writing script which is written from right to left whilst Hindi uses the Devanagri script which is written from left to right.
Further on there are different pronunciations as well though these may vary from area to area. The most promiment one is the letter Z which many Hindi speakers prounces as J so the word Zameen (earth) would be prounced as Jameen by many Hindi speakers. There are probably other difference as well that arent coming to my mind right now 
Brisieis
Joined Sep 2011 24,135 Posts | 8+ ------------ Shaheen pretty much said it all. Niki86
Joined Jan 2011 1,190 Posts | 0+ BalkansShaheen said: I am an Urdu speaker and If i am to generalize basically there are two levels of both Hindi and Urdu, that is informal and formal. The informal versions of the two languages are quite similar, in fact so similar that they can really be called dialects of a same language (usually refereed to as Hindustani). Loose examples would be how a Spanish speaker could comprehend Portuguese or Swedish speaker could comprehend Norwegian. However the formal version of the two languages will be much more different as Urdu vocabulary is influenced heavily from Persian, Arabic and Turkish whilst the emphasis in Hindi is on Sanskrit. So for example the word for mother in formal (known as "Khalis") Urdu is Valida which obviously has Turkish roots whilst in formal Hindi it would be Mata. In the informal versions of the two languages however words like ma or amma would be used by both so that they understand each other. Similarly the word for welcome in Urdu is Khoshamdeed from Farsi and in Hindi is Swagat. And so forth i can give many examples. Then there is the script difference. Urdu uses the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq writing script which is written from right to left whilst Hindi uses the Devanagri script which is written from left to right.So you can't converse with a Hindi speaker? How about Tamil?
Lord Keviv
Joined May 2010 277 Posts | 1+ India Hindi and Tamil are totally different. I am an Indian and a Tamilian and I am yet to learn spoken Hindi properly. I once spoke to a Pakistani gentleman who knew Hindi fluently and I didnt !! Shaheen
Joined May 2011 2,744 Posts | 283+ SwedenNiki86 said: So you can't converse with a Hindi speaker? How about Tamil? Click to expand...Depends on how strong their accent is and how formal they are being in their Hindi. If it is just the average informal Hindi from the Delhi area then i should be able to understand without many problems. However last year i met many Indians due to my work, and they came from Maharashtra. Their Hindi was just too fast and different for me so we ended up conversing in English with words of Hindi in between. As for Tamil, totally different. It belongs to another language group as well i.e. is not an Indo-European language as the below map shows. Even Marathi (the language of Maharashtra) which is supposed to be an Indo-European language was not understandable in the least for me.
And this map shows the different languages in their respective scripts 
1991sudarshan
Joined Jun 2011 1,812 Posts | 3+ São Tomé de MeliaporeShaheen said: Depends on how strong their accent is and how formal they are being in their Hindi. If it is just the average informal Hindi from the Delhi area then i should be able to understand without many problems. However last year i met many Indians due to my work, and they came from Maharashtra. Their Hindi was just too fast and different for me so we ended up conversing in English with words of Hindi in between. As for Tamil, totally different. It belongs to another language group as well i.e. is not an Indo-European language as the below map shows. Even Marathi (the language of Maharashtra) which is supposed to be an Indo-European language was not understandable in the least for me.in pondicheri they speak tamil not malayalam.
Qutuz
Joined Oct 2011 537 Posts | 0+ The differences between the languages was probably not so great only half a century ago. And the reason for their divergence seems mostly political. In India, the Hindu nationalists have tried to expunge Arabic and Persian influence from the language, and to replace it with Sanskrit alternatives. 1991sudarshan
Joined Jun 2011 1,812 Posts | 3+ São Tomé de Meliapore There is no much difference between Hindi and Urdu. Common vocabulary, gammar,etc. The only difference is Urdu is spoken by majority of Muslims through out India and Hindi is spoken by Hindu and other community people in north India. People were made to think that Urdu is for Muslims. Urdu uses extensive Persian words and Hindi uses more number of Persian and Sanskrit words. But both Hindi and Urdu are not connecte d to Sanskrit through grammar. The history of Urdu and Hindi cn be dated back only during the moghul and other Muslim dynasties. At that point of time Persian was the court language. But with passage of time the Persian and local languages mixed together to form Hindi or Urdu. You can still see in many of the bollywood film with film starting with English Hindi and urdu. The two Languages are mutually Intelligible. For pure political and religious reasons both languages are made to look different from each other. Shaheen
Joined May 2011 2,744 Posts | 283+ Sweden1991sudarshan said: There is no much difference between Hindi and Urdu. Common vocabulary, gammar,etc. The only difference is Urdu is spoken by majority of Muslims through out India and Hindi is spoken by Hindu and other community people in north India. People were made to think that Urdu is for Muslims. Urdu uses extensive Persian words and Hindi uses more number of Persian and Sanskrit words. But both Hindi and Urdu are not connecte d to Sanskrit through grammar. The history of Urdu and Hindi cn be dated back only during the moghul and other Muslim dynasties. At that point of time Persian was the court language. But with passage of time the Persian and local languages mixed together to form Hindi or Urdu. You can still see in many of the bollywood film with film starting with English Hindi and urdu. The two Languages are mutually Intelligible. For pure political and religious reasons both languages are made to look different from each other. Click to expand...If i said this to a Hindi speaker he would have no idea what i just said [FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]yak_nazar besh naheeN fursat-e-hastee GHaafil garmi-e-bazm hai ik raqs-e-sharar hone tak Of course the Urdu of Ghalib is probably the purest type there is, but i just want to point out how Khalis Urdu is different from Hindi no matter how similar the informal Urdu is to Hindi, and it is due to this formal Urdu that the two are classified as different languages. The two do have the same roots as you pointed out, that is Urdu stemming out from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi. From what i have read the irony is that Urdu is on the decline in its ancestral homeland in Delhi, Lucknow, Agra. Instead it has come to serve as the Lingua Franca in Pakistan, as Persian had done before it. [/FONT][/FONT]
Shaheen
Joined May 2011 2,744 Posts | 283+ Sweden1991sudarshan said: in pondicheri they speak tamil not malayalam. Click to expand...I cant read the Indian scripts so no idea what languages are written there, the languages in Pakistan seem to be right with the southern ones using Nastaliq script and the northern ones using the Naskh script.
Niki86
Joined Jan 2011 1,190 Posts | 0+ BalkansLord Keviv said: Hindi and Tamil are totally different. I am an Indian and a Tamilian and I am yet to learn spoken Hindi properly. I once spoke to a Pakistani gentleman who knew Hindi fluently and I didnt !!Knowing Tamil you can understand Telugu though, right?
Lord_of_Gauda
Joined Nov 2009 8,402 Posts | 77+ Canada I agree with most of what shaheen has said. I differ from him in one aspect: Urdu does have hindi influences and as such, shares pro-nouns and adjectives with Hindi, even in Urdu's 'purest' form. For example, the urdu text Shaheen posted in post#10 is unreadable for me, except for pronouns/adjectives such as 'besh', 'hai', 'hone', 'tak', etc. The reality of urdu's history is that its purest form was preserved in Delhi Sultanate/Mughal era court documents and imperial discourse, along with the 'high literature' associated with courtly poets/writers. On the street level, urdu always existed as a blend of hindi and urdu, with heavy emphasis on the hindi part to such a degree that urdu is almost completely intelligible to a native hindi speaker. This phenomenon has carried over to the modern time, with what passes as 'spoken hindi' today having some urdu words incorporated into it, as well as bollywood hindi being a blend of hindi and urdu. 1991sudarshan
Joined Jun 2011 1,812 Posts | 3+ São Tomé de MeliaporeNiki86 said: Knowing Tamil you can understand Telugu though, right? Click to expand...No you can not. Telugu vocabulary is totally borrowed from Sanskrit with few Tamil words. But the grammar pattern is same to some extant.
1991sudarshan
Joined Jun 2011 1,812 Posts | 3+ São Tomé de MeliaporeLord_of_Gauda said: I agree with most of what shaheen has said. I differ from him in one aspect: Urdu does have hindi influences and as such, shares pro-nouns and adjectives with Hindi, even in Urdu's 'purest' form. For example, the urdu text Shaheen posted in post#10 is unreadable for me, except for pronouns/adjectives such as 'besh', 'hai', 'hone', 'tak', etc. The reality of urdu's history is that its purest form was preserved in Delhi Sultanate/Mughal era court documents and imperial discourse, along with the 'high literature' associated with courtly poets/writers. On the street level, urdu always existed as a blend of hindi and urdu, with heavy emphasis on the hindi part to such a degree that urdu is almost completely intelligible to a native hindi speaker. This phenomenon has carried over to the modern time, with what passes as 'spoken hindi' today having some urdu words incorporated into it, as well as bollywood hindi being a blend of hindi and urdu. Click to expand...It is the other way. urdu influenced Hindi. Many words in the Classical Hindi are derived form Urdu.
Master Chief
Joined Dec 2010 728 Posts | 0+ Shaheen pretty much covered the differences.
The Imperial
Joined Nov 2010 4,253 Posts | 4+ 3rd rock from Sol I speak Marathi... and it is very similar to Hindi. I got many Muslims in my class, and they speak Urdu. Urdu in it's informal form can be differentiated from informal Hindi by trained ears like mine Here's the thing.... imagine a gold necklace with inlaid gems.... the gold necklace is like the base of Urdu and Hindi languages. The gems in the neclace are some specific words used only in Urdu/Hindi. Most Hindi/Urdu speakers understand each other quite easily... And the line b/w Urdu and Hindi is so thin.... that it vanishes all together sometimes. Examples.... (meaning-very beautiful) Urdu - bahut sundar Hindi - atee sundar meaning - (more than enough): Urdu - zyada hogaya Hindi - adheek hogaya Lord Keviv
Joined May 2010 277 Posts | 1+ IndiaNiki86 said: Knowing Tamil you can understand Telugu though, right? Click to expand...nope.Telugu is more sanskritized and except for a few words, it is totally different from tamil. Malayalam and tamil are more similar though... R
Rosi
Joined Jul 2008 6,242 Posts | 3+ That which passes as 'Hindi' in northern India is basically a blend of Hindi and Urdu (both languages originate in the same place and are deeply ingrained in the culture of the area which makes them inseparable) with a fair amount of regional dialect thrown in. This dialect will differ from region to region, of course. Bollywood movies are full of Mumbai slang since that's where it is based. So spoken Hindi and formal Hindi are two completely different animals. No one speaks pure Hindi in India outside of academic circles (and some news channels), it's always a blend of Hindi and Urdu and loads of local slang. And, of course, English. Hindi and Urdu have the same grammatical structure but different vocabulary; Hindi is Sanskrit-derived and Urdu is Farsi-derived. The scripts are different too. However, this distinction is blurred in India as Indians tend to borrow freely from whatever languages are available to them to make their point, which means their spoken language will always be a hodge podge of sorts. Shaheen
Joined May 2011 2,744 Posts | 283+ SwedenThe Imperial said: I speak Marathi... and it is very similar to Hindi. Click to expand...I had no idea what the people i knew were saying in Marathi mate, maybe those specific people just spoke too fast.
The Imperial said: Examples.... (meaning-very beautiful) Urdu - bahut sundar Hindi - atee sundar Click to expand...Actually in Urdu "very beautiful" would be "Nihayet Khobsoorat".
Lord_of_Gauda said: I agree with most of what shaheen has said. I differ from him in one aspect: Urdu does have hindi influences and as such, shares pro-nouns and adjectives with Hindi, even in Urdu's 'purest' form. Click to expand...Oh no i am not saying that Urdu even in its purest form does not share any similarities with Hindi. After all i did mention that Urdu emerged out of the Khariboli dialect and hence shares many similarities with Hindi.
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