Since a long time I used to feel that the Urdu technical expressions made by the Muqtadra Qaumi Zaban and other learned bodies were incomprehensible for the common man. However, as I am neither any good in Urdu nor in Persian or Arabic I thought this might be my own ignorance and that they might be comprehensible for people with the average grounding in Urdu. One day, to my surprise, Professor Fateh Mohammad Malik told me that he felt that the word ‘Chairman’ rather than Sadar Nasheen was better for his position at the Muqtadra. This was music to my ears and I confronted him with my theory that we should accept that Urdu is changing and words of English ought to be accepted as legitimate words of Urdu. I was amazed that he agreed and even more when he proposed that I myself should compile and edit a lexicon of words which, in my opinion, should be accepted into Urdu. Later he also suggested that words of Urdu in English should be added to our lexicon. This is how the present work was started.
The following lexicon can be seen in two ways: either as an attempt to accept, regularize and standardize modern, Pakistani Urdu or as an attack on the ‘purity’ of Urdu. As far as we (the team of people contributing to this lexicon) are concerned, this is a sincere attempt to standardize Urdu by accepting the fact that some English words are commonly used in it. From this acceptance follows what is called corpus planning in the literature of Language Planning (LP) (Cooper 1969: 122-156). This consists of determining what the standard Urdu spellings and pronunciation of the word in question will be. In short, we have simply accepted that we in Pakistan do use some English words ordinarily in Urdu and, having done so, the Muqtadra has determined their Urdu spellings and pronunciation in this work. Moreover, we have also given a list of Urdu words used by writers of English so as to indicate that the absorption of English words into Urdu is not one-way traffic. English too has absorbed words from Urdu some of which have been officially incorporated in the standard dictionaries of English while others are used for stylistic reasons by creative writers of English (Rahman 1990).
This is not the first time a lexicon of new terms in Urdu has been compiled. Indeed, there is a tradition for doing so which Atash Durrani has described in his book on the subject (Durrani 1993: Chapters 5 and 6). Even the idea of using English words in Urdu is not new. Abdul Haq, called the Father of Urdu (Baba-e-Urdu), conceded that words which have no equivalent in Urdu---such as sodium, chlorine etc---should be accepted in Urdu (Quoted from Durrani 1993: 185). However, in his famous Standard English Urdu Dictionary he translated ‘pilot’ as nakhuda which is just the sort of translation the following pages attempt to change. Other institutions, such as the Taraqqi-e-Urdu Bureau of New Delhi too agreed that currently used English terms may be retained in Urdu (Durrani 1993: 221). In Pakistan this principle was accepted in theory but the tendency was to accept a term of English only if there was no Urdu alternative for it. Major Aftab Hasan, a well known lexicographer, said that ‘telescope’ and ‘electroscope’ do have Urdu equivalents and hence these may be used instead of the English originals (Durrani 1993: 228). Many others, whom Atash Durrani mentions in detail, also agreed that commonly used English terms may be retained. However, since what everybody had in their minds was the retention of terms which had no Urdu equivalent, the dictionaries of the Muqtadra do not retain commonly used English words which do have an Urdu equivalent. What we want to do in this lexicon is to retain English words---but only commonly used ones---which do have Urdu equivalents.
Some people feel that, instead of retaining English words, we should make new ones---preferably using Arabic and Persian roots. This activity too is part of corpus planning and is called ‘neologism’. As I have argued elsewhere, we should, indeed, create new words and we certainly have several collections of lexicons published by the Osmania University, the Punjab Text Book Committee, the Urdu Science Board and the Muqtadra. Unfortunately when we coin new words we allow political and ideological factors to influence us (Rahman 1999: 263-267). Thus, instead of easily comprehensible terms, we come up with such abstruse compunds of Arabic and Persian origin that they do not serve to communicate anything except our desire to advertize that Pakistan has an Islamic identity---something which the culture of our people should leave in no doubt anyway. For example look at the terms given in Qamus-ul-Istilahat by Sheikh Minhajuddin (1965).
Thermometer Tapish
paema
Current Account Chalat Hisab; Chalta leekha
Plumber Surb
kar; nulkar; nul saz
Ploytechnic Jame-ul-funoon; Kaseer funni
This is not to deny the author’s immense labour singlehandedly for several decades. It is only to emphasize that the tendency has been to avoid English terms if it was at all possible because they did not appear to symbolize our Perso-Arabic roots. However, even Minhajuddin did give some English alternatives such as ‘clinic’ and ‘plas’ (for pliers) in addition to the more learned Urdu equivalents. In short it was recognized that common people do understand the English terms better than the Arabic and Persian ones preferred by the lexicographers. It is precisely this tendency which we intend to take further---whether within permissible limits or not is for the readers to decide.
I am sure this lexicon has many faults. Those who agree with the assumption that commonly used English words should be accepted as part of Urdu will point out that we have left out many of them. Or, perhaps they might tell us that we have included words in our list which are not commonly used at all. If so, I and my colleagues at the Muqtadra will be very grateful to them. We need this kind of feedback because we want to improve this lexicon. This, after all, is only the first issue. We hope subsequent issues are more satisfactory.
Those who do not agree with our assumptions should bear with us. However, since they advocate the purist position let me give arguments against it which they might consider. The purist position basically rejects language change calling it ‘corruption’. The position is very old and one can understand it if seen in the context of religion. For instance, in ancient India Vac (the word) was sacred (Padoux 1990: 1-2). Thus linguistic change was ipso facto ‘corruption’. As all living languages do change the primary language of religion, called Sanskrit, was standardized and restricted to formal functions. The languages of the people, the living mother-tongues of the teeming millions, were called Prakrits and our modern South Asian languages are derived from them. Sanskrit was standardized by Panini, a grammarian born near Attock in what is now called Pakistan, and his nearly 4000 rules were memorized and orally transmitted for several centuries before they were written down (Itkonen 1991: 6). Sanskrit then became part of the religious tradition of the Hindus and concern with its purity---which meant disallowing any change---was understood as part of religion itself.
In the Arab world concern with grammar also owed its origin to the threat of linguistic change. According to Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah as translated by Franz Rosenthal:
Concern for the Mudar language was only felt when that language became corrupt through the contact of (Arabs) with non-Arabs, at the time when (the Arabs) gained control of the provinces of the ‘Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and the Maghrib. (At that time) the (Arabic linguistic) habit took on a form different from the one it had originally. The (Mudar language) was thus transformed into another language. (Now) the Qur’an was revealed in (the language of the Mudar), and Prophetical traditions were transmitted in it, and both the Qur’an and the traditions are the basis of Islam. It was feared that, as a result of the disappearance of the language in which they were revealed, they themselves might be forgotten and no longer be understood. Therefore, a systematic treatment of its laws, a presentation of the analogicul formations used in it, and the derivation of its rules were needed (Ibn Khaldun n.d: 346).
Thus the ulema made grammar (sarf and nahw) as much a part of Islamic education in the madrassas as was theology itself. And that, indeed, is the position of Arabic grammar in the madrassas of South Asia even now (Rahman 2002: 71-108).
This concern with linguistic change undermining the centrality of the language of sacred texts is understandable. However, the desire that Arabic, the language of the sacred texts, should not change did not stop linguistic change. What it did was to create a classical Arabic and several varieties of demotic Arabic. Classical Arabic is still the language of formal domains and gives a unity to the Arabic-speaking world as far as the higher domains of literacy and power---official correspondence, lectures in universities, sermons, scholarly writing, ceremonial and liturgical utterances---are concerned. However, it is nobody’s mother tongue and has to be learned in schools. The common people of Yemen speak a variety of demotic Arabic different from that heard in the bazaars of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. In short, Arabic, like classical Greek, is now a diglossic language with a Higher (H) and a Lower (L) varieties. The H varieties are used in the formal domains and the L ones are used in popular speech and informally (Ferguson 1959; Kaye 2001).
From these historical examples one can conclude that linguistic change never actually stops. What can happen is that a language can be fixed or frozen at a certain point in time. While this may be justifiable for religious reasons it is debatable whether it is also justifiable for other reasons. But at this point let us pause for a moment and determine what is language change?
If one looks at dictionaries one finds the first use of a certain word. This, however, is only the first written evidence of use which happens to have survived. One does not know whether the word was in use earlier and had gained acceptance later or not. However, what is clear is that when people come in contact with each other through travel, trade, conquest, immigration or cultural domination then their languages start borrowing words from each other and start changing. However, the process is not neutral and balanced evenly on both sides. It depends on power. The dominant language is that which is used in the domains of power which I have defined earlier as government, administration, judiciary, military, education, research, media, commerce and the higher echelons of modern professions (Rahman 1996: 13). The language used in these domains, which can also be called the language of power, influences all the languages it comes in contact with much more than it is influenced itself. In some cases, as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas points out, the coloniser’s names come to be used by the colonized people. Thus the Sami people who live in northern Finland and Norway use the names of the Norwegians, Swedish and Finnish people. The Africans use European names and so on (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000: 157).
Because power enters the equation it should be mentioned that linguistic change might end up in killing a language. As Juan Cobarrubias (1983) has pointed out state policies towards certain languages might be as follows:
(1) Attempting to kill a language;
(2) Letting a language die;
(3) Unsupported coexistence;
(4) Partial support of specific language functions;
(5) Adoption as an official language. (Cobarrubias 1983: 71).
In such cases it makes sense to resist the onslaught of the dominant language. One may teach and insist on using words of one’s own language to resist the power of the colonizing language---a process which I call ‘Resistance Language Teaching’ (Rahman 2002: 37). It is also true that English is significant in 114 territories, French in 54, Spanish in 27 and Portuguese in 12 (Mc Arthur 1998: 47-48). Thus there are genuine fears of English replacing or adulterating other, less powerful, languages. This fear is even found in Japan which is both economically powerful and monolingual. According to the Japanese scholar Yakio Tsuda:
[The Japanese suffer from] an Anglophilic consciousness of an uncritical and unconditional admiration for English and Western culture, while developing a very negative image of their own language and culture, the position of English as the most dominant international language preventing the linguistic and cultural self-determination of the speakers of other languages (Tsuda 1992: 32).
This fear is found to be much stronger in Pakistan which is an ex-colony of Britain and where English is a marker of elitist education, affluence, urban and upper-class upbringing and high status. In short, because so many people ape Western ways and speak English for snobbish reasons others resist them by objecting to its use. In other words, many of our ‘purists’ do not perhaps object to the reality of linguistic change. Indeed, they even accept such a change if it means the acceptance of words of such Pakistani languages as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi. However, they draw the line at English objecting that the use of English words is tantamount to linguistic and cultural defeat. Instead, they argue, as mentioned earlier, that we should undertake exercises in the making of new words.
My contention is only that we need not coin new terms---terms which we need if Urdu is to be modernized---with reference to identity politics. Our only criterion in this regard should be communicative ease and convenience. Thus, we should use commonly intelligible words of Urdu such as are used by the common people in both Pakistan and the Hindi belt of India. If, however, an English word is in common currency then that is what we should use. We need not be apprehensive of our language being taken over by English. After all, Urdu is too big a language to be wiped out. Moreover, the reason languages disappear is that we kill them. We are not killing Urdu with a sword but we are giving it slow poison. This we are doing by not using it in the domains of power. If we were to introduce Urdu in the domains of power in Pakistan then and then only can we ensure that it will grow into a living modern language capable of expressing all kinds of meanings and all aspects of contemporary reality. Such modern Urdu must be of practical value as far as communication is concerned which means it must accept commonly used words of English, as well as other languages as its own. Thus, our acceptance of foreign words which our people are already using is not the acceptance of defeat. It is merely pragmatic accommodation. It is a reality which we must acknowledge in order to add to the vocabulary of Urdu not to substract from it; in order to strengthen the vitality of Urdu, not to weaken it; in order to make Urdu the language of offices and universities, not to confine it to the home. This is the purpose of adding English words to the lexicon of Urdu.
* * * * * * * *
Now I come to the second portion of this exercise---the words of Urdu in English. On this issue there are many historical sources the most well known being the ‘Introductory Remarks’ to Hobson-Jobson (Yule and Burnell 1886) and the ‘Historical Introduction’ of Ivor Lewis’s book Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs (1991). Both these books are dictionaries of the words the British in India used either informally among themselves or in formal, official correspondence and records.
It is noteworthy that it was trade, not war, which carried the first few words of Indian Sanskritic origin to English. Some of these words are:
English Sanskrit Time of Use in English
Pepper Pippale 11th Century
Ginger Srngaveram 13th “
Panther Pandari kas 13th “
Sugar Sarkara 13th “
Musk Mashka 14th “
Sandal Chandara 14th “
Camphor Karpuram 15th “
(Adapted from Lewis 1991: 6).
However, it was war and the consequent occupation of India by Europeans which opened the floodgates of South Asian words into Western languages. The first conquerors, albeit of only a small part of India, were the Portuguese. Thus it is not surprising that Portuguese words entered Indian languages and English. In Pakistan and India we write ‘peon’, ‘almyra’, ‘cobra’ and ‘mosquito’ as if they had always been English. In fact they are of Portuguese origin. Likewise words like ‘curry’, ‘monsoon’, ‘mango’ and ‘copra’ were Indian and they entered Portuguese and then came to English.
The British colonial officers readily adopted many words from India to express the reality around them. To use these words spontaneously was proof of having lived in India. At the dinner table in England this could make one an object of admiration because, after all, India was a far off land where one put one’s life in danger when one went off to live there. So, some ‘Anglo-Indians’---as the British living in India were originally called---used Anglo-Indian diction (i.e many Anglicized words of Indian languages mainly Urdu or Hindustani as they called it) in their speech. Others were offended with this practice---such as Sir Charles Napier who once wrote against it---just as we are when we find a Pakistani putting in too many English words in his or her Urdu speech.
There are several dictionaries of these words and we know that some of them like ‘calico’, ‘chintz’, ‘jungle’, ‘curry’, ‘veranda’, ‘loot’, ‘sepoy’, ‘and ‘toddy’ etc were accepted in English very early. Other words, especially from official circles, fell into disuse when the British rule over India came to an end. One can find them in the novels of the Raj like the works of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). But outside these works they are not known. Still other words entered English with the immigrants from South Asia, especially from Pakistan, in Britain. Thus ‘curry’ which might have been forgotten became well known---even notorious! Then international events, like the Western support to the Afghans to throw out the Soviets in the 1980s, made Islamic concepts like jihad and mujahideen current in English. For those who read post-colonial literatures in English a whole barrage of South Asian words came from famous novelists like Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Arundhati Roy and Ved Mehta. These novelists use indigenous words for stylistic purposes---to create a local idiom; to create authentic identity; to appear exotic etc---but the fact is that they do introduce South Asian words into English. It is true, however, that most of these words are not yet naturalized into English.
The reaction of the British towards foreign words is not very different from ours. In the nineteenth century there were many protests against Anglo-Indian usage. At present there is an outcry against American slang. In France, even more than in Britain, there is much fear of American expressions infiltrating the standard French language. However, languages are living organisms which keep changing. Laws prohibiting the use of foreign words may not always stop the change if the people themselves have taken them to heart. In my opinion the only sensible thing to do is to record the change thus, even belatedly, making it a part of the language. If it is only a temporary fad it will just fade away. If it has a niche in the hearts of the people it will come to stay.
This lexicon has not been written by me. I only gave a few hundred words in the beginning. Then members of the Muqtadra added the other words. A separate note will indicate, though very roughly, what exactly was the contribution of the other members of the team. The words of Urdu found in English sources were compiled by contributors who will be named in the note mentioned above. I wrote this introduction which you have been reading originally in English and I edited the whole work. That is my contribution to it but it is much less than that of the other members of the team whose efforts I appreciate and salute here. Above all I appreciate Professor Fateh Mohammad Malik’s help, cooperation, understanding and insight without which this work could not have been done.
References
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