Story of Hindustani Razia,

In any case, since both of them were slaves, they certainly did not bring 'TURKISH ARMY' with them to India.

AFAIK they were Turcic people (the Turkish are also Turcic people). However, many of these people (like the Chaghatay-Turks who counted Babar as one of them) had been influenced greatly by Persian Culture and thought the world of it (much like French culture in England during the Middle Ages).

Thus when these people came to India, they introduced what they thought to be the epitome of high culture—not their own—but a culture which they had adopted, the Persian one. Foe example the Babarnama although written in Babar’s mother tongue is very “Persianised”.

Story of Hindustani Razia,

In any case, since both of them were slaves, they certainly did not bring 'TURKISH ARMY' with them to India.

AFAIK they were Turcic people (the Turkish are also Turcic people). However, many of these people (like the Chaghatay-Turks who counted Babar as one of them) had been influenced greatly by Persian Culture and thought the world of it (much like French culture in England during the Middle Ages).

Thus when these people came to India, they introduced what they thought to be the epitome of high culture—not their own—but a culture which they had adopted, the Persian one. Foe example the Babarnama although written in Babar’s mother tongue is very “Persianised”.

Story of Hindustani Razia, #238

don't buy the difference being in 'vocab'..because Hindi uses a ton of Persian and Urdu uses a ton of Sanskrit words even in serious literature.

Well, at least in the literary forms of the languages, IMO, there is a difference in vocab which is why I feel that the two are best described as registers of a language (since, as you mention, we have established with a fair amount of certainty that there are no differences in grammar between the two and are hence the same language). However, in their spoken forms, location being a given, there is very little to choose between people who call themselves Urdu speakers and those who call themselves Hindi speakers.

Some small tweekings in the nagari script can make it perfectly code all words of the language easily

As someone mentioned, some stuff as already been done. For example a bindi is put below ‘kha’ in ‘khabar’ to get that guttural sound. Maybe more could be done.

In order to keep the PS, it has to go thru major overhaul

Er ...dil ke behlane ko Ghalib yeh khayal accha hai?

Story of Hindustani Rahul,

Heh! Agree to disagree. I hate that. :P.

TTFN

Story of Hindustani Rahul,

The same point that Razia made in #205

Words created using the rules of Sandhi have no meaning (astitva?) unless they are part of the Hindi lexicon. As such, it is just a rule for joining words and the difference between "Hindi" which does have rules for Sandhi and "Urdu", which does not, is just a difference of vocab not grammatical structure.

Story of Hindustani Rahul,

They may or they may not

In which case I can do no better than to quote Ellora sahib:

"Sandhi is not even a linguistic construct, just rules that govern how syllables combine."

Story of Hindustani Razia,

I don't know pushto, but if there is only ONE gender, how can it be 'feminine'...by definition there has to be masculine gender to define feminine

Heh! That is a fair point and I can't recall details of that discussion. Maybe the chap meant that they use words ending in 'ee'.

Anil,

Just like Farsi added to Hindi/Urdu so will English. There is nothing wrong in that and even if there was there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Story of Hindustani Razia,

Bulleya where were you when some interactors were beating me up for worrying about Urdu's survival?

Throughout the Northern Parts of the subcontinent, Standard Urdu has been by-and-large a lingua franca, rather than a native tongue (other than Delhi and West UP). As far as India goes no other language can take Hindi's place as the principal lingua franca (other than South India).English is understood by a microscopic minority and spoken by even fewer and as such is in no position to replace Hindi. Bollywood and the burgeoning Hindi TV industry only make matters earlier for the language. And since over 95% of Hindi/Urdu’s native speakers reside in India, I doubt there should be any worries about its survival.

What is more to be worried about are languages which are often subsumed under the umbrella of Hindi/Urdu while they are, in all honesty not Hindi (IMO) and are at best a part of a very wide ranging dialect continuum. This diglossia puts Hindi at higher pedestal than the native language. The most obvious example would be Bhojpuri, I guess. Any Bihari who has a chance to switch over to Hindi does and very few Biharis outside Bihar would know the language unlike, say, Bengalis living outside Bengal who would cling to Bengali. Marwari would be another example.

Story of Hindustani #209 (also Razia’s #205)

Rahul,

Would Hindi speakers use and understand Sandhi words which are non-lexical in speech?

For example, if I went out into Delhi and used the word “swArAm” (su + ArAm) would people understand what I mean?

P.S: Forgive me if I’ve got the Sandhi rules wrong, but as far as I can remember an ‘oo’ ki maatra followed by a non ‘oo’ ki matra vowel makes the last consonant half and a ‘va’ is added to make the sandhi. Eg: Swagath= su + Agath.

Story of Hindustani #175 Razia,

As in I mean what determines whether a word would be mas or fem? WRT, I'm a bit intrigued as to why the etymology of paani explained to you why the word should be mas. Does the ling (gender) of the word depend on its origin?

Story of Hindustani Ellora,

Bengali has none (or just one), linguistically speaking

A logical thing too. Why try and asign a gender to something when He hasn't? Also, as I've mentioned in #158, Calcatians speaking in Hindi and, AFAIR, Biharis (Rahul?) also use one masculine gender for everything.

Btw, I remember discussing this gender thingy and one chap came up with this interesting theory:

The Purbi langauges use the the masculine gender to represent everything. Standard Hindi/Urdu uses both and as we travel even more west, a language like Pushto has everything as feminine. Dunno whether the last fact (Pushto all F) is true but if it is it would be interesting observation.

Story of Hindustani Yaar Ellora, this might be stupid question but is there any way to determine pulling-streeling of a word? Any rules/order? That is, other than rote?

Story of Hindustani Zang,

Dunno about Gujju but there are quite a few differences between Bengali and Devanagri although, as you point out there are many points of convergence too.

The Bengali script cannot be used to adequately represent Hindi/Urdu (no ‘va’, 'sa', short vowels etc).

Vaise, Wikipedia tells me there was a 'Kaithi Script' used in Bihar too for Hindi/Urdu. Maybe someone else can tell us more about it.

Story of Hindustani Razia,

1. why Paani is masculine even though it ends in 'i'.

This masculine/feminine thing is the most confounding thing in the language, at least for me.

Also, this distinction is very fluid (if you consider a dialect continuum and not define it strictly by the Western UP/Delhi dialects, as is usually done in India). For example, Calcatian Hindi speakers do not use the feminine at all (prolly influenced in the practice from Bengali) and I don’t think Bihari speakers do either.

Story of Hindustani Jang,

i have never heard a words like belajj or nirsharam.
in short, be is used for farshee origin and nir for sanskrit origin.

I think a similar distinction exists for English words of Germanic origin and Latin origin. The prefixes used for the two sets of words are different. “Fore” (as in foretell) is one for Germanic words and "pro-" is one for Latin wala words.

However, since both sets of words are used commonly by people who see themselvs as English speakers, both are taken to be a part of English rather than being grouped as two different languages.

Story of Hindustani Ellora,

Shoaib, the verb 'paa' means 'to drink' in Sanskrit. 'Paani' comes from the Sanskrit 'Paaniya' i.e. 'drinkable'. A related word is dhoomra-paan (literally 'drinking smoke' i.e. smoking)

Fair enough, although, I guess, jal is still a more "formal" word in Shudhh Hindi. Would you have any literature (books, websites) which would give me some more info on Hindi word etymologies?

Also, thanks for #145. What are the different fonts Devanagri is written in, btw?