How close they are?

[cHr0mChIk]

Greetings.

So, I was wondering, how close Hindi and Urdu really are? I know they use different scripts, but are they much different in spoken form?

I wanted to start learning one of these two, and I was wondering which one to start. I can already read Arabic script, so I thought to choose Urdu.

If I learned Urdu, how much of Hindi would I understand?

Thank you in advance.

[eskandar]

At the everyday spoken level they are very similar, sometimes identical. The differences are in vocabulary (especially as you get into higher register words used in writing, etc.) and sometimes the pronunciation of a few sounds.

Take me as an example. I learned Urdu but never formally studied Hindi. I can easily converse with Hindi speakers though sometimes there are a few words they use that I don't understand or vice versa. There have even been times when people told me I spoke good "Hindi" when in my mind I was speaking Urdu. However I can't read Hindi and I can barely understand a single sentence of the formal Hindi they use in Indian news media, for example.

[cHr0mChIk]

Can you translate something to Hindi from Urdu?
I'd like to see how different it would sound.

One verse of this Nasheed is in Urdu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFW---YSWE
(Urdu part starts at 2:13)

I have tried to transcribe the text.
Since I don't speak Urdu, there might be mistakes:

تیری محبّت کی مہک سے [Teri muhabbat ki mehak say - From the fragrance of your love]
یہ زمین و آسمان آباد ہے [Yeh zameen o asman abaad hai - The earth and the skies have prospered]
رحمت کی برسات آتی ہے [Rehmat ki barsaat aati hai - And the rain of mercy have poured upon us]
دل و جن یا رسول الله [Dil o jaan ya Rasul Allah - My heart and soul is for you, oh Messenger of God]

I'm curious to hear how would this sound in Hindi, and would it be singable. (I took the translation from the internet).

[eskandar]

Well, here is where things get very tricky. It's not always possible to tell where Hindi ends and Urdu begins. If you wanted to translate it into 'shuddh Hindi' ("pure" literary Hindi that avoids all Perso-Arabic words), it might sound something like:

Tere pyaar ki mehak say
Yeh dharti aur aakaash basat hai
Dayaa ki barsaat aati hai
Man aur aatmaa haay Bhagwaan ka duut

It's probably a pretty bad translation - as I said, I've never studied Hindi. I tried to find Sanskritic equivalents to replace all the Perso-Arabic words. But the complications continue: not all Hindi speakers understand formal literary Hindi, so some of those words might be totally unintelligible to them, whereas the 'technically Urdu' words like muhabbat, zameen, asman, rehmat, dil, jaan would all be perfectly understood by nearly all Hindi speakers. Some of those 'Urdu' words are way more commonly used in spoken Hindi than their proper 'Hindi' equivalents.

[cHr0mChIk]

Thank you.

So it appears that the most accurate translation would actually be, pretty much, just transcribing it to Devangari script.

Here's my attempt:

तेरे मुहब्बत की महक से
[Tērē muhabbata kī mahaka sē]
यह ज़मीन व आसमान आबाद है
[yaha zamīna va āsamāna ābāda hai]
रहमत की बरसात आती है
[rahamata kī barasāta ātī hai]
दिल व जान या रसूल अल्लाह
[dila va jāna yā Rasūla Allāha]

[eskandar]

So it appears that the most accurate translation would actually be, pretty much, just transcribing it to Devangari script.

Probably! The only part Hindi speakers might not understand would be "ya rasul Allah", the rest should be perfectly understandable.

तेरी मुहब्बत की महक से
[Tērī muhabbat kī mahak sē]
यह ज़मीन-ओ-आसमान आबाद है
[yah zamīn o āsamān ābād hai]
रहमत की बरसात आती है
[rahmat kī barsāt ātī hai]
दिल-ओ-जान या रसूल अल्लाह
[dil o jān yā Rasūl Allāh]

I corrected your transcription and transliteration. It looks like you ran it through Google Translate, which introduced some mistakes in the Devanagari. Also its transliteration scheme is based on Sanskrit rather than Hindi, which is why it gives you all those extra vowels (eg. zamīna though it's pronounced zamīn). Similarly, a short 'a' before 'h' in Hindi/Urdu usually turns into 'e', which is why for example مہک / महक is transcribed mahak though it actually gets pronounced mehak.

[cHr0mChIk]

Thank you for your corrections. Well, yes, I do not know Devangari yet, so I indeed used GT.

its transliteration scheme is based on Sanskrit rather than Hindi, which is why it gives you all those extra vowels (eg. zamīna though it's pronounced zamīn).

I have actually read that that vowel in the end should actually be pronounced in literary Hindi, although it's not pronounced my many speakers. I don't know is it actually true, though.

[eskandar]

I don't think that is really true - maybe only with Sanskrit words used in literary Hindi. I don't know for sure either, but I can't imagine someone reading यह ज़मीन-ओ-आसमान आबाद है out loud as "yaha zamina o asamana abada hai", it would sound ridiculous!

[cHr0mChIk]

I don't know for sure either, but I can't imagine someone reading यह ज़मीन-ओ-आसमान आबाद है out loud as "yaha zamina o asamana abada hai", it would sound ridiculous!

Well, yes, it would indeed sound ridiculous if someone would emphasize it like that. Perhaps they pronounce it reduced, and nearly silent. Like in Russian, when "a" and "o" are found after the stressed syllable. For example: "трудно высказать" /trudnə vɨskɐzɐtʲ/. I believe it's probably some reduced vowel like that, or perhaps nearly silent.

I have read that these are pronounced actually, here:
viewtopic.php?p=446502#p446502

If they are speaking "properly" / formally you'll definitely hear the schwa sound -- such as on the news, politics/religious speeches, literary commentary, intellectual debates etc BUT in casual speech many Hindi speakers will omit the sound -- but then again, in "casual speech" Hindi speakers tend to lean much less on sanskritic/proper vocabulary and much more so on its Hindustani vocabulary that it shares with Urdu - which reflects Hindustani/Urdu phonics i.e. no schwa ending.

Then again, you will never hear a Hindi speaker pronounce the national anthem --> जन गण मन as "jan, gaN, Man" but always "jana gaNa mana" etc.

[eskandar]

From what I understand (including from huhmzah's post) this does not apply to words of Persian origin like zamin, asmaan, aabaad, etc. But again, I could be wrong.

[cHr0mChIk]

I don't really know that either

[Meera]

Like everyone has said, they are extremely close. A Hindi and Urdu speaker can understand each other on a conversational level. The differences come in at a higher level like news and academics. In my opinion it is really only politics that separates them. Honestly I think there are some dialects of English that are more separate than Hindi/Urdu.

[cHr0mChIk]

So, it's pretty much the same situation as with Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, etc.

If I understood well, Urdu is practically Hindi filled with Perso-Arabic loanwords and script. Pretty much the same relation Serbian and Bosnian have.

So, my question is: Is Urdu written with Devangari script going to be Hindi (and vice versa - Hindi written with Perso-Arabic = Urdu)? I mean, will it still be Urdu despite with which script it's written, is it still clearly distinguishable?

[Meera]

So, it's pretty much the same situation as with Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, etc.

If I understood well, Urdu is practically Hindi filled with Perso-Arabic loanwords and script. Pretty much the same relation Serbian and Bosnian have.

So, my question is: Is Urdu written with Devangari script going to be Hindi (and vice versa - Hindi written with Perso-Arabic = Urdu)? I mean, will it still be Urdu despite with which script it's written, is it still clearly distinguishable?

I don't know much about Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian but from what I heard it almost exactly the same. That is a hard question to answer because it really depends on the sentance or what it is. The languages are so similair it can be really hard to draw the line even between the scripts. As a genreal rule I guess you could say if it is written in Perso-Arabic it is Urdu and if it is written in Devangari it is Hindi, however this might not always be true it really depends on the context. It depends on the speaker too, for example if Urdu is written in the Devanagari script (for example a song lyric) a Hindi speaker may swear up and down that it is fully Hindi and not Urdu because of politics. I don't if this makes sense or not A lot of it is just about politics.

[eskandar]

I don't know as much about BCS but I would say that the situation with Hindi/Urdu is very comparable on a spoken level but not in writing. Today it is not merely politics or script that separates the written language. If you took academic Urdu and transliterated it into Devanagari, it would not be that intelligible to Hindi-speakers, and the same is true for transliterating academic Hindi into the Perso-Arabic script. There wouldn't be any problems with the grammar, but there is so much Urdu vocabulary used in formal/literary settings that Hindi speakers couldn't understand, and even more formal Hindi vocabulary that Urdu speakers wouldn't understand. I don't think that is really the case for BCS. From what I've heard, even on the written level the three 'languages' are basically the same (albeit with orthographic differences), that is to say, if you took a Serbian newspaper and transliterated it into the Latin script without changing any of the words, the average Bosnian or Croatian should be able to read and understand it just fine. (Please tell me if that's not the case - I haven't studied these languages and am only going by what I've heard about them). I read Urdu fluently and can read anything available in the language, from poetry to novels to academic writing to newspapers, but if you transliterated a Hindi newspaper for me, I would still have to look up the definitions of so many words that it would still be impossible for me to understand. I have also been in situations where Hindi-speakers couldn't understand my Urdu because my vocabulary was too formal and I didn't know (or couldn't remember) some of the informal 'Hindustani' equivalents for my formal vocabulary.

[Meera]

Eskandar, that's true I just meant that sometimes you will get people saying what is Hindi/Urdu just based on nothing but politics, like in song lyrics you could have a song that uses so much Perso-Arabic vocabulary and some Hindi speakers will never dare say it's Urdu. I actually saw many arguments from native speakers of Hindi on social media as what it is Hindi and what is Urdu to the point that it was kind of ridiculous. One Hindi speaker even said they were completely unintelligible languages when he was using sentences that an Urdu speaker would understand. I try to be careful when talking about the Hindi/Urdu divide for this reason.

Also cHr0mChIk, I have noticed that Hindi speakers seem to know more Persianized words than Urdu speakers knowing Sanskritized words depending on the region. This is because Bollywood tends to use more Persian words to make the songs sound more poetic. And I really suggest learning both scripts. Devanagari is pretty simple and you can pick it up fast plus you will be able to get more reading material because you will be able to read both.

[cHr0mChIk]

Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian (Some even consider Montenegrin a separate language, so it too) are 100% understandable by speakers, it doesn't matter is it "Academic speech" or everyday talk, since differences are so subtle, almost non existent (Although they usually are distinguishable even when written with a same script), and anyone who knows a single one of these languages understands 100% of the rest (and even about 80% of Macedonian, and some more...)

However, it seems that the situation is not the same with Hindi and Urdu, where everyday talk is the same, but more formal and academic speech is quite different. Can you show me where to learn about these differences?

Thank you.

[eskandar]

Check out this book and read From Hindi to Urdu (scroll down). I think those two books discuss this issue. Some of these sources would probably be relevant as well.

[cHr0mChIk]

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[cHr0mChIk]

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