Urdu Study Group

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Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-05, 6:20

This is a study group for Urdu and the product of this discussion. :) The current plan as I understand it is to go through at least one native media resource a week. This week, that includes at least a part of this ghazal by 19th-century poet Mirza Ghalib.

Out of said ghazal, I've memorized 43,1; 43,3; 43,5; and 43,8, i.e.:

ذکر اس پری وش کا اور پھر بیاں اپنا
بن گیا رقیب آخر تھا جو راز داں اپنا

منظر اک بلندی پر اور ہم بنا سکتے
عرش سے ادھر ہوتا کاش کے مکاں اپنا

دردِ دل لکھوں کب تک جاؤں ان کو دکھلا دوں
انگلیاں فگار اپنی خامہ خوں چکاں اپنا

ہم کہاں کے دانا تھے کس ہنر میں یکتا تھے
بے سبب ہوا غالب دشمن آسماں اپنا


I've gone through the commentary for these particular couplets and tried to identify (a few :P) vocabulary words I wasn't familiar with before, too, but I'm always up for going through these things again. :) We can either go through the whole poem (eight couplets) or just these four. I'll leave the decision up to Saim (and anyone else if they're interested)!

Saim Bhai (or anyone else), please let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for what (else?) we should be doing. If you like, we could try working through BBC articles together, too (same with Facebook posts just as long as they don't require me to sign up for Facebook lol).

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-05, 9:11

Nice! I think for this week four couplets should be enough, then maybe next week we can do the other four.

EDIT: Actually I think I could probably go through the whole thing in a week.

vijayjohn wrote:(same with Facebook posts just as long as they don't require me to sign up for Facebook lol).


Sure, I can always share screencaps and blurr out people's names. :)

First couplet:

پَری وَش - elfin, fairylike, beauty
رقیب - rival
راز دان - confidant

Second couplet:

مَے - wine
بزمِ غیر - in someone else's company [2]

[1] وَش like, resembling; پَری fairy, beautiful woman
[2] بزم gathering, get-together

Third couplet:

بلندی - hight, elevation
عرش - heaven, high status
کاش کہ - would that! how I wish! God grant!

Fourth couplet:

ذِلّت - disgrace, insult
ٹالنا - put off, evade, send away, reject a request
آشنا - friend
پاسبان - guard, watchman
بارے - at last (?)

Fifth couplet:
فِگار - wounded
خامہ - pen
چکّان - thick, clotted, coagulated; blot, scar

Sixth couplet:
مِٹانا - eradicate, erase
عَبَث - in vain
ننگ - shame (?)
سنگِ آستاں - doorstep stone[1]

[1] سنگ - stone; آستانہ - threshold

Seventh couplet:
تا - so that, in order to
غمّازی - backbiting, slander

Eigth couplet:
دانا - wise, learned
ہُنر - craft, skill
یکتا - unique

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-06, 9:00

یہ الفاظ کسی مشتبہ رقیب یا کامیاب شخص کے لئے غیرمناسب یا متعصّب احساس کا حوالہ بھی دے سکتے ہیں۔


These words can refer to an inappropriate or prejudiced feeling toward a suspected rival or successful person.

روٹی اور مے کس کی طرف اِشارہ کرتی ہیں؟


What do the bread and the wine indicate?

منگولیا سطحِ سمندر سے 1580 میٹر (5200 فٹ) بلندی پر واقع ہے۔


Mongolia is situated at a hight of 1580 metres (5200 feet) from sea level.

ہم ہر ایک باب اور آیت کے لئے عرش کے شکر گزار ہیں جو ہمیشہ ہمیں دی گئی ۔


We are thankful to heaven for every chapter and verse we have ever been given.

قومی فخر کی بجائے، واسا مایوسی اور ذلّت کی علامت بن گیا۔


Instead of being an object of national pride, the Vasa became synonymous with disappointment and disgrace.

مَیں نے اُسکی بات مذاق میں ٹالتے ہوئے کہا، ”جہاں سے ہم آئے ہیں وہاں بھی بارش ہوتی ہے۔“


“Where we come from it rains too,” I said, shrugging off his words with a laugh.

پھر 20 سال کی عمر میں اُنہوں نے یہوداہ سے بُت پرستی کا نام و نشان مٹانا شروع کِیا۔


And when he was 20, he began to remove the traces of idolatry from Judah.

Any other suggestions for examples sentences for this week's words are welcome. These are all examples for Glosbe, although the translations have been slightly modified by me in some cases. I would especially appreciate sentences for the following words: بزم ,غمّازی ,پاسبان ,فگار ,عبث.

And this is me trying to pronounce the sentences.

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-08, 5:16

Saim wrote:Nice!

Thanks! :)
وَش like, resembling

This is new to me.
بزم gathering, get-together

This is a word whose meaning I keep forgetting. :P It can also mean 'feast' or 'banquet'. It's related to phage in English.

Also new from that couplet for me:
منظور 'seen, admired, agreeable, acceptable (etc.)'
Fourth couplet:

ذِلّت - disgrace, insult
ٹالنا - put off, evade, send away, reject a request
آشنا - friend
پاسبان - guard, watchman
بارے - at last (?)

Makes sense (that بارے would mean 'at last' here, rather than 'once', which is the meaning I'm more familiar with and perhaps the more common sense). I thought آشنا meant 'first acquaintance', so while neither that nor بارے is strictly a new word to me, the meanings used in this couplet are. I'm pretty sure I've also seen ٹالنا before but forgot what it meant. Didn't know ذِلّت or پاسبان, either.
چکّان - thick, clotted, coagulated; blot, scar

No tashdid here, it's just چکان. :)
مِٹانا - eradicate, erase

The verb being used here is just مِٹنا, though, or rather مٹ جانا. Platts translates the former as meaning something like 'to be effaced', but I think of these as meaning simply 'to fade' and 'to fade away', respectively.
عَبَث - in vain
ننگ - shame (?)
سنگِ آستاں - doorstep stone[1]

[1] سنگ - stone; آستانہ - threshold

All new to me. ننگ can also mean 'disgrace', which seems to be the sense used here. (But it can also mean 'reputation' or even 'honor'!).

I also didn't know:

گهسنا - to rub. I thought it meant 'to wash' or something.
سجده - prostration. My brain really wants to read this as *sajda instead of sijda.
Seventh couplet:
تا - so that, in order to
غمّازی - backbiting, slander

Wouldn't have guessed this exact meaning of in this context. Also didn't know this was a word:

ہم زباں - of the same language or tongue, conversing together, expressing the same opinion, unanimous
یکتا - unique

I always forget the exact meaning of this word, too, somehow (despite the clue in its etymology).
Any other suggestions for examples sentences for this week's words are welcome. These are all examples for Glosbe, although the translations have been slightly modified by me in some cases. I would especially appreciate sentences for the following words: بزم ,غمّازی ,پاسبان ,فگار ,عبث.

بزم is a pretty common word, and if we keep doing ghazals, you will see Ghalib using it a lot, I promise. :P But also, here's a sentence from Jasoosi Digest that uses it:

بات در اصل یہ ہے کہ اس بار کہانیاں کچھ زیادہ طوالت اختیار کر گئیں اور اس طوالت کا نزلہ اس بزمِ یاراں پر آ گرا.

Of course, there's no translation, but I guess my attempt at a translation into English might be:

"What actually happened is that this time, the stories included ended up being a bit too long and the burden ('catarrh') of this length fell upon this gathering of friends."

نزلہ is a really hard word to translate here, it seems. "The nasal inflammation of this length" doesn't make much sense in English. :lol:

Also, I tried to transcribe a dialogue from an old movie from the 70s that includes the word پری. :P (The movie is called Ankur, and this part is from 1:07:22 to 1:07:54). It's set in a village outside Hyderabad and takes place between the village landlord's son, who's from Hyderabad, and Lakshmi, his maid who he recently started having an affair with. He tries to complement her using various comparisons she doesn't understand, including a comparison to a fairy:

لکشمی، تو تو آج اپسرا لگ رہی ہے.
کیا لگ رہی ہوں، سرکار؟
پری! کبھی سینما دیکھی ہے تو؟
ہاں، وہ دیکھی نا، وہ 'بال ناگما'!
آہ! تو آج film star لگ رہی ہے.
کیا ہے کہ بولوں، صاحب؟
نہیں سمجھی؟ ارے، وہ فلم میں رہتی ہیں نا؟ ?Uh, heroine وہی جو گاتی ہیں، ناچتی ہیں، عشق کرتی ہیں...


I'm afraid I don't have anything for the other words you've listed yet, sorry! :P
And this is me trying to pronounce the sentences.

Nice! I guess I could try doing that, too, or I could record myself singing half of this ghazal. :lol:

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-08, 6:19

vijayjohn wrote:منظور 'seen, admired, agreeable, acceptable (etc.)'


That's a good one to know. I have this derived form in my flashcards, lifted directly from a BBC Urdu article (translation mine):

پرویز مشرف کے کاغذات نامزدگی کی منظوری ان کی عدالت میں پیشی سے مشروط ہے۔

The approval of Pervez Musharraf's nomination papers is conditional on his appearence in court.

No tashdid here, it's just چکان. :)


The Oxford Urdu dictionary has it with tashdeed. :hmm:

گهسنا - to rub. I thought it meant 'to wash' or something.


Last year I had the following sentence in my cards, from the song "Jawab de":

پینسلوں کے سکّے ہی گھس گئے۔


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fesdr3PAWUQ&t=0m23s

سجده - prostration. My brain really wants to read this as *sajda instead of sijda.


Huh? But it is سَجدہ.

Here it is on forvo.

ہم زباں - of the same language or tongue, conversing together, expressing the same opinion, unanimous


I didn't even look that up; I didn't recognise it as a word. :lol:

یکتا - unique

I always forget the exact meaning of this word, too, somehow (despite the clue in its etymology).


There's also یکّا - single, solitary if that helps you remember.

This is just what I wanted from this study group by the way, discussing the words makes them stick. :D

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-08, 7:05

Oh, sorry, I just edited my last post a few times to respond to your other post, too, lol.
Saim wrote:
No tashdid here, it's just چکان. :)


The Oxford Urdu dictionary has it with tashdeed. :hmm:

Ah, now I see what happened here. They're different words. :)

چکّان is a native word/tadbhav that does indeed mean what you wrote, but the word being used here is actually the Persian loanword چکان, meaning 'dropping' (or I guess in this case 'dripping'). :)

One useful feature of the link I used for this ghazal is that you can switch between Urdu script, Devanagari, Roman script with diacritics, and Roman script without diacritics on every page, both the page for the whole ghazal (where these options are at the top of the page) and the links specific to each couplet (where they're at the bottom). This is a useful feature of this website whenever you're wondering how specific words in a ghazal are supposed to be pronounced. :) If you switch to Roman script with diacritics, for example, خامہ خوں چکاں in {43,5} appears as ḳhāmah ḳhūñ-chakāñ.
سجده - prostration. My brain really wants to read this as *sajda instead of sijda.


Huh? But it is سَجدہ.

Here it is on forvo.

Hmm, the website says nang-e sijdah, and Platts has sijda, too, but not sajda. Maybe they're variant pronunciations that aren't recorded in Platts?

Or maybe no one knows how to pronounce some of these crazy Persian loanwords anymore. :silly:
ہم زباں - of the same language or tongue, conversing together, expressing the same opinion, unanimous


I didn't even look that up; I didn't recognise it as a word. :lol:

They have it in the explanation for that couplet. I almost missed it, too. :)
There's also یکّا - single, solitary if that helps you remember.

Oh, I didn't know that! :shock:
This is just what I wanted from this study group by the way, discussing the words makes them stick. :D

Yay! :mrgreen:

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-08, 10:00

vijayjohn wrote:Ah, now I see what happened here. They're different words. :)

چکّان is a native word/tadbhav that does indeed mean what you wrote, but the word being used here is actually the Persian loanword چکان, meaning 'dropping' (or I guess in this case 'dripping'). :)

One useful feature of the link I used for this ghazal is that you can switch between Urdu script, Devanagari, Roman script with diacritics, and Roman script without diacritics on every page, both the page for the whole ghazal (where these options are at the top of the page) and the links specific to each couplet (where they're at the bottom). This is a useful feature of this website whenever you're wondering how specific words in a ghazal are supposed to be pronounced. :) If you switch to Roman script with diacritics, for example, خامہ خوں چکاں in {43,5} appears as ḳhāmah ḳhūñ-chakāñ.


That's so confusing. Both even have to do with liquid. :lol:

Maybe they're variant pronunciations that aren't recorded in Platts?


Probably. Oxford has both.

Now onto your edit:

بات در اصل یہ ہے کہ اس بار کہانیاں کچھ زیادہ طوالت اختیار کر گئیں اور اس طوالت کا نزلہ اس بزمِ یاراں پر آ گرا.

Of course, there's no translation, but I guess my attempt at a translation into English might be:

"What actually happened is that this time, the stories included ended up being a bit too long and the burden ('catarrh') of this length fell upon this gathering of friends."

نزلہ is a really hard word to translate here, it seems. "The nasal inflammation of this length" doesn't make much sense in English.


You're right that نزلہ here is used in a sort of figurative sense. I think it's easier to understand if you take it as a unit along with the verb گرنا.

Oxford gives the following for نزلہ گرنا:

"of a trouble to befall, (of rage) be vented (on), face bad luck"

vijayjohn wrote:Also, I tried to transcribe a dialogue from an old movie from the 70s that includes the word پری. :P (The movie is called Ankur, and this part is from 1:07:22 to 1:07:54). It's set in a village outside Hyderabad and takes place between the village landlord's son, who's from Hyderabad, and Lakshmi, his maid who he recently started having an affair with. He tries to complement her using various comparisons she doesn't understand, including a comparison to a fairy:

لکشمی، تو تو آج اپسرا لگ رہی ہے.
کیا لگ رہی ہوں، سرکار؟
پری! کبھی سینما دیکھی ہے تو؟
ہاں، وہ دیکھی نا، وہ 'بال ناگما'!
آہ! تو آج film star لگ رہی ہے.
کیا ہے کہ بولوں، صاحب؟
نہیں سمجھی؟ ارے، وہ فلم میں رہتی ہیں نا؟ ?Uh, heroine وہی جو گاتی ہیں، ناچتی ہیں، عشق کرتی ہیں...


Great example!

Nice! I guess I could try doing that, too, or I could record myself singing half of this ghazal. :lol:


Go for it! :)

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-08, 15:05

Saim wrote:That's so confusing. Both even have to do with liquid. :lol:

I think I remember reading somewhere that Ghalib was deliberately confusing in his poetry and wrote a lot of it while he was a teenager or something like that.
Probably. Oxford has both.

Oxford gives the following for نزلہ گرنا:

"of a trouble to befall, (of rage) be vented (on), face bad luck"

Clearly, I need to start using that Oxford dictionary. :lol:
Great example!

Thanks! :)
Nice! I guess I could try doing that, too, or I could record myself singing half of this ghazal. :lol:


Go for it! :)

Which one? :P Or do you mean both?

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-08, 15:53

vijayjohn wrote:I think I remember reading somewhere that Ghalib was deliberately confusing in his poetry and wrote a lot of it while he was a teenager or something like that.


I mean the words themselves, though. I wonder to what extent the average native speaker understands the difference between ćakān and ćakkān.

Which one? :P Or do you mean both?


Both or either!

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-08, 18:43

Saim wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I think I remember reading somewhere that Ghalib was deliberately confusing in his poetry and wrote a lot of it while he was a teenager or something like that.


I mean the words themselves, though.

I know. I think they may have meant the words themselves, too (in addition to other aspects of his poetry).
I wonder to what extent the average native speaker understands the difference between ćakān and ćakkān.

I wonder to what extent the average native speaker is familiar with either of those words, tbh. Even native vocabulary can be very obscure to native speakers sometimes, it seems.
Which one? :P Or do you mean both?


Both or either!

Okay, this is me trying to read those sentences but stumbling over the last two, and this is me singing but with weird-ass substitutions for [n] because my nose is perpetually stuffed up due to allergies. :lol:

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-09, 12:29

Btw what should we do for next week? Another ghazal or a rap song or a Facebook post? Or one or more ads/texts from Jasoosi Digest? :lol: (Of course, I'd have to write those out first :silly:). Or something else? :)

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-09, 14:09

By next week do you mean this week (7/9-14/9)? Because from this Saturday to the 11th of August I won't be able to do any language study (I'll be having 6 hours a day of Hungarian class + excursions so that'll probably be enough!).

How about this short Facebook post:

Image

گمان ہے کہ احتساب کورٹ کا نواز شریف فیملی کا فیصلہ محکمہ صنعت و زراعت باہمی مشاورت سے طے کر رہے ہیں۔


It's short but there's several words I don't know. I'm not sure if I can do much more than that this week, but we can for sure do something more complicated (a BBC article or a rap song or something) during the week of 12/8.

By the way, if you ever want to do anything from Jasoosi Digest, if you have a smartphone just take a photo of a page and upload it, there's no need to type it all out (unless you want to practice typing of course!).

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-09, 15:48

All right, one way or another, I probably will try getting something from Jasoosi Digest at some point (I'll try out your smartphone idea but otherwise type it out if it somehow turns out that I find that more convenient. Either way, I'm sure I can get something from that and that that'll help us with vocab, too! :D).

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-10, 8:56

گُمان - idea, thought, conjecture
اِحتساب - accounting for, accountability
محکمہ - department, bureau, section [I vaguely knew this one]
صنعت - industry [forgot this one]
زِراعت - agriculture
باہمی - shared, reciprocal, mutual
مشاورت - consultation [probably related to مشورہ - advice]
طَے کرنا - pass through, dispose of, settle or decide (I think here it's the last meaning) [remember looking this up before but forgot]

There is an idea that the Accountability Court is settling its decision regarding the Nawaz Sharif family through mutual consultation with the Department of Industry and Agriculture.

The only thing I don't understand is why رہے is plural masculine, or what exactly it's agreeing with. Court is feminine singular, family should also be feminine singular I guess...?

By the way I forgot to say, I like your accent in Urdu (even with your stuffed nose)! And thanks to your recordings I realised I was confusing واقع and واقعہ and that فٹ is فُٹ (duh!).

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-10, 12:42

Nice going, Saim Bhai! (This is another one of those sentences that sounds odd to me. I don't know that I've ever seen a Facebook post start with 'there is an idea...'. :silly:). Didn't know any of those words myself, though طَے کرنا at least vaguely rings a bell. :P
Saim wrote:The only thing I don't understand is why رہے is plural masculine, or what exactly it's agreeing with. Court is feminine singular, family should also be feminine singular I guess...?

Maybe because it's not literally the court(room) itself that's doing the settling but rather the people in it?

I think both کا's may be agreeing with فیصلہ ultimately, i.e. احتساب کورٹ کا agrees with نواز شریف فیملی کا فیصلہ, and of course نواز شریف فیملی کا agrees with فیصلہ. :)
By the way I forgot to say, I like your accent in Urdu (even with your stuffed nose)! And thanks to your recordings I realised I was confusing واقع and واقعہ and that فٹ is فُٹ (duh!).

Thanks! :) Oh, I didn't know واقعہ really...interesting! :D

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby eskandar » 2018-07-14, 20:29

I'm excited that there's finally some Urdu activity around here again!

Saim wrote:بارے - at last (?)

Literally "once" but also "for once" and thus "at last". Cf. Turkish bari. (From Persian, of course...)

Saim wrote:I would especially appreciate sentences for the following words: بزم ,غمّازی ,پاسبان ,فگار ,عبث.

They are all poetic/literary words which come from Persian. I don't think any of these are used much in everyday speech. بزم (feasting) often comes together with رزم (fighting) as bazm-o-razm "feasting and fighting". A line from Mir comes to mind for عبث :
ناحق ہم مجبوروں پر یہ تہمت ہے مختاری کی
چاہتے ہیں سو آپ کریں، ہم کو عبث بدنام کیا

I'll leave its translation as an exercise ;) but to understand it you need to know that God is being addressed, atypically, as آپ here.

vijayjohn wrote:گهسنا - to rub. I thought it meant 'to wash' or something.

Could well be. Picture someone washing clothes by hand - it's mostly rubbing!

Saim wrote:There is an idea that

I think I would translate گمان ہے کہ here as "it is thought that..." or "it is supposed that..."
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-14, 23:51

Thanks, eskandar bhai! :)
eskandar wrote:I'm excited that there's finally some Urdu activity around here again!

And with ghazals, too! :yep:
vijayjohn wrote:گهسنا - to rub. I thought it meant 'to wash' or something.

Could well be. Picture someone washing clothes by hand - it's mostly rubbing!

Except in India where it's mostly beating? :P

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby eskandar » 2018-07-28, 23:25

Shall we translate an article? I'll get us started with the first few sentences.

عمران خان کا سفر
https://www.bbc.com/urdu/pakistan-44990438

عمران خان نے نیا نیا ورلڈ کپ جیتا تھا اور مُصر تھے کہ سیاست میں نہیں آئیں گے۔ اسی زمانے میں کراچی میں دماغی امراض کے ماہر ایک بزرگ ڈاکٹر نوجوانوں میں بڑھتے ہوئے منشیات کے استعمال اور سگریٹ نوشی کے خلاف منصوبے بناتے رہتے تھے۔

Imran Khan had just won the World Cup and insisted that he would not enter politics. At the same time, a great doctor and expert in mental health was planning against the increasing use of drugs and smoking among youth.

انھوں نے ایسا ایک زبردست آئیڈیا بتایا کہ اگر حکومت کسی طرح انھیں عمران خان دے دے تو وہ ایک اشتہار ایسا بنائیں گے جسے دیکھنے کے بعد ملک کے نوجوان منشیات بھی چھوڑ دیں گے اور سگریٹ نوشی بھی۔

He described an amazing idea, that if the government somehow gave him Imran Khan, he would create an advertisement that, after seeing it, the nation's youth would give up drugs and smoking.

اشتہار میں آ کر عمران خان کو صرف اتنا کہنا ہو گا کہ سگریٹ نوشی سے مرد نامرد ہو جاتا ہے۔

Coming into the advertisement, Imran Khan would just have to say that men become unmanly/impotent from smoking cigarettes.

نہ اشتہار بنا، نہ کچھ بدلا۔ سگریٹ پینے والے سگریٹ پیتے رہے، اور منشیات بھی اچھی اور سستی ہوتی گئیں۔ ڈاکٹر صاحب کو نئے نئے آئیڈیاز آتے گئے لیکن اس عرصے میں عمران خان نے خود کو بہت بدلا۔

The advertisement was not made, nor did anything change. Cigarette smokers went on smoking cigarettes, and drugs became good and cheap. The doctor had all kinds of new ideas but in that time Imran Khan changed himself greatly.

کرکٹ کے تاریخ دان بتاتے ہیں کہ عمران خان دنیا کی تاریخ کے وہ پہلے فاسٹ بولر ہیں جنھوں نے بیچ کریئر کے اپنا بولنگ ایکشن بدلا اور پہلے سے بہتر بولر بن گئے۔

Historians of cricket say that Imran Khan is the first fast bowler in world history who changed his own bowling action mid-career and became a better bowler than before.

Notes
-I'm not sure I'd encountered the grammatical form ہوتی گئیں before, though I think I guessed its meaning correctly.
-اچھی اور سستی was also confusing the hell out of me. I kept reading it as "good and laziness" which didn't make any sense, until I remembered the word سستا :oops: I wonder if the meaning is that drugs became [good] and [cheap] (two separate qualities) or [good and cheap], as in "good and ready" -- just meaning "very cheap". The latter would, of course, be an anglicism, but those are a dime a dozen in Urdu, especially Urdu journalism.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby Saim » 2018-07-29, 9:50

Hey! I like the text you've suggested. As I said in the Turkish thread, I can't really do any language related stuff until the 11th of August, but after then I'll be back and ready to do weekly Urdu study. :)

Vijay, feel free to work on this text with eskandar if you have the time!

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Re: Urdu Study Group

Postby eskandar » 2018-07-29, 21:47

The next sentences were much more difficult:

جنگ اخبار کے پرانے قارئین کو یاد ہو گا کہ عمران خان نے اپنی نظریاتی جنگ کا آغاز کالم لکھ کر شروع کیا تھا جس میں انھوں نے اپنی براؤن صاحب والی تھیوری پیش کی تھی جس میں ہمیں یہ بتایا گیا تھا کہ انگریز تو چلا گیا لیکن اس کے لے پالک دیسی انگریز ابھی تک ہمارے حکمران ہیں۔

Old readers of Jang News will remember that Imran Khan had started writing his own critical frontpage(?) column in Jang where he presented his own Mr. Browne theory, in which he told us that the English had left but their adopted Desi Englishmen are still our rulers. :?:

ان کے خیالات ایک معصوم انقلابی کے تھے۔ ایسا ایک آدھ معصوم انقلابی ہر گلی محلے میں ہوتا ہے۔ ایک سے دو باتیں ہو جائیں تو انقلابی پارٹی اتنے ہی دھڑوں میں بٹ جاتی ہے۔

His ideas were those of a naive revolutionary. This kind of half-naive revolutionary is in every street, every neighborhood. When one [issue] becomes two issues (?), the revolutionary party becomes split into as many factions [as there are issues]. :?:

عمران خان کو انقلابی سے وہابی بنانے میں زیادہ وقت نہیں لگا۔ انھوں نے قرونِ اولیٰ کے قصے سنا کر ہمارا دل گرمایا اور ولایت میں اپنی جوانی کی فتوحات کی جھلکیاں دکھا کر ہمارا ایمان تازہ کیا۔ جب اس سے بھی بات نہیں بنی تو انھوں نے پاکستان کے پرانے گرگوں سے ٹیوشن پڑھی اور اتنے اچھے نمبروں سے پاس ہوئے ہیں کہ یار لوگ ابھی تک گنتی کے چکر میں پڑے ہوئے ہیں۔

It didn't take Imran Khan long to go from turning from revolutionary to Wahhabi. Telling stories of the first centuries [of Islam], he warmed our hearts, and showing highlights of the victories of his own youth in the country, he renewed our faith. When nothing became of that(?), he studied tuition from Pakistan's old vagabonds (???) and passed with such good grades (?) that man, people are still stuck counting [them]. :?:

Notes/questions/new vocab
آغاز کالم - literally 'start column' - I guessed 'frontpage column' but not sure
لے پالک - adopted (took me a while to realize spinach was not involved)
ایک سے دو باتیں ہو جائیں - I guessed it might mean "when one issue becomes two" or something similar
دھڑا - faction
بٹنا - to be divided (cf. بٹوارہ)
جھلکیاں - highlights (I first parsed this as 'glimpses')
اس سے بھی بات نہیں بنی - I guessed "nothing became of that"
گرگا - vagabond (not sure it makes sense in this context, so maybe it's the wrong word?)
ٹیوشن پڑھنا - to take tuition from? to study from?
اتنے اچھے نمبروں سے پاس ہوئے ہیں - this construction was confusing for me (the پاس ہوئے ہیں part) - I wonder if پاس here is the English "pass" or if it means that "he returned with such good numbers"?
کے چکّر میں X - entangled in, caught up in, stuck in X
Please correct my mistakes in any language.


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