# Urdu: Proportion of Persian in Urdu?



## Qureshpor

One of our friends, Rahulbemba Jii, has mentioned in a number of threads (three to be precise) the figure 70% pertaining to the proportion of Persian in Urdu. This figure infact is taken by RB from an article written by Ameera Kamal. This is the actual quote


_*"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words.” *(Ameera Kamal) (Hindi-Urdu: Origin of the Division) 07/09/2011 _

RB, then while enquring about the word "saaqii" asks, and I quote:

_"Is the word of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)?" Urdu:Saqi (09/09/2011_)

He once again, in "Urdu:dair-au-haram" again on 09/09/2011 enquires..

_"Are these words of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)"_

Let us return to Ameera Kamal's assertion *"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words".

*Ameera Kamal's arithmatic might not be all that brilliant but we do not need to be mathematicians or engineers to realise that if Urdu is 70% Persian and 30% is Arabic and Turkish then words like "roTii, kapRaa aur ghar" must be a big round zero per cent!

It stands to reason that working out a percentage of words from a particualr language can not be an exact science. One writer may use a higher proportion of one language than another. Indeed the same writer within his work may have more of one language in one piece than in another. (see Iqbal's "nayaa shivaalah") Let us carry out a small exercise.

Iqbal's "Indian Anthem" has 145 words in total. 24 of these are Persian and 10 Arabic. This gives 16% Persian, 7% Arabic and 77% Indic.

Mirza Ghalib is considered to be one of those poets who has perhaps used more Persian in his Urdu poetry than most. I have picked one Ghazal, which in my opinon has possibly more Persian than any other of his Ghazals. It is Ghazal no.2 from his Urdu Diivaan and it begins, "dil miraa soz-i-nihaaN se be-muHaabaa jal gayaa".

Total words, 115
Persian words, 31
Arabic words, 13
Persian, 27%
Arabic 11%
Indic 62%

I appreciate that these two pieces of evidence can not be seen as conclusive but it is logical to assume that if one takes into account a piece of composition which has least number of Persian words and another which has most, one can come to some form of reliable conclusion. By the way one of the lines in Ghalib's Ghazal that I have mentioned goes like this.

aag is ghar meN lagii aisii kih jo thaa jal gayaa (91% Indic)

By the way, saaqii is from Arabic and it literally means "someone who gives someone else water or something else to drink".

I hope this has been of some help to those who have some interest in the Urdu language.


​


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## chizinist

That's really interesting. As someone who is learning Urdu (and previously learned Arabic and Persian) I am guessing that the relationship of Persian-Urdu is similar to Arabic-Persian; a large amount of loanwords that end up being supplementative to other 'native' words.


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## lcfatima

In the field of ESL (I am an ESL teacher) we have these lists of the most common words produced by computer programs (different sources like Oxford produce these lists in our industry, usually first 1000 for very low level students, first 3000, and so on) and we use them to write materials using high frequency words for lower level learners and so forth, and we gauge the level of our exams and materials with them. We just upload the text into a program, and the vocab is checked against these lists. It would be interesting to see a list like this produced for Urdu. The generated lists could be checked for word origin. My suspicion is that 60%+ words would be Indic in the high frequency realm-verbs and daily items, household objects, etc. As far as text or rhetorical analysis, when higher register language sources are used, the Persian component will be more frequent. But it would be interesting to quantify spoken usage of daily language as well.


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## flyinfishjoe

A long time ago, I read a book by Dr. Hardev Bahri called _Persian Influence on Hindi_. I recall in that book he gave a percentage for the number of Persian words in Hindi. I think it was 25-30%, or something close to that. I'm not sure how he arrived upon this number, or whether this was "scientifically" determined, but I thought it was worth it to post it here.


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## rahulbemba

This instance (Persian words dominating Urdu language) had appeared in the below forum which was natural since we were discussing the origin of Urdu and relationship with Hindi: 

Thread: Hindi-Urdu: Origin of the Division ( http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2140277 )

I request interested members to check this forum too, and contribute and discuss if they wish. 

For this topic, I would quote a portion of article from BBC which tells about how Urdu originated and this to a fair extent explains why there should be a very high proportion of Persian words in Urdu dialect: 

*"The old Urdu was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic and was  the language of the most powerful warrior tribes of Central Asia. These  tribes would invade, conquer and occupy areas within easy reach for  their wealth, gold, silver and precious stones. Wherever these tribes  went, they took their language which had an amazing mingling and  absorbing local words and proverbs.*" (A Brief History of Urdu; http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other.../history.shtml) 

Now, I read the initial post of this forum and find the research done on one or two of Mirza Ghalib's poems as a naive pointer to find out the facts of this matter  Ghalib's poems or any poet's poems would reflect at most the language at the time the poet lived. It won't tell about the broader aspects since history of Urdu is older than a poet, and also has had traveled a long way. This is why I call the exercise as naive and would appreciate some truly scholarly research on this topic (either primary or secondary). 

Even the word meaning of "Urdu" has come from Persian "Camp", and it is not surprising that Urdu would have so many words from the Persian origin. Here is a quote on the same: 

*"the impact of Islām created a new language, Urdu (from Persian:  Camp), based on Hindi; Urdu was the lingua franca of the army. Urdu was  used later for literature and at present is the mother tongue of most  Indian Muslims and their brethren" *(Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...ture#ref532147)


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## Qureshpor

chizinist said:


> That's really interesting. As someone who is learning Urdu (and previously learned Arabic and Persian) I am guessing that the relationship of Persian-Urdu is similar to Arabic-Persian; a large amount of loanwords that end up being supplementative to other 'native' words.



Yes, I would say this is a fair assessment. I must congratualte you for tackling Arabic, Persian and now Urdu!



lcfatima said:


> In the field of ESL (I am an ESL teacher) we have these lists of the most common words produced by computer programs (different sources like Oxford produce these lists in our industry, usually first 1000 for very low level students, first 3000, and so on) and we use them to write materials using high frequency words for lower level learners and so forth, and we gauge the level of our exams and materials with them. We just upload the text into a program, and the vocab is checked against these lists. It would be interesting to see a list like this produced for Urdu. The generated lists could be checked for word origin. My suspicion is that 60%+ words would be Indic in the high frequency realm-verbs and daily items, household objects, etc. As far as text or rhetorical analysis, when higher register language sources are used, the Persian component will be more frequent. But it would be interesting to quantify spoken usage of daily language as well.




It is good to have views of educationalists with regard to language and vocabulary. Producing a list of most frequently used words for the purposes of teaching language to children of a certain age and ability would no doubt be a very useful tool. I would suggest that even at such a tender age (primary school age), Persian and Arabic words, in addition to the dominant Indic base, would form part of the natural everyday spoken Urdu. For someone who does not come from an Urdu speaking background, I would have understood the meanings of all the following (and a lot lot more) words. (I would also add that an illiterate adult’s range of understanding of Persian and Arabic words would be even greater.)

bachchah, bistar, makaan, diivaar, tasviir, safed, siyaah, surKh, zard, sabz, sabzii, darvaazah, farsh, raushanii, raushan-daan, sanduuq, zevar,, Khush, Khush-buu, naaraaz, raazii, biimaar, davaa’ii, daaruu, shiishah, mez, kursi, qalam, davaat, taKhtii, kitaab zamiin, aasmaan, siHn, daraKht, sard, garm, gosht, namak, gandum, shaljam, piyaaz, anguur, daanah masjid, Allah, Khudaa, rasuul, nabii, paiGhamabr, kalimah, imam, maulavii, vuzuu, namaaz, mazhab du3aa subH, shaam, zuhar, zabaan, madrasah, tafriiH, Haazir, janaab, taraanah, paak, paliid, nishaan, yaqiin, qaum, mulk, muraad, parcham, sitaarah, jaan, jaan-var, zindagii, maut, qabr, gor, goristaan, Khaandaan, qabiilah, chihrah, gardan..I don’t think I need to go on! Vast majority of these words would be understood by Hindi speakers.


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## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> This instance (Persian words dominating Urdu language) had appeared in the below forum which was natural since we were discussing the origin of Urdu and relationship with Hindi:
> 
> Thread: Hindi-Urdu: Origin of the Division ( http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2140277 )



With regard to "Persian words dominating Urdu language", please watch this space for a rejoinder.



rahulbemba said:


> Now, I read the initial post of this forum and find the research done on one or two of Mirza Ghalib's poems as a naive pointer to find out the facts of this matter



It appears that you did n't actually "read" my initial post. If you had done so, you will have found out that one poem was by Iqbal and the other by Ghalib. Besides, I did offer the "rationalisation" behind my method, as quoted below. Again, you must have missed it. I hope that at least you took one thing on board from my post. And that involved simple addition and subtraction. 

"I appreciate that these two pieces of evidence cannot be seen as conclusive but it is logical to assume that if one takes into account a piece of composition which has least number of Persian words and another which has most, one can come to some form of reliable conclusion."



rahulbemba said:


> Ghalib's poems or any poet's poems would reflect at most the language at the time the poet lived. It won't tell about the broader aspects since history of Urdu is older than a poet, and also has had traveled a long way. This is why I call the exercise as naive and would appreciate some truly scholarly research on this topic (either primary or secondary).



Please refer to page 207 (last paragraph, which goes onto page 208) of the following six page document entitled “Some notes on Hindi and Urdu” by the late Professor Ralph Russell of London University’s SOAS. 

http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/11/19somenotes.pdf

“Urdu as written both in India and Pakistan is no more Persianized/Arabicized today than it ever was. Its Persianization, if one wants to use that term, was already accomplished when modern Hindi came into existence, and there is virtually no further scope for it. There has never been, is not now, and never can be any effective “Muslim” movement to “Muslimize” Urdu in the way that the creators of Modern Hindi “Indianized” it.”

I have ignored your other quotes for the simple reason that they are not only grossly inaccurate but portions of them are totally irrelevant to this or any other language based thread.


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## rahulbemba

I did read your initial post. Please don't assume that I didn't read it just because I didn't feel infatuated by your research 

I have studied statistics. There is a concept of "*sampling*". If you select wrong sample, there is a very high probability that you will get a wrong result. Now, since you selected two "poets" for sample (one of whom may be your favorite), it will be called a "*biased sample*" in statistical terms. Again, to select two poems would again not be the "*sufficient size*" of a sample for a proper research. Also, there is no such rule that if you select two poems and make a count, the result would be the average of the two figures. "2" would be statistically too small a sample size for making a conclusion here.

Now on so called "*Persianization/Arabicization*", I read your quote. It says _"its Persianization was already accomplished... and there is virtually no further scope for it."_ For any living language, I think there is never an "end stage". Languages are there to grow taking up words, meanings and a lot of inputs from many other languages with which it comes into contact. So it's always a "journey" and "evolution" of things like languages. When it stops growing, or better, when it stops learning, it rots, it's a dead language. So many languages stopped "interacting" with other living languages and are dead languages today. I am not saying that Urdu is one such, but the author of the above article means to indicate that there has been a "*full stop*" on the *journey* of Urdu in its learning from Persian - I hope there is no such full stop.

Another line, _"There has never been, is not now, and never can be any effective “Muslim” movement to “Muslimize” Urdu in the way....”_ Here, "Muslimize" is a wrong term. Better, use the former, "Persianization / Arabicization" etc. Now how could such "*ization*" be done when the Urdu developed in circumstances where there were so many different races in its fold? As the BBC article I quoted above tells some tribes like "*a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic*". Since there were multiple races and groups involved with their own languages and dialects *interacting with each other* which gave rise to Urdu, such an "ization" was not possible in the first place!


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## lcfatima

Qureshpor: Actually these word lists I had in mind are for teaching and assessing university level ESL students and used for academic English, not for teaching children. But I think it would be fruitful to conduct such an analysis of Urdu...more so than examining poetry or literature which I feel would yield a deceivingly higher percentage of Persian words.

Yes, many of those words would be understood by Hindi speakers because they are in fact Hindi words of Persian origin.


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## Qureshpor

lcfatima said:


> Qureshpor: Actually these word lists I had in mind are for teaching and assessing university level ESL students and used for academic English, not for teaching children. But I think it would be fruitful to conduct such an analysis of Urdu...more so than examining poetry or literature which I feel would yield a deceivingly higher percentage of Persian words.



Yes, I do appreciate that the percentage of Persian ( and Arabic) words in Urdu poetry is likely to show a higher percentage than the spoken language but I chose the two samples for two reasons.

1) The "taranah-i-Hindi" is a poem with a relatively smaller Persian/Arabic element whilst Ghalib's Ghazal has a lot more. So, these two samples are a kind of "extremes". I am fully aware that this is in no way a scientific survey.

2) Anyone can easily have access to these pieces of poetry and can check my word count etc.

The samples of words I have provided are words from daily speech.



lcfatima said:


> Yes, many of those words would be understood by Hindi speakers because they are in fact Hindi words of Persian origin.



I and many more would disagree with your reasoning but I shall not argue my points here. I hope this will become clear from other threads.


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## Qureshpor

flyinfishjoe said:


> A long time ago, I read a book by Dr. Hardev Bahri called _Persian Influence on Hindi_. I recall in that book he gave a percentage for the number of Persian words in Hindi. I think it was 25-30%, or something close to that. I'm not sure how he arrived upon this number, or whether this was "scientifically" determined, but I thought it was worth it to post it here.



Thank you. I shall do a little bit of digging.


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## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> Even the word meaning of "Urdu" has come from Persian "Camp", and it is not surprising that Urdu would have so many words from the Persian origin"




“Urdu” is *not* a Persian word; in fact it happens to be Turkish! By your logic, Hindi, which *is *a Persian word should be inundated with words of Persian origin. Sadly, another logic down the drain!

P هند _hind_ [or _hindu_; Pehl. _hindu_, or *hind*; Zend _hindu_; S. सिन्धु], s.m. India, Hindustān (properly restricted to the Upper provinces, between Banāras and the Satlaj);—a Hindū, an Indian. (Platts)

P هندوي हिन्दवी _hindwī_, or हिन्दुवी _hinduwī_, or हिन्दूई _hindū__ʼī_ [prob. _hindu_+_ī_ = S. इन्], adj. & s.m. Of or belonging to India, or to the Hindūs; Indian, Hindū;—an Indian, a Hindū;—s.f. The language or dialect of the Hindūs, the Hindūʼī or Hindī language;—blackness (of the hair, &c.) (Platts)

“...the Muslims in their Persian writings casually referred to this spoken language in the same way as most other Indo-Aryan languages they came across in such vague terms as “hindi” (Indian language) or “Hindui” (Hindu language).”
(Hindi and Urdu Since 1800- A Common Reader-- Christopher Shackle and Rupert Snell)


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## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> I have studied statistics. There is a concept of "*sampling*". If you select wrong sample, there is a very high probability that you will get a wrong result. Now, since you selected two "poets" for sample (one of whom may be your favorite), it will be called a "*biased sample*" in statistical terms. Again, to select two poems would again not be the "*sufficient size*" of a sample for a proper research. Also, there is no such rule that if you select two poems and make a count, the result would be the average of the two figures. "2" would be statistically too small a sample size for making a conclusion here.




Your level of education might be awe inspiring but we are talking about language matters here. No one has suggested for a moment that the simple two poem word count was a scientific exercise employing statistical analysis. Thank you for the lesson but I am quite content with my ability to workout things when they don't quite add up!


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## rahulbemba

rahulbemba said:


> Even the word meaning of "Urdu" has come from Persian "Camp".



I made a mistake to write Persian here. It should be Turkish. _*"The term “Urdu” derives from a Turkish word “ordu” meaning camp or army*." _It is said that even the Mughals were from Persianized Central Asia but spoke Chagatai Turkic as their first language at the beginning before eventually adopting Persian.

Now here is a quote which tells why Persian is so prominent in Urdu: 

 Sanskrit, Sauraseni Prakrit, and then Sauraseni Apabhramsa served as languages of interregional communication from early times until the *Muslim invasions in north India in the 13th century* (Nayar 1969, p53). *At this time, Persian became the court language* while Sauraseni Apabhramsa continued to be used as an official language. *Beginning with the Moghul emperor Akbar's reign Persian was used as the official language and over time gained such prestige that it enjoyed continued use as the official language in north India* *even after the end of Muslim rule.* (Nayar 1969, p. 57).

Also: *English replaced Persian as the official language in 1837*, though Persian and, to a lesser extent, Hindi were retained in some capacity at the lower levels of administration. [Ref] 

It is said that *Persian was the official language* of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and many successor states, as well as the *cultured language of poetry and literature*. A noted scholar Alam Muzaffar says: 

*Persian became the lingua franca of the empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature*. _(Alam, Muzaffar. "The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics." In Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 2. (May, 1998), pp. 317–349.)_

To me there is no surprise why there is so high influence of Persian in Urdu and so high % of Urdu words are of Persian origin because of the history of these two languages.


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## BP.

rahulbemba said:


> ...
> I have studied statistics. There is a concept of "*sampling*". If you select wrong sample, there is a very high probability that you will get a wrong result. Now, since you selected two "poets" for sample (one of whom may be your favorite), it will be called a "*biased sample*" in statistical terms. Again, to select two poems would again not be the "*sufficient size*" of a sample for a proper research. Also, there is no such rule that if you select two poems and make a count, the result would be the average of the two figures. "2" would be statistically too small a sample size for making a conclusion here.
> ...


*A sample is inherently biased. We try to mitigate the bias by randomizing the sampling procedure or by boosting or finding and putting away the source of the bias e.g. the human sampler; or simply by enlarging the size of the sample so that it becomes more representative of the population and the central limit theorem comes into play. And we're not even talking descriptive statistics which has inherent sample attribute weightage problems and the human cannot be expelled from the sampling process!

However, you are making a grave confusion between a sample and an example. What was offered to you was the latter. And that by nature is punctual not serial neither copious. What I mean to say is, 2 examples are enough examples to evoke the rest of the similar examples lying hidden within those neuronal links. Unless there aren't any...

* Sorry guys for the little detour, but like our friend here I too have studied some statistics, and I don't like something I teach being misunderstood, much less the misunderstanding propagated.


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## rahulbemba

BelligerentPacifist said:


> *A sample is inherently biased. We try to mitigate the bias by randomizing the sampling procedure or by boosting or finding and putting away the source of the bias e.g. the human sampler; or simply by enlarging the size of the sample so that it becomes more representative of the population and the central limit theorem comes into play. And we're not even talking descriptive statistics which has inherent sample attribute weightage problems and the human cannot be expelled from the sampling process!
> 
> However, you are making a grave confusion between a sample and an example. What was offered to you was the latter. And that by nature is punctual not serial neither copious. What I mean to say is, 2 examples are enough examples to evoke the rest of the similar examples lying hidden within those neuronal links. Unless there aren't any...
> 
> * Sorry guys for the little detour, but like our friend here I too have studied some statistics, and I don't like something I teach being misunderstood, much less the misunderstanding propagated.



A sample is not always "inherently biased" in statistical terms. You can read some overviews about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/A12723.html

Now you say that the two cases were presented as "examples" and not as "samples". The way I looked at it (I have studied Research Methodology as a subject too), those were presented as part of a "systematic research" - where the researcher tried to follow a proper research "methodology". The methodology was based on "arithmetic average" (which I objected to). 


> In post#10, he says, "Yes, I do appreciate that the percentage of Persian ( and Arabic) words in Urdu poetry is likely to show a higher percentage than the spoken language but I chose the two samples for two reasons.
> 
> So, these two samples are a kind of "extremes". I am fully aware that this is in no way a scientific survey.
> 
> The samples of words I have provided are words from daily speech."



He calls it a "sample" himself. And he called it a sample replying to another member lcfatima not to mine, so you can trust his instincts.

Well, I advised him a better research methodology for such an exercise. This subject needs a subjective analysis and not a quantitative one (which he did in fact, though said that it was not scientific - though again I don't agree that it was not scientific. It was scientific but used a wrong methodology, in my opinion).


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## BP.

rahulbemba said:


> ...
> He calls it a "sample" himself. And he called it a sample replying to another member lcfatima not to mine, so you can trust his instincts.
> ...


If he did, then even though I understand he meant a taster, I'm once more guilty of reading just one post off a long thread and replying to it. Let me impose a 24 hours exile on myself so I come back a better reader...


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## tonyspeed

I am ready to place the invasion story in the rubbish bin of false language theories. It would be interesting to find out when this particular theory was adopted about being Urdu linked to the army. I supect that is was propaganda created by jingoistic Indian nationalists sometime in the 20th century.

In all older books I have read, this theory is never mentioned. In fact, all of the older books hint at the fact that here the word Urdu refers to the the bazaar of Delhi or refers to the "camp" that is Delhi, since Delhi was a place of encampment not continuously, but several times during its history. 

One such example is "The Influence of English Literature on Urdu Literature" by Sayyid Abdul-Latif (1924)


> "In addition to this, another hundred millions use it as an indispensable second language in their daily intercourse, *not only in the bazaar or the marketplace, as the term "Urdu" implies,* but even in polite society"



*Urdu Letters of M̲i̲rzā Asaduʾllāh Ḵẖān G̲ẖāli  Translated by Daud Rahbar*



> "The Dihli-born lovers of Dihli continue to praise the language spoken here! What wild and invinscible faith! Listen, strange creatures of God: *The Urdu Bazar here is no more. So how can Urdu survive?*"




Persian was the language of government, as simple as that.


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## Wolverine9

^ Urdu is a Turkish word and means both army and camp.  The two meanings are linked because they refer to a collective group of people.  In the linguistic context, members of the army lived in the "camp" of Delhi, which further intertwines the two meanings.

In order to determine the proportion of Persian in Urdu, it would be good to analyze a comprehensive Urdu dictionary and determine the percentage of each language that comprises it (or avoid this painstaking endeavor by finding scholarly work that does).  Also keep in mind when people like Ameera Kamal make such exaggerated statements they may be focusing on nouns and adjectives in particular, rather than on verbs.


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> ^ Urdu is a Turkish word and means both army and camp.  The two meanings are linked because they refer to a collective group of people.  In the linguistic context, members of the army lived in the "camp" of Delhi, which further intertwines the two meanings.
> 
> In order to determine the proportion of Persian in Urdu, it would be good to analyze a comprehensive Urdu dictionary and determine the percentage of each language that comprises it (or avoid this painstaking endeavor by finding scholarly work that does).  Also keep in mind when people like Ameera Kamal make such exaggerated statements they may be focusing on nouns and adjectives in particular, rather than on verbs.



The problem with this method is that it would be skewed. If we looked at the percentage of Latin based words in English we would get a skewed picture if we included scientific words. Even though such words are not commonly used by the public, they would constitute a significant portion of the English vocabulary.

An interesting approach would be to record everyday conversation and calculate the percentage based on those findings.


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## marrish

Wolverine9 said:


> ^ Urdu is a Turkish word and means both army and camp.  The two meanings are linked because they refer to a collective group of people.  In the linguistic context, members of the army lived in the "camp" of Delhi, which further intertwines the two meanings.


Let me add something to this statement that is going to change the associations one is likely to have after reading it. ''Urdu'' is indeed a Turkic word in the etymological sense however it is a word shared by Persian, Urdu, Hindi and a lot of other languages. In Persian, a camp is often referred to as ''urduu-gaah''.

The most important is that the meaning of this word has nothing to do with the description of the Urdu language! For a simple fact that the first time this language was referred to with the word ''urduu'' was a phrase ''zabaan-e-urduu-ye-mu3allaa'' زبان اردو معلی which means ''the language of the Exalted Camp''. The Exalted Camp means the Court of the Emperors and the surrounding baazaar, not a military camp. Urdu is not a lashkarii zabaan, as even many Pakistanis are wrongly taught, it is not a military language. It is a language of diversity, poetry, knowledge and social integration.



> In order to determine the proportion of Persian in Urdu, it would be good to analyze a comprehensive Urdu dictionary and determine the percentage of each language that comprises it (or avoid this painstaking endeavor by finding scholarly work that does). Also keep in mind when people like Ameera Kamal make such exaggerated statements they may be focusing on nouns and adjectives in particular, rather than on verbs.


I have a good answer to this and I hope you and others will find it interesting. It happened this way that a respected lexicographer, author of a couple of specific Urdu dictionaries who compiled them in the beginning of the twentieth century, Sayyid Ahmad KhaaN Dihlavi SaaHib, has provided us as the coming generations with a detailed account (1892) of the percentage of various words in his great Urdu to Urdu dictionary, Farhang-e-Asafiyyah.

Indic (including Punjabi): 21644
Urdu: 17505
Arabic (including Arabicisms): 7584
*Persian: 6041
*Sanskrit: 554
English: 500
Other: 181
Turkish: 105
Greek: 29
Portuguese: 16
Hebrew: 11
Syriac: 7
Latin: 4
French: 3
Pali: 2
Burmese: 2
Malabar: 1
Spanish:1

Best greetings.


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## peterbruce01

Qureshpor said:


> One of our friends, Rahulbemba Jii, has mentioned in a number of threads (three to be precise) the figure 70% pertaining to the proportion of Persian in Urdu. This figure infact is taken by RB from an article written by Ameera Kamal. This is the actual quote
> 
> 
> _*"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words.” *(Ameera Kamal) (Hindi-Urdu: Origin of the Division) 07/09/2011 _
> 
> RB, then while enquring about the word "saaqii" asks, and I quote:
> 
> _"Is the word of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)?" Urdu:Saqi (09/09/2011_)
> 
> He once again, in "Urdu:dair-au-haram" again on 09/09/2011 enquires..
> 
> _"Are these words of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)"_
> 
> Let us return to Ameera Kamal's assertion *"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words".
> *
> Ameera Kamal's arithmatic might not be all that brilliant but we do not need to be mathematicians or engineers to realise that if Urdu is 70% Persian and 30% is Arabic and Turkish then words like "roTii, kapRaa aur ghar" must be a big round zero per cent!
> 
> It stands to reason that working out a percentage of words from a particualr language can not be an exact science. One writer may use a higher proportion of one language than another. Indeed the same writer within his work may have more of one language in one piece than in another. (see Iqbal's "nayaa shivaalah") Let us carry out a small exercise.
> 
> Iqbal's "Indian Anthem" has 145 words in total. 24 of these are Persian and 10 Arabic. This gives 16% Persian, 7% Arabic and 77% Indic.
> 
> Mirza Ghalib is considered to be one of those poets who has perhaps used more Persian in his Urdu poetry than most. I have picked one Ghazal, which in my opinon has possibly more Persian than any other of his Ghazals. It is Ghazal no.2 from his Urdu Diivaan and it begins, "dil miraa soz-i-nihaaN se be-muHaabaa jal gayaa".
> 
> Total words, 115
> Persian words, 31
> Arabic words, 13
> Persian, 27%
> Arabic 11%
> Indic 62%
> 
> I appreciate that these two pieces of evidence can not be seen as conclusive but it is logical to assume that if one takes into account a piece of composition which has least number of Persian words and another which has most, one can come to some form of reliable conclusion. By the way one of the lines in Ghalib's Ghazal that I have mentioned goes like this.
> 
> aag is ghar meN lagii aisii kih jo thaa jal gayaa (91% Indic)
> 
> By the way, saaqii is from Arabic and it literally means "someone who gives someone else water or something else to drink".
> 
> I hope this has been of some help to those who have some interest in the Urdu language.
> 
> 
> ​


This should read "*Currently, the non-Sanskrit Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words.*


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## peterbruce01

Qureshpor said:


> One of our friends, Rahulbemba Jii, has mentioned in a number of threads (three to be precise) the figure 70% pertaining to the proportion of Persian in Urdu. This figure infact is taken by RB from an article written by Ameera Kamal. This is the actual quote
> 
> 
> _*"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words.” *(Ameera Kamal) (Hindi-Urdu: Origin of the Division) 07/09/2011 _
> 
> RB, then while enquring about the word "saaqii" asks, and I quote:
> 
> _"Is the word of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)?" Urdu:Saqi (09/09/2011_)
> 
> He once again, in "Urdu:dair-au-haram" again on 09/09/2011 enquires..
> 
> _"Are these words of Persian in origin (as I learned about 70% Urdu words come from Persian language)"_
> 
> Let us return to Ameera Kamal's assertion *"Currently, the Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% of Persian words and the rest are a mixture of Arabic and Turkish words".
> *
> Ameera Kamal's arithmatic might not be all that brilliant but we do not need to be mathematicians or engineers to realise that if Urdu is 70% Persian and 30% is Arabic and Turkish then words like "roTii, kapRaa aur ghar" must be a big round zero per cent!
> 
> It stands to reason that working out a percentage of words from a particualr language can not be an exact science. One writer may use a higher proportion of one language than another. Indeed the same writer within his work may have more of one language in one piece than in another. (see Iqbal's "nayaa shivaalah") Let us carry out a small exercise.
> 
> Iqbal's "Indian Anthem" has 145 words in total. 24 of these are Persian and 10 Arabic. This gives 16% Persian, 7% Arabic and 77% Indic.
> 
> Mirza Ghalib is considered to be one of those poets who has perhaps used more Persian in his Urdu poetry than most. I have picked one Ghazal, which in my opinon has possibly more Persian than any other of his Ghazals. It is Ghazal no.2 from his Urdu Diivaan and it begins, "dil miraa soz-i-nihaaN se be-muHaabaa jal gayaa".
> 
> Total words, 115
> Persian words, 31
> Arabic words, 13
> Persian, 27%
> Arabic 11%
> Indic 62%
> 
> I appreciate that these two pieces of evidence can not be seen as conclusive but it is logical to assume that if one takes into account a piece of composition which has least number of Persian words and another which has most, one can come to some form of reliable conclusion. By the way one of the lines in Ghalib's Ghazal that I have mentioned goes like this.
> 
> aag is ghar meN lagii aisii kih jo thaa jal gayaa (91% Indic)
> 
> By the way, saaqii is from Arabic and it literally means "someone who gives someone else water or something else to drink".
> 
> I hope this has been of some help to those who have some interest in the Urdu language.​




According to The Dawn Nov 13 2011:
"Muslim rulers did not introduce any new language [into the sub-continent]. Instead they gave a new script (Persio-Arabic or Nastaliq), which was comprehendible to the spoken language of India. They even invented and introduced new signs or letters for the new sounds which are utterly local to the existing Persio-Arabic script, i.e., all the aspirated sounds of Bha, Pha, Tha, Gha, Dha, Rha, Lha and retroflexed sounds like Rah, Taa, Daa, etc. Hence all the _*tens of thousands of words *_spoken in Urdu containing these sounds have their origin in the early Vedic or middle Vedic era, i.e., 400 to 600BC." (My italics.)
​


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