# Hindi/Urdu: Identical languages?



## Glu

Hi

Are Hindi and Urdu the same language or dialects to the same language or are they totally different ???


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## SofiaB

Same language, different alphabet. Hindi uses modified Sanskrit and Urdu,  Modified Arabic or Persian alphabet, Some words are different but not enough to be another language.


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## Pivra

But local ppl use this language called Hindustani which is a mix of both Urdu and Hindi. Hindi is more from Sanskrit while Urdu, which was invented during the Mughal era uses more of Persians and Arbic words eg
Hello
In Hindi is Namaste which derrived from Sanskrit word Namaskar, which means solutation.
But for Urdu its Aslaam o Alaikum... which is surely from Arabic.
Thank you in hindi is Dhanyabaad 
but in Urdu it is Shukran....
what else... lemme see....
I think the word for king in Urdu is Shah, while in Hindi it is Raja.... just like other Sanskrit influenced languages.

I hope this helps abit


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## SofiaB

Other than the writen forms how similar or different are Hindi and Urdu? it was asked in a previous thread.What is your opinion. of course Urdu has more Persian and Arabic than Hindi
also is 5 anj,pansh or paj. I have heard different pronunciations.


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## macta123

Hello,
    Hindi and Urdu is commonly classified as Hindustani languages.
    Hindi has many words derived from Sanskrit while Urdu has many words from Arabic/Urdu. Urdu is written in Arabic script (from Right to Left [caligraphy] ) but Hindi has Devanagiri script
       Many vocabularies (or words) are different  in Hindi and Urdu
 for example:  Hindi - Dhanyawaad for Thank you
                   and Shukriya for Thank you in Urdu
          Darakth for Tree in Urdu   and Ped for Tree in Hindi 
         and so on...              

       5 = Panch  in Hindi
        5 = Anj in Tamil and Malayalam


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## Roshini

Isn't 5 anji in Tamil instead of anj? a little correction there.


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## Pivra

And how about noun declensions in Urdu .... like kamra in Hindi means room but I am in the room is kamre main.... so does Urdu have something similar?


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## macta123

Hello,

Mein kamrey main hoon. = I am in the room (is true both in Hindi and Urdu). 
Kamra and many of such vocabularies are common in Hindi and Urdu. Although there are word like Kaksh (for room in Hindi -- These are rarely used in Cities and Towns in India). Amongst the urban population in India, Hindustani(Mixture of Hindi and Urdu) is more popular.


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## Pivra

how often are Sanskrit borrowed words use in everyday lives for ppl who speak Hindi? What is the evolutionary process of Hindi from Sanskrit?

Dhanyavaad


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## macta123

Hello,
Evolutionary process of Hindi from Sanskrit is quite tough to say about.
Hindi in reality is a mixture of many dialects spoken in North and parts of East India(like Bihar,Jharkhand).It uses words from Sanskrit, few words from Pali and few Persian(Parsi) words. 
     At the same time Urdu which was formed in India for benifiting the Mughal emperors who came from central Asia. They couldn't adapt well to the Indian format of the language. So over a period of time the scholars who were associated to the Palatial courts developed a language out of Hindi and Arabic. Since Mughal emperors were Muslims and they also needed to read the scriptures (Holy Quran) so Arabic words replaced many from the Sankrit/Pali words and it gave to a new language called Urdu.

The development of Hindi has been taking place overs 1000s of years. The Aryans who are the forefather's of modern India came from Central Asia many 1000s years back and they had Sanskrit as their language. They developed their language Sanskrit in India and rest is history...

    At the same time some people from their cult or neighbourhood in Central Asia moved towards Europe and they developed the Latin language out their (from the core language which also gave raise to Sanskrit).


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## Pivra

Hey, Macta do you know that my name is also in Pali lol.... Piya (beloved) + vra (the one who is) (similar to vata in Sanskrit)

There are quite a few words in (should I say our ancestral language) Sanskrit that are related to Latin and Greek.

such as Danta which means teeth
Maha- Mega
Raj- Regnum
and so on so forth. 

 If I have a chance to go back to study in Thailand again I might take Hindi or Sanskrit but it is very hard to find a place to learn it in Canada.


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## macta123

Hello,

   Does universities in Thialand teach Hindi??
   By the way in United States they are going to give Hindi lessons (as Foreign Language) in this or propbably next year. So you may get a chance to learn there in your neighbouring country.

 and I suppose few Universities in the U.S. do have Hindi as one of the courses?


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## Pivra

Yes, but only specific universities do. There is this really old university in the old Bangkok area called Thai- Bharata ashram. I think they are there to teach many languages from India. (BTW my 8th grade science teacher when I was in Thailand is from Bangalore lol)  


k... c ya... Im really interested in learning Hindi, maybe when I go back I might get some courses.


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## Jhorer Brishti

Spoken Hindi in Delhi and spoken Urdu in Islamabad differ only in accent(pronouncing J's like Z's in Urdu,etc.) and in certain words. The average speaker of either of these languages will be able to understand the other. Formal or Shudh Hindi and shudh Urdu which is what is used in news broadcasts,etc. is not intelligible to the speaker of the other language. This is because "Hindi" is stripped of most of its arabic/persian derived words and replaced with sanskrit ones while "Urdu" loses its sanskrit derived words in favor of Arabic or Persian ones. In fact the Hindi spoken in Bollywood movies(especially during songs) is more similar to standard Urdu than it is to Hindi. As Macta said, the range of dialects spoken in north-central( and somewhat eastern) India and Pakistan are generally termed Hindustani(both Hindi and Urdu fall into this continuum).

Hindi has never been a separate language.It's birth(sketchy) coincides with Urdu. In early texts, both Urdu and Hindi are used to refer to the same language. The reason for having two names for the same language is primarily political in my opinion.. The Moghuls did not have a hard time learning Hindi(as hard a time as learning any other language but Persian which is the language they spoke is an Indo-Iranian language anyways) but like the British after them had a great impact on the spoken languages of that time. In fact they patronized and encouraged the literary traditions of both Sanskrit as well as the spoken languages(though not initally). Although muslims spoke the language of their province(Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan,etc.) and studied Arabic they learned Persian as well. Hindus spoke the language of their province, studied Sanskrit and Persian. The study of Persian was irrespective of religion and this is why there is such an influence from Persian on modern Indic languages and in particular on Hindi/Urdu since Delhi and most of today's "Hindi Belt" is where the Moghuls made their home and had the largest influence.


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## Pivra

Who know what is Avestan.... and is it like Sanskrit?.... cuz .. ive heard that in Avesta Asura means Deva and Deva means Asura.  Asura as in Mara


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## manikghoshal

Glu said:


> Hi
> 
> Are Hindi and Urdu the same language or dialects to the same language or are they totally different ???


 
Hindi, which means Indian Language from Hind / India, and Urdu, are both 100% Indian Languages. In the middle-ages the Muslim Invaders conquered India changed the official language from Sanskrit to Persian. The common folks conversed in a colloquial language called Hindustani. After Persian was imposed on the Indians common Hindustani/ Hindi started to pick up a few Persian words and Arabic words in the vocabulary, especially in some Muslim parts of the country, like Uttar Pradesh. The transformed language was named URDU, which was written in Persian script from right to left (Hindi is written in indigenous Devnagari script from left to right).

But it must be understood that the basic language remained Sanskrit/ Prakrit, probably because an overwhelming majority in North-India/ India were indigenous people and not from Iran or Arabia. They constituted a very small fraction of the general public actually.

The most Basic common words of URDU like yeh (this) is from Sanskrit word Yaha; woh(that) is from Waha; gaya is from gatah (Sanskrit) gayah (Prakrit- t becomes y) etc. There are THOUSANDS of such simple Sanskrit words in Urdu, without which Urdu would not be a language at all, that are from Sanskrit/ Prakrit. 

What actually happened is something like this- If, for e.g., the Russians conquer England and make Russian the official language of England, in a few hundred years some Russian words would automatically be spoken by the English common folks, especially those who like and support the Russians. But the general grammar of English would still remain same.

I must add here that Hindi also has quite a few Persian and Arabic words in it, but much fewer of theses foreign words and more indigenous Indian words, actually.


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## Istriano

In Hindi they say shukriya, like in Urdu and not Dhanyawaad (which is overly formal and archaic-sounding). Watch Bollywood movies, it's how real people speak, it's not in Sanskritized Hindi but in normal NewDelhi Hindi/Urdu.


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## manikghoshal

You may think in Hindi movies they are speaking Urdu- that is your problem! Hindi movies are in Hindi. As I have said aao, Jaao, baytho, yeh, woh, including numbers (one ,two, three) Ek, do, teen, char, paanch, che, saath, aath, nao, das are all from Sanskrit. Have you heard Arabic/ Persian numerical? Very different! Very foreign!

Urdu is a North Indian language, and Sanskrit is the mother of all North Indian languages. If you think Urdu is similar to Persian or Arabic, oy are living in a fool’s paradise! The simplest words Hum (us) is from Sanskrit word Aham. Tum (you) is from Sanskrit word Taome/ tuome. Just by adding a few foreign words to an Indian language you cannot create a foreign language, understand? Get real!


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## BP.

manikghoshal said:


> You may think in Hindi movies they are speaking Urdu- that is your problem! Hindi movies are in Hindi. As I have said aao, Jaao, baytho, yeh, woh, including numbers (one ,two, three) Ek, do, teen, char, paanch, che, saath, aath, nao, das are all from Sanskrit. Have you heard Arabic/ Persian numerical? Very different! Very foreign!
> 
> Urdu is a North Indian language, and Sanskrit is the mother of all North Indian languages. If you think Urdu is similar to Persian or Arabic, oy are living in a fool’s paradise! The simplest words Hum (us) is from Sanskrit word Aham. Tum (you) is from Sanskrit word Taome/ tuome. Just by adding a few foreign words to an Indian language you cannot create a foreign language, understand? Get real!



That overarching attitude won't do. Be a little courteous. We're all here to learn. And that includes repositioning of one's understanding of a matter if someone else's is correct.

And please so not raise four and a half years old threads from the dead unless you know you are contributing very significantly.

Thank you for understanding.


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