# Urdu: to be a good role model to someone



## ihsaan

Hi,

How do you express this sentence in Urdu:
"to be a good role model to someone" ?

I'm especially thinking of the phrase:
"It is important to be a good role model to your child(ren)."

Any help appreciated!


----------



## lcfatima

to be a good role model to someone:
*kisi ke liye ek acchee misaal banna (or maybe hona would be better?)*

It is important to be a good role model to your children:

*Apne bachon ke liye achee misaal banna ahim hai.*


----------



## ihsaan

Thank you! Very helpful!
(Why is it acche in your sentence, and not accha? Grammatically speaking; What does it point back to. )

How would you say someone is not a good role model?

"He/she is not a good role model."


----------



## lcfatima

Misaal (it is an Arabic origin word, the "s" is that -th- the -t- with three dots, if you want to look it up, it is the same root as maslan, which means "for example") is feminine. So it would be an "acchee misaal" even for a man.


----------



## ihsaan

Ah, now I get it. My question was based on a misunderstanding. 
I write feminine endings with "i", and plural endrings with "e". I sometimes confuse this with the English spelling (ee). 

Thank you for helping me out!


----------



## cherine

lcfatima said:


> Misaal (it is an Arabic origin word, the "s" is that -th- the -t- with three dots, if you want to look it up, it is the same root as maslan, which means "for example") is feminine. So it would be an "acchee misaal" even for a man.


 Interesting!

Excuse me for putting my nose where I shouldn't, but this caught my attention. The word in Arabic for role model is mathal a'la مثل أعلى and it's masculine not feminine.
Same thing for mathalan مثلاً , it's also a masculine.

So, it's kind of interesting to see that a masculine word was borrowed and used as a feminine one.
Do you write the Urdu word with a ث or a س ?


----------



## linguist786

Cherine, the Urdu word is written with a tha, but Urdu words with tha are often pronounced with an S (eg, kasrat (kathrat)). And "misaal" is definitely feminine in Urdu.

I can't think of a better translation


----------



## lcfatima

yes cherine, actually all Arabic loan words in Urdu retain their root spelling with some minor adaptations to fit with the nastaliq script, but the original Arabic pronunciation is not retained. Phonemes that don't exist in Urdu are approximated to another sound consistantly. So (tha) is retained in writing, but always pronounced as if it were a (seen) (sorry, no Arabic or Urdu font). That is also why you may have heard your subcontinental friends say Ramazaan Mubaarak...the Arabic (dhaad) is always a -z- sound in Urdu.

I also find it interesting that gender doesn't travel with a lexical adoption. For example kitab and kursi are also feminine in Urdu but not in Arabic, as are many other Arabic adoptions. I have no idea why that is or if there is some accepted linguistic theory about gender retention and lexical adoption.

The reason I pointed out the Arabic origin and spelling to the original query is because as a learner it is easier to find words in the Urdu dictionary if you know that the "s" in misaal is spelled with an Arabic -tha-, otherwise one may have to look first for -seen-, then -saad,-then -th-, which are all pronounced as -seen. It just makes using the Urdu dictionary easier to know which letter is used with some of the "tricky" Arabic letters in Urdu spellings.


----------



## cherine

Thanks Mohamed and Fatima 



lcfatima said:


> So (tha) is retained in writing, but always pronounced as if it were a (seen)


It's the same thing in some Arabic dialects. We write "correctly", but some countries pronounce the ث as an "s", while others pronounce it as a "t", and of course there are others who keep the "th" sound.


> The reason I pointed out the Arabic origin and spelling to the original query is because as a learner it is easier to find words in the Urdu dictionary if you know that the "s" in misaal is spelled with an Arabic -tha-, otherwise one may have to look first for -seen-, then -saad,-then -th-, which are all pronounced as -seen. It just makes using the Urdu dictionary easier to know which letter is used with some of the "tricky" Arabic letters in Urdu spellings.


You're very right about that, of course


----------



## panjabigator

lcfatima said:


> I also find it interesting that gender doesn't travel with a lexical adoption. For example kitab and kursi are also feminine in Urdu but not in Arabic, as are many other Arabic adoptions. I have no idea why that is or if there is some accepted linguistic theory about gender retention and lexical adoption.



Gender sometimes seems very arbitrary in Urdu, doesn't it.  My only guess for the gender of /kursii/ is that it follows a similar pattern to other feminine nouns, i.e. it can be pluralized, written in the oblique, etc. just like other "indigenous" Indic words do.  As for /kitaab/, I surmise that it may just follow the pattern of the Sanskritic synonym /pustak/, which too is feminine.


----------



## Faylasoof

panjabigator said:


> Gender sometimes seems very arbitrary in Urdu, doesn't it.  My only guess for the gender of /kursii/ is that it follows a similar pattern to other feminine nouns, i.e. it can be pluralized, written in the oblique, etc. just like other &quot;indigenous&quot; Indic words do.  As for /kitaab/, I surmise that it may just follow the pattern of the Sanskritic synonym /pustak/, which too is feminine.


 
Hello panjabigator!I would generally agree with this. Actually, the arbitrariness of gender in Urdu can be quite notorious and may be gauged from the following examples:yogurt = dahi دھی   Masculine = mozakkar مذكر  in the Luckhnow dialect of Urdu BUT feminine = mo’annas مؤنث in the Delhi dialect!Pearl = moti موتی  Masculine = mozakkar مذكر in both dialects!Generally, when a noun ends in ی (yay / yaa) it is regarded as a feminine while if it ends in  ا (alif)  it is treated as a masculine. But as the above example shows, there are common exceptions. For loan (Arabic, Farsi etc.) words, regional conventions rather than general rules may have governed the choice of gender establishment at the time of borrowing. Here is a good example:Book = kitab  كتاب  feminine = mo’annas مؤنث (Luckhnow and Delhi dialects)Booklet = kitabchah كتابچہ Masculine = mozakkarمذكر (Luckhnow and Delhi dialects)The latter seems to follows the masculine gender rule of other words ending in چہ e.g. child =  bachchah بچہ and spoon = chamchah چمچہ , both mozakkarمذكر (Luckhnow dialect) , while چمچی = chamchi = small spoon, is feminine = mo’annas مؤنث  But all this still leaves the problem as to why child =  bachchah بچہ  , a gender-neutral word borrowed from Farsi ended up as masculine. Unless one argues that this was to fit the chamchah چمچہ  versus چمچی rules above.  I do not know the etymology of چمچہ  , but assume it to be of local Indian origin where it might have been a masculine.Regards.


----------



## panjabigator

Very interesting analysis Faylasoof sahib.  I was a bit caught off guard when while in Lucknow I <dahii> as mozakkar and not mo'annis- regional difference, I guess.  
I guess <bachchah> has to be masculine when we have <bachchii> for female children.


----------



## BP.

lcfatima said:


> ..... So (tha) is retained in writing, but _*always*_ _pronounced as if it were a (seen)_....



Please don't issue blanket statements like that. Maybe if you don't ever pronounce 'thay' correctly doesn't mean there aren't people who don't. Of cource 'mithaal' *isn't* pronounced 'misaal'. It is on TV, but we know the standards of Urdu on our national televisions. There are people among the ahliaan-e-zabaan who appreciate the difference and when speaking are careful to distinguish between the two sounds, even though they're close.

I think you'd say we don't differentiate between 'zaal' and 'zay' (dhaal and zaa in Arabic??). For instance the 'z' in 'zakhira' or 'zee-shaan' isn't pronounced the same way as 'zeera' or 'zalzala'.

For non-native speakers, the best example of how 'thay' and 'zaal' are pronounced I can give is from the two usages of 'th' in English. Think 'bath' or 'theory' for 'thay' and 'their' or 'that' or 'the' for 'zaal'. The 'th' sound as in 'the' has in some dialects degraded to a soft 'd', but I think we can still refer to e.g. Received Pronunciation for the original sound.


----------



## panjabigator

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Please don't issue blanket statements like that. Maybe if you don't ever pronounce 'thay' correctly doesn't mean there aren't people who don't. Of cource 'mithaal' *isn't* pronounced 'misaal'. It is on TV, but we know the standards of Urdu on our national televisions. There are people among the ahliaan-e-zabaan who appreciate the difference and when speaking are careful to distinguish between the two sounds, even though they're close.



Why would people distinguish between these sounds when speaking when Urdu doesn't?  This summer, I studied Urdu in Lucknow and one of our teachers always pronounced the "ain."  It was very odd.


----------



## Faylasoof

Ah!  Now we are back to teaching standards! Good Urdu speakers (real Urdu speakers, if you like) do distinguish many more sounds than may seem obvious to you.  Briefly, we are very careful about distinguishing some closely related sounds more than others.  A sign of good Urdu diction is to distinguish for example, &quot;qaaf&quot; as in &quot;qareeb&quot; (= near) and &quot;kaaf&quot; as in &quot;kaam&quot; (= work);  &quot;alif&quot; as in &quot;laal&quot; (= red) and &quot;ain&quot; as in &quot;la'al&quot; (ruby). In common speech the &quot;ain&quot; can be pronounced more like &quot;hamza&quot; but it is enough to make the distinction between these two otherwise very similar sounding words.  The really careful speaker however would have more of an &quot;ain&quot;-like sound.           Also, we ALWAYS pronounce &quot; 'ilm&quot; (= knowledge) with an &quot; ‘ain&quot; NEVER like the &quot;hamza&quot; / &quot;alif&quot;.  There are other examples too, as in the use of &quot;hey&quot; as in &quot;bahar” (= in every / to every – from Farsi) or “behroop” (= disguise) and “Hey  / Haa” as in “baHar” (= sea – from Arabic) or “Halwa (= sweet dish –  from Arabic “Huluww” = sweet). Here the “Hey” may be less intense than as in Arabic, but the sign of good Urdu diction is to distinguish between “hey” and “Hey”. I don’t see anything odd about this as I had good teachers (my parents) and am quite used to it. The same cannot be said about others I know who persist in mixing these. Hardly surprising as their teachers could hardly tell the difference between the examples above.


----------



## BP.

Biraader punjabighaRiyal, seems like there's a puritan infestation on the forum

Faylasoof, agree with you entirely. Down to the h and H, which has had me being called a pseudo-qaari but what the heck what's right is right.


----------



## panjabigator

Mu'aafii for drifting a tad a way from role models, but would you say pronouncing the Islamic month of Ramadan as <ramzaan> (maintaining a _zwad_ but pronouncing it as a _zaal_) is incorrect?


----------



## Cilquiestsuens

Faylasoof, The fact is that when you are used to read or recite the Quran-e-paak, you get so much used to the pronounciation of He, 'Ain, etc, that it starts 'infecting' your own Urdu.... This is why so many of the Molwis giving bayaans on TV have this accent.... They are not even showing off, they can't help it... 

Three Arabic sounds don't make it to Urdu, THaa (=Seen in urdu), Dhaal (=Zey in Urdu)  and Dad (emphatic D) which is a Z (Zwad) in Urdu... (as in wa laD Daaaalliin... = laa aD Daaalliin )

And by the way Mu'afi, Zwad and Toe (where you insert and u, w, o) are according to me a popular Indian pronounciation of the Arabic 'Ain or Emphatic letters.... I prefer Ma'afi (even without 'ain, but with a slight hamza) to mu'afi....


----------



## BP.

Most Arabic sound reached us through Persian and got mangled up in the process. The 'zwad' (fricative soft d) is a z in Farsi and therefore also in Urdu. But I can't bring myself to accept that we don't maintain a difference, however slight, between 'zaal' and 'zay' or between 'thay' and 'seen'. The firsts of the pairs are pronounced with the tip of the tongue, which is placed touching the teeth, and the seconds from the middle of the tongue. Haven't you noticed, when we say 'zaraa', the z is a bit softer? Or the 's', as you would, in mutaasir?


----------



## Cilquiestsuens

In mutaasir I hear a hissing sound... as a normal 'seen' 

'zaraa' also, doesn't sound  different from any other word starting with a Zey, like *zara'at*...*, zar, zan, zamiin..*


----------



## Faylasoof

Cilquiestsuens,

Not just reading the Quran, any proper Arabic grounding will make you pronounce some Arabic alphabets more than others as the Arabs do – well, at least almost as good as. As I mentioned earlier, “ain” is one of these but its full or proper pronunciation can depend on a number of factors, such as : 

1) The word itself (we ALWAYS say “ ‘ilm”, “aql” “amal” etc. with an “ain”, but “ma’aaf”, when used consciously, I (and family & friends) always pronounce the “ain”, except when (2) or (3) applies. 

2) The speed at which one is talking. Often at high speed conversation the “ain” sounds more like “hamza’.

3) The type of audience e.g. uneducated or semi-educated. Then for us at least, “ma’aaf” and “ma’aafee”, and the like that have a middle “ain”, have almost more of a “hamza’ sound. (For the others, i.e. those beginning with “ain” we always pronounce it clearly. 

Now don’t ask me why this pronunciation anomaly depending on the words, the speed etc. and the position of “ain”, but I have noticed it quite often with family and close friends (all Luckhnawis). However, when we are in each others company then it is a distinct “ain” all the way thru’. Both practices are subconscious of course. 

Yes, the letter THaa ( sounds just like the true Spanish “c” in Barcelona) has ended up like the letter Seen with an “s” (as in English “see”) rather than the Spanish “c” above. Hence, “asar” rather than “aTHar”. But again when said consciously, I’ve heard “THamar = fruit!! Not too often

I also agree with your other examples. Interestingly, the Arabic letter Dhaad as in the true Arabic pronunciation of Ramadan = Ramadhaan.(or Dhaalleen, as you give), and which we treat more like “z”, is unique to Arabic. That si why a very interesting name of the Arabic language given by the Arabs is: 

lughat-udh-dhaad = the language of the letter dhaad!


----------



## Faylasoof

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Most Arabic sound reached us through Persian and got mangled up in the process. The 'zwad' (fricative soft d) is a z in Farsi and therefore also in Urdu. But I can't bring myself to accept that we don't maintain a difference, however slight, between 'zaal' and 'zay' or between 'thay' and 'seen'. The firsts of the pairs are pronounced with the tip of the tongue, which is placed touching the teeth, and the seconds from the middle of the tongue. Haven't you noticed, when we say 'zaraa', the z is a bit softer? Or the 's', as you would, in mutaasir?


 

BP, 

You are correct in saying that “Most Arabic sound reached us through Persian and got mangled up in the process”. But we did manage to keep the “qaaf” separate from the “ghayn / ghain”, and as I mentioned before, at least some of us try to keep a difference (at least some of the times) beween the softer “haa” and the guttural “Haa”.

Funnily, we never bother to soften the “qaaf’ to a “kaaf” ever. So, those with good Urdu diction would NEVER say “kalam” instead of “qalam” ( = pen ). That would be regarded as a major slip. In fact, in Luckhnow when praising somebody’s Urdu diction they would say:

on ka / os ka sheen-qaaf bilkul dorost hai!
[Their / His or Her sheen-qaaf is absolutely correct / is perfect]

[Not only “qaaf” but “sheen for some reason was also noticed. Possibly due to the tendency amongst the uneducated to use “seem” instead of “sheen”, e.g.

ooi aadmee bahoot sareef huway = woh aadmee bahoot shareef hai (Urdu proper).

= that man is very noble / honourable / decent.


----------



## panjabigator

Faylasoof said:


> BP,
> 
> 
> Funnily, we never bother to soften the “qaaf’ to a “kaaf” ever. So, those with good Urdu diction would NEVER say “kalam” instead of “qalam” ( = pen ).



In Hyderabadi (India) Urdu, the "qaaf" is often pronounced as a "kh."  I wonder if your saying changes in Hyderabad


----------



## BP.

Have heard the sheen, qaaf waali tamtheel. But pronouncing qaaf seems to be totally lost on people of my generation. When I visited Karachi last August, I noticed the first time even my closest friends (including those from Lakhnavi and Hyderabadi families) were pronouncing it kaaf. Made for a good laugh but in retrospect its sad. Its interesting to note that none of the Panjabi as-haab where I live are able to pronounce qaaf, even when coaxed to do it. On the other hand most Pukhtuns and Dari-speakers pronounce a crisp and clear qaaf.


----------



## panjabigator

BG, thanks for your comments.

Question about a word you used: /tamsiil/.  I looked it up and the dictionary suggests "allegory," "play," or "example."  It also suggests /tamsiil pesh karnaa/ as "to adduce an example."  Is this usage of /tamsiil/ similar to /maslaan/?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## BP.

Yes they have the same root. Idem for <mithaal>: example.

For your Hyderabaadi 'q' comment, you're right it IS pronounced 'kh', but those who emigrated elsewhere sometimes adopt the more general 'q' sound. BTW I think Daccani (Hyderabaadi) is the absolutely the coolest Urdu accent of them all.


----------



## Faylasoof

In this instance, for a <proverb>, I would use <masal> [actually it is <mathal>, but we’ve been there already]. 

….. and just a few words about the <qaaf> vs <kaaf> question. I too have noticed the younger generation (both in Pakistan and India) do this. In our own family (and some friends and their families) though we have kept the distinction even amongst the younger lot. Also, visiting Lahore ~ 3 years ago I met better educated people (all Punjabis) who also were able to pronounce <qaaf> with ease - even some shopkeepers. But they were the exceptions.

Interestingly, in some colloquial Arabic dialects, like Egyptian -Lugha MiSriyya Aameyya, I understand the <qaaf> is pronounced like <hamza>. So <raqs> ( = dance) would be pronounced <ra’s> - which is <head> in the fuS-Ha (classical or MSA).

I found another interesting thing about Deccani when one of my maternal uncles got married to a Hyderabadi lady. She not only came with the occasional <kh> instead of <q> , which she has now got rid of after living in Luckhnow, she also never drew ( and still doesn’t draw ) the distinction between masculine and feminine! So she continues to say about herself: < mein aayaa; mein gayaa> etc. instead of <mein aai; main gai> . I was told that this is common Deccani


----------



## BP.

I LOLed very hard at < mein aayaa; mein gayaa>. Reminded me of a big, burly Pashtun guy telling me 'um subah say hahaN *k-haRi* hai'!

Its no big deal that somebody whose mother tongue is different mispronounces the 'qaaf' wrong (remember Allama Iqbal and his <kalam>). What I find sad is we're teaching the wrong <Tallaffuz> (i.e. 'kaaf') in schools.


----------



## Faylasoof

Precisely my sentiments about <qaaf>. 

Hope no one takes me for a die-hard <qaafist fundamentalist> who wishes to impose his <qaafism> on everyone else!! 

As we all agree it’s all about good instructions. When the Urdu teachers I’ve met over these last 2 and a half decades can’t pronounce it then we can’t expect their ever-growing number of students to do so either.

I remember being told the story about Iqbal when at school. It was something like:
<jinhe hum samjhe the Iqbal woh nikle ikbal> _But that was unfair_. 

He is one of the great poets of Urdu and Farsi, and I read him quite a lot.


----------

