Talk:Hindustani language/Archive 6

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A New Proposal

I made an error. I began to think that this page was "Hindustani" and not "Hindustani language". My new proposal considers both.

For the "Hindustani language," the title of this page, the modern (i.e. 21st century) usage is overwhelmingly a reference to the 19th-century or early-20th-century language of the Colonial British Raj or the version proposed by Gandhi, Nehru, and some Indian nationalists before 1947:

• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 513 references to "Hindustani language".
• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 75 references for "Hindustani language" that do not refer to the Colonial British Raj or to Gandhi and Indian Nationalism of pre-1947 era
• Finally in Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 513 references to "Hindustani language"
• And, in Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 138 references to "Hindustani language" and "Hindi-Urdu"

For "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (not necessarily with "language"):

• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 11,900 references to "Hindi-Urdu"]
• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, there are 10,200 references to "Hindi-Urdu" that do not refer to "Hindustani"
• Therefore, as is to be expected, there are 1,700 references to both "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (the context of this page)

Among journals in Linguistics:

• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Linguistics, there are: 526 references to "Hindi-Urdu"
• In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Linguistics, there are: 486 references to "Hindi-Urdu" that do not refer to "Hindustani".
• Therefore, as is to be expected: In Google Scholar, in the 21st-century, among journals in Lingustics, there are 40 references to both "Hindi-Urdu" and "Hindustani" (This the context of this page.)

My new proposal, based on the statistics above displaying ratios of between 7 to one and 13 to one, is:

It is proposed that

• 1. Hindustani language be either (i) restricted in content entirely to the period from 1800 to 1947, or (ii) be redirected to a page Hindustani language (1800–1947); with the following "For" template up top:
  For the Central Indo-Aryan language with standard registers Hindi and Urdu, see Hindi-Urdu.
  • The date 1800 is a reference to the founding of Fort William College in 1800, which led and the first British efforts at standardizing the "Hindustani language," based on the work of John Borthwick Gilchrist's A Grammar, of the Hindoostanee Language, Or Part Third of Volume First, of a ... 1796
• 2. Hindi-Urdu, no longer be redirected to Hindustani language, be instead about the Central Indo-Aryan Language whose standard registers are Hindi and Urdu.
• The following pages be moved:
  • 3. Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar
  • 4. Hindustani phonology to Hindi-Urdu phonology
  • 5. Hindustani orthography to Hindi-Urdu orthography (Please note the difference between the Wikipedia page Hindustani orthography, which is a rudimentary list of the writing systems of Hindi, Urdu, Romanized Hindi-Urdu, and Hind-Urdu for Braille, and the orthography described in a typical book on Hindustani (Hindustani manual by Phillott, D. C. (Douglas Craven), 1860-1930. Publication date 1918) published during the Raj: see the introduction to the orthography here and the more detailed in Appendix D and E here.)
  • 6. Hindustani etymology to Hindi-Urdu etymology
  • 7. Hindustani people to Speakers of Hindi-Urdu
  • 8. Hindustani kinship terms to Hindi-Urdu kinship terms

I will soon be writing an RfC, and advertising in the Wikiprojects: India, Pakistan, Linguistics, British Empire, and History Until the RfC comes to some conclusion, I recommend that the tags currently in the article remain. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:44, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

PS. The current trend in voting is of little meaning, as the two editors who have been pinged are the creators of all these pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:50, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• I believe that some confusion will be avoided if Hindustani grammar and the other subsidiary articles are renamed to have titles with "Hindi–Urdu". However, I really don't see the case for splitting the main article as proposed. The Hindustani before 1947 is not a different entity from the Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu after 1947. Anything special that can be said about its role during the Raj can trivially fit into the "History" section of the general article. – Uanfala (talk) 00:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I have now renumbered the proposal points. The main point is that today "Hindustani language" is used for nothing (statistically) other than the language in the Raj. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

PPS It is also of paramount importance that editors from WikiProject Pakistan (who are Urdu-literate) take part in the RfC, and the editors at WikiProject British Empire as well. Otherwise, there is a real danger that a POV about the use of "Hindustani languahge" currently prevalent in India, and linked to the drastic reduction of Urdu-literacy there, will prevail on this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:23, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Partially agree. (N.B. The "current trend of voting" should not be discounted as "of little meaning" just because it reflects a differing opinion.)

-Agree to points 2-8. Extend to History of Hindustani → History of Hindi-Urdu. The current section Hindustani language#History should be then merged in History of Hindi-Urdu; currently the content is badly forked.

-Oppose point 1. The concept Hindustani language (1800–1947) can be covered in History of Hindi-Urdu. The move from Hindustani language to Hindi-Urdu shall suffice.

To distinguish between "Hindustani" and "Hindustani language" in the current context is spurious. The fact that Hindustani has no official status does not deprive it of its status as a language. To deny a lect the designation "language" only because it has no official status is an obsolete, elitist and discriminatory POV, which was pointedly characterized by Max Weinreich's bonmot "A language is a dialect with an army and navy".

Numerous modern sources still refer to the vernacular spoken by hundreds of millions of speakers as Hindustani, first of all the Encyclopædia Britannica in the article "Hindustani", but also many other sources listed in the discussion above. Another broad tertiary 21th century source not yet cited here is H. Dua's chapter "Hindustani" in the Concise Encyclopaedia of Languages of the World, which fully covers the complexity of the term "Hindustani". Both Ethnologue[1] and Glottolog[2] use "Hindustani" as an umbrella term that includes Hindi and Urdu. EB, Elsevier, Ethnologue, Glottolog can hardly be accused of being agents of a "POV currently prevalent in India".

What Fowler&fowler's quantitative listing correctly shows: the usage of the term "Hindustani" is declining, being increasingly replaced by "Hindu-Urdu". Masica (1991), quoted several times before, speaks of "(Standard) Hindi-Urdu". Further examples for the modern use of "Hindi-Urdu" each in a broad tertiary source and in a linguistic specialist source are the chapter "Hindu-Urdu" in The World's Major Languages (Comrie 2009) and the book Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia; in the latter, the author refers to the contemporary language as "Hindi-Urdu" when citing examples from that language.

Apart from in its declining currency in scholarly usage, the term "Hindustani" is fact not recognized by many non-specialists as a possible synonym for contemporary "Hindi-Urdu". Further, only a very small fraction of native speakers of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani self-identify as speakers of "Hindustani". A page move (without POV-forking) will definitely be to the benefit of our readers. What may be counted as anecdotal evidence: in 1980, Ralph Russell (long-time head of the Urdu deparment at SOAS) published course material entitled A New Course in Hindustani for Learners in Britain, but soon renamed it A New Course in Urdu and Spoken Hindi for Learners in Britain for newer editions since 1986. I can only speculate about the motive at the moment, but most likely, potential students were more attracted to a course that mentions the well-known variants Urdu and Hindi, rather than the less known "Hindustani". –Austronesier (talk) 12:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

That is a very good example of the late Ralph Russell's book title! It is supported less directly by all the scholars and educationsts of Urdu, who have to my knowledge never offered a course on Hindustani: Gopi Chand Narang (at the University of Delhi); the late Masud Husain Khan (at the Aligharh Muslim University and Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi); C. M. Naim (at the University of Chicago), the late Muhammad Umar Memon (at Wisconsin), Frances Pritchett (at Columbia), the late Annemarie Schimmel (at Harvard), Ruth Laila Schmidt (at the University of Oslo, and author of Essential Urdu Grammar, Routledge; the late Victor Kiernan (historian at Ediburgh, and early translator of the poetry of Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz; all the courses taught at the major centers for Urdu in Sou

Thank you for your clear and cogent discussion of proposal points 2. to 8. I entirely agree with them. However, I have to disagree with your point about 1, about making Hindustani a section of Hindi-Urdu. It is belied by the statistics. The references to Hindi-Urdu are overwhelmingly not to Hindustani language as shown above; however the references to "Hindustani language" are by ratio of 4 to 1 not to Hindi-Urdu (which I have added later). Clearly, therefore Hindustani language cannot be a part of Hindi-Urdu. To be more explicit, in the 21st-century, in Google Scholar there are 513 references to "Hindustani language," indicating it is still has a wide currency of reference, but only 138 of these have references to Hindi-Urdu. Whichever way you cut the pie, Hindustani language has a specific independent meaning, referring to the language standardized by the British during the period 1800 to 1947, and promoted in the last period by Indian nationalists. To make it a part of Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:DUE. As for Britannica, I wasn't aware at the time when I made my initial proposal, but was told by a reliable source at the University of Chicago, which for a long perio d in the second-half of the 20th centurty oversaw the entries in Britannica, that the last major revision was in 1979. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

PS What you say about declining usage of "Hindustani language" is partially true. It is very true for journals in Linguisitics and Languages. For out of 513 modern references to "Hindustani language" only 44 are in these Linguistics/Languages journals, which means that the remaining 469 references are in journals in History, Asian Studies, etc most referring to the Raj Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

References

@Fowler&fowler: The "historical" Hindustani language (1800–1947) is part of the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani continuum and can therefore be covered as a sub-topic in the History of Hindi-Urdu. I am quite aware that the term "Hindi-Urdu" in the modern sense only gained prevalence with the emergence of Urdu as national language of Pakistan and Hindi as official language of India, whereas propagation of a standardized, official form of Hindustani ended with the partition. Yet, the History of Hindi-Urdu does not start with emergence of the term "Hindi-Urdu"; it is the entire history of the entity variously called "Hindustani" and "Hindi-Urdu", which also inlcudes the topic of the Hindustani language (1800–1947). I recommend to re-read the above-cited quotes from Tariq Rahman's book From Hindi to Urdu in this context. –Austronesier (talk) 16:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The primary usage of the term Hindustani language is a synonym for Hindi-Urdu, which has two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu. It is for this reason that an academic institution such as the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon offers a class on Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu. The creation of an article about Hindustani apart from Hindi-Urdu would violate WP:CFORK. Any history about the language in colonial India can be added to the History of Hindi-Urdu article. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we are in agreement here, User:Austronesier. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 17:38, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Among 21st-century sources 5,420 references are found to "Hindustani""language" and "history" which are not references to music or other variables that we have discounted above Of these, 596 are also references to "Hindi-Urdu"; In other words, the usage "Hindustani" and "history" are only infrequently, in the ratio 1 to 9, correlated with "Hindi-Urdu". I only today became aware of the History of Hindustani page. It is a can of worms, unrelated to statistics of usage, that I do not want to open. It should be moved to History of Hindi-Urdu, but Hindustani language has nothing to do with it, as its history mentions Hindi-Urdu only once in nine times. If the editors of the new History of Hindi-Urdu want to make a small section on the Hindustani language, it is there prerogative, but it will have to have a banner up top,

Main article: Hindustani language

. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:57, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. [Update: Proposer clarifies that they oppose moving this article to 'Hindi-Urdu', which is the only thing the rest of us might agree on. So I oppose the entirely of this proposal.] Another proposed content fork over the definition of the word "language". The change in name is secondary in the proposal to a continuing attempt to deny the nature of the language. The language is still often called "Hindustani" today, as repeatedly shown above. It's also called Hindi-Urdu and Urdu-Hindi. Two of the advantages of the name Hindustani is that (a) it doesn't give one standard form primacy over the other, and (b) it doesn't conflate so badly with the name 'Hindi', which can mean much more than the Manak Hindi that's the 'Hindi' part of Hindi-Urdu. This can confuse people, as Fowler's confusion with the map attests. The fact that Fowler wants to move Hindustani to Hindi-Urdu, but in the history section add a hat note 'Main article: Hindustani language', demonstrates that confusion, as does their continued insistence that 'Hindustani language cannot be a part of Hindi-Urdu.' So even if we did change the name, we wouldn't satisfy them, and AFAICT the only reason to move the articles would be to placate Fowler. IMO, that's not sufficient reason to do it. — kwami (talk) 09:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Re. the spurious Google Scholar searches, I just checked one. True, "there are 75 references for 'Hindustani language' that do not refer to the Colonial British Raj or to Gandhi and Indian Nationalism of pre-1947 era". But you shouldn't have stopped there. There are only 52 references for 'Hindi-Urdu language' that do the same.[3] So 'Hindustani' is more common than 'Hindi-Urdu' in the one search I checked. Are those search parameters now invalid because they produce the wrong results? (If you take out the word 'language', the numbers jump to 5,570 and 4,990 -- 'Hindustani' still wins.) — kwami (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@kwami: My vote for "Hindi-Urdu" over "Hindustani" is triggered by Fowler's proposal, but not solely based on that. I have mentioned some non-statistics-derived reasons for it. But the page moves are of lesser priority. Much more important is to keep up the integrity of the current structure of articles against POV-forking; here, I am in full agreement with Anupam and you. –Austronesier (talk) 11:43, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:

• I have said nowhere that either Hindustani or Hindustani language should be moved to Hindi-Urdu, only the ancilliary articles on grammar etc, as they are quite disconnected both in scope and depth from the great British grammars and dictionaries of Hindustani I have listed above. I have said only that Hindustani language should either be an independent article with scope only the period 1800 to 1947, or it should be redirected to a page Hindustani language (1800–1947).
• You have interpreted your results incorrectly. The pages we are debating about are Hindustani language and Hindi-Urdu, not "Hindustani language" and "Hindi-Urdu language"; the latter is not a common expression. The total number of 21-century references in Google scholar to "Hindi-Urdu language" are 167. There are other ways to compare the terms. You can compare "Hindi-Urdu" all of whose references are to language with "Hindustani" (with the term normalized for references to music (as in Hindustani classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, ...) which I have done above. Look, as Austronesier has acknowledged the modern term for the common base of Hindi and Urdu is "Hindi-Urdu" not "Hindustani." Please do not use words such as "spurious."
• As for the tags, please note that this page has not changed one whit in content since they were added. The page continues to have a section on Sample Texts which is entirely original research. The first sentence of the UN Human Rights charter in formal high Hindi/Urdu is translitered into Urdu/Hindi respectively. However, the authors have forgotten to add the pronunciation (the "talaffuz" in Urdu of the Hindi) which would show the limitations of what these transliterations can accomplish. How many Hindi speakers in India will be able to pronounce the Urdu consonants: غ (ghain) and ق (qāf)? One in five? How many will be able to pronounce خ khe and ژ zhe? One in ten? And how many will be able to correctly pronounce ث se and ص su'ād in Arabic words in Urdu? One in twenty?) So what is the point of saying that the same text in one language can be written in the other which one can do in any language using a mechanical translator and by using diacritics? Until you are able to fix that section, and add some sources for that section, please leave the OR tag in. Meanwhile I will describe other issues in the article—unrelated to naming and periodization—which necessitated adding the tags. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: What is that sense of integrity that trumps usage. E.g. Anyone can see that references to Hindustani grammar are almost entirely to those of the Raj years. However, references to "Hindi-Urdu grammar"—the few that there are (as today most books either discuss Hindi grammar or Urdu grammar—are more akin to the grammar section of this page.

Finally, there is a deeper POV at the root of this notion of Hindustani. I am not saying that the authors of this page subscribe to it, but it is linked to what Syed Shabuddin has called the "slow linguistic genocide" of Urdu in India. See his article Status of Urdu in India: Based on Analysis of the Language Census, 2001; Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 1, December 20, 2008. In particular note his chilling conclusion:

This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family. Thus, Urdu faces the prospect of becoming an ethnic language as far as Hindi-speaking States are concerned. Soon it will be limited to those whose parents take special pains to teach Urdu by sending them to local Maktabs and Madrasas or by arranging private tuition at home. One does not know whether and how long Urdu in north India can stand this steady erosion and multi-pronged encroachment. Urdu may soon become extinct in the region of its birth, while it continues to expand horizontally, in all its glory beyond its borders and even across continents and oceans.

It is my contention that the redefinition of Hindustani with these new meanings and claims is a POV of denial of this linguistic genocide, so the increase in Urdu-illiteracy can be countered by citing no decrease in Hindustani literacy. The children of the Urdu-literate who cannot read Urdu, will still be able to read the redefined Hindustani in the Hindi or Roman script. That is why, as I've already stated, it is of supreme importance that Wikiproject Pakistan, History, and British Empire, as well as Linguistics should be sounded out about the forthcoming RfC. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when you state that Hindi speakers are not able to pronounce certain sounds in loanwords from Persian or Arabic. Most educated Hindi speakers know how to prounounce the words properly, as evidenced by watching any news anchor or watching any Hindi movie. Listen to a recent song, such as Tum Hi Aana and look at the lyrics. The Hindi-Urdu word gham (sadness) for example, is written as ग़म in Devanagari and غم in Nastaleeq. Do you think that Jubin Nautiyal is misprouncing the words when he sings the song? You also mentioned ख़ / خ. Load the first few seconds of this sample from the news: "आज की ताज़ा ख़बर Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar (آج کی تازہ خبر)". Do you still think that educated Hindi speakers do not use these words or know how to pronounce them? If so, I think you need to reevaluate your opinion. Anupam^Talk 19:58, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Anupam: Thanks for you examples, which I have not examined. I do not need to. Syed Shahabuddin in his seminal article has already stated:

Slow Linguistic Genocide: THE impact of this process of assimilation is increasingly perceptible as the Urdu-speaking population in the post-independence period moves from the second to the third or the fourth generation in Hindi-speaking areas. The denial of facilities for learning Urdu in schools could not deprive the second generation from learning to speak the language at home. This generation was not able to read or write Urdu but even then while writing in Devanagri script, it used Urdu vocabulary, which it had learnt at home and in social intercourse (and perhaps through the film). But, steadily, because the dots have been given up in Devanagri script and azadi is written as ‘ajadi’, to give an example, it has lost the capacity to pronounce Urdu words correctly. In the third generation, one notices a clear setback. This generation has lost its command of basic Urdu vocabulary and has become largely dependent on the language it learns at school.

If the new generation from the Urdu-speaking cross-section of India's population were unable to pronounce these words 20 years ago, then what does the example of one or two Bollywood singers with plenty coaching in altering their accents accomplish? Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply User:Fowler&fowler, though I would encourage you to look at the examples I provided. As you do not have an Indo-Pakistani background and have not travelled to these countries (I have been to both many times), you may not be aware of how the language is spoken practically. In India, if you visit Delhi or Lucknow, no educated Hindi speaker will prounounce azadi (आज़ादी / آزادی) as ajadi (आजादी / آجادی), though when writing the word, typists may omit the nuqta for convenience sake as it is understood (similarly, most typists omit vowel markers in Urdu; for example, خُدا is written as خدا). Indeed, in Language and Society in South Asia, published by Motilal Banarsidass, Michael C. Shapiro and Harold F. Schiffman note:

The pronunciation of many speakers includes a number of consanants that are not part of the indigenous systems, and which have been introduced into the language through the absoption of Persian and Arabic loan words. The presence or absence of thee consanants is seldom categorial within a community, and tends to be correlated with the degree of education, sex, and social background of the speaker.

You admit that some Bollywood singers may have had coaching; that only corroborates my point that there is a proper way to pronounce certain words in Hindi/Urdu (by the way, this is not an issue of accent, as you have incorrectly noted). Now, rural speakers or speakers of Hindi as a second language may mispronounce these consonants and no one is disputing that. With respect to Urdu, these phoenomes are not always maintained either; Mangat Bhardwaj notes in Panjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar (published by Routledge) that "Almost all Panjabi speakers (and many Urdu speakers as well) pronounce the first two of these words with [k] instead of [q]" in reference to the words taqriban and haqiqtan. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 02:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@Anupam: Thanks for your post. The diacritics (zabar, zer, pesh, sukoon, and even tashdeed or those of izafat) are added for children or disambiguation. However, a nuqta is an entirely different thing. In the old days if you had not added the nuqta correctly, the Ustad would have smacked you with the takhti so hard that your back would have ached for days. The dropping the dot in the z sound in Hindi is the equivalent of dropping the nuqta in Urdu, Persian, or Arabic. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:49, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

@Fowler&fowler: It is simply grotesque to see that a long-standing definition of the term Hindustani employed by scholars from Sir George A. Grierson to Dr. Tariq Rahman is linked to these developments. Your source does not make such a connection. –Austronesier (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

FYI - WikiProject Linguistics is informed about this. That's the very reason why I'm here. –Austronesier (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I respect your clear posts.

• However, this announement in WT:Lingustics, about which we were never told, is not exactly POV, nor the process in consonance with WP rules. In contrast, I pinged only administrators on this page to head off edit-warring.
• Greirson is a primary source. It it is an effort of the Raj years. We are talking about modern linguistics.
• As for Tariq Rahman's doctorate. It is in Pakistani English Literature. Tariq Rahman has has been teaching English for most of his career. Is Rehman supposed to trump:
• C.M. Naim at Chicago, the author of major textbooks in Urdu and the founder of the two major journals in Urdu? Where in Naim, C. M. (2004), Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim, Orient Blackswan, pp. 121–, ISBN 978-81-7824-075-6 is the only reference to "Hindustani" if it is not to the Raj?
• the late Annemarie Schimmel at Harvard, whose short biography says, "Alongside her Islamic “tripos” in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish under Hans Ellenberg, Richard Hartmann, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, and Annemarie von Gabain, Schimmel also studied Urdu, then called Hindustani, with Tarachand Roy at Berlin University,"
• Or the late Ralph Russell, who, by your own information, changed the name of his textbook from Hindustani to Urdu.

• Look, we can all cherry-pick information. But it is abundantly clear that the overwhelming references to "Hindustani" in the modern scholarly literature is to the British-promoted language of the period 1800 to 1947. The even more overwhelming referenes to "Hindustani grammar," Or "Hindustani phonology" or "Hindustani orthography" are all to the Raj period, whose great grammars and dictionaries I have listed above. I have proposed the move:
• Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar, not because the latter term encapsulates the former, but because the page as it exists is only about the latter term. I feel, the great grammars of the British period can be discussed adequately in the Hindustani language once it is disabused of interpretations not commonly found in the literature.
• As for the decline of Urdu, Shahabuddin is not the only one. Barbara D. Metcalf, (in Metcalf, Barbara D. "Urdu in India in the 21st Century: A Historian's Perspective." Social Scientist 31, no. 5/6 (2003): 29-37. Accessed January 15, 2020. doi:10.2307/3518032.), says

  "Concern about the condition of Urdu in India is widespread. Urdu illiteracy has increased without question. In both Delhi and Hyderabad, for example, a few years back, I found that libraries with Urdu holdings might have no librarian able to read the script. There is a shortage of teachers able to teach Urdu adequately."

• I respect your posts here for their clarity and cogency. Why you would want to move Hindustani language to Hindi-Urdu in light of what you have previously argued is perplexing and not supported by the arguments. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:16, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

PS Finally, I note that both Shahabuddin and Metcalf's articles were written around the turn of the century, reporting information from the census of 2001. Next year there will be another census. The horror that its numbers will unfold about Urdu illiteracy is anybody's guess. For us, however, it is very important to take note that in India in many newspaper- and other popular accounts, a redefinition of Urdu, called Hindustani, with a lexicon of Hindi lightly sprinkled with the simple Urdu of Bollywood lyricists, and written in Roman letters, constitutes the new effort to reclaim Urdu and to deny its precipitous decline. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Fowler, you continue to confuse the name with the thing. WP is not a dictionary. This article is about the *language* that Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu are registers of. Period. It's amazing that we need to repeat such a basic fact over and over. What we *call* this article may be debated, but its subject is set. You can continue denying that, but you're just spinning your wheels and wasting everyone's time, including your own. You can write another article on a different topic, if you like, but denying that Hindi/Urdu exists is ridiculous. — kwami (talk) 08:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Please don't misquote me. I have not denied that Hindi-Urdu exists, only that Hindi-Urdu is not Hindustani. The usage is clear. Hindi-Urdu is about the "language," the mutually comprehensible substrate of Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani is about the version of Urdu, mostly prose, promoted by the British in India during the period 1800 to 1947, and in the last quarter-century of which to a rudimentary version promoted by Indian nationalists. It was in the realm of that Hindustani that the great British grammars and usage guides were written. So good were those guides that the great modern poets of the Urdu language such as the late Fahmida Riaz had used them to them by their own acknowledgment. It was in aid of that later Hindustani that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in mid-life, learned how to write in the Perso-Arabic script, that Subhas Chandra Bose chose Qadam Qadam Badaye Ja ([sic]) to be the anthem of his Indian National Army, and "Ittehad, Itmad aur Qurbani" its motto. It is to that "Hindustani," that the modern scholar of Urdu, C. M. Naim, Naim, C. M. (2004), Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim, Orient Blackswan, pp. 122–, ISBN 978-81-7824-075-6 attributes the efforts of John Borthwick Gilchrist and Fort William College. It is this "Hindustani" that Tariq Rahman refers to in his Teaching of Urdu in British India. That is why Hindustani language has to be moved to Hindustani language in British India or Hindustani language (1800–1947). My preference is to the former, as it clearly acknowledges, and thereby limits, the usage to the British years. I am pretty sure what I am talking about. I have consulted the scholars. I have the usage numbers on my side. It will borne out in the RfC when editors from WikiProjects India Pakistan, History, and British Empire take part. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:44, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

"Hindustani is about the version of Urdu" -- no, that is one definition of the word 'Hindustani', one of several, as has been pointed out to you over and over again. You're engaged in POV-pushing and I didn't hear that. Unless you're willing to acknowledge that your Truth isn't the only 'truth', this discussion appears to be a waste of time.

"That is why Hindustani language has to be moved to Hindustani language in British India ..." -- but this article is about regular old Hindi/Urdu Hindustani, as the lead clearly states. What you're proposing is that we intentionally misrepresent the language, and claim that the lingua franca of India and Pakistan, the language of Bollywood, was restricted to the British Raj. That's not a serious proposal. — kwami (talk) 03:40, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: There is no contradiction between my strong rejection of your claim that the term Hindustani exclusively refers to the limited entity "Hindustani language (1800–1947)" (which you maintain in spite of all the above-mentioned post-independence sources which range well into the 21th centrury), and my reservations whether "Hindustani language" is the ideal page title for an encyclopedia that is directed at a general audience.

You see, if I were discussing this in a narrow-topic encyclopedic project that only involved fellow linguists and also non-specialists with a genuine interest in linguistics, mostly likely I wouldn't even encounter someone who had a problem with the use of the term "Hindustani" that has an unbroken scholarly tradition from Grierson to the current day. With a rudimentary familiarity with secondary and tertiary literature in our field, this usage of "Hindustani" will be easily recognized.

However, specialized in-group terminology for a given topic will not always coincide with common usage. And since this encyclopedia aims at a general global readership, we certainly have to consider common usage and—as a corollary—also easy recognizability. It is in this context that I have cited the Russell anecdote, and prefer "Hindi-Urdu" as page title for this main article as well as all related size-splits (such as the current Hindustani grammar), including history-related material that most definitely also includes "Hindustani language (1800–1947)", which is independent of whether the overarching lemma is "Hindustani language" or "Hindu-Urdu". –Austronesier (talk) 17:14, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Fowler, making edits after experiencing mass opposition towards them is far from being constructive. Read the comments here again, especially by Kwamikagami and please don't make misleading edits including this frivolous tagging, because the consensus was established above to remove them. RaviC (talk) 12:13, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Do you think I haven't read the discussion when I initiated it and contributed a great deal to it? The version that I have put in place now is the result of that consensus, from the sources that had been added in the previous version—but only in piecemeal fashion, a little from here, a little from there. What is Hindustani? Is it the Rekhta of Ameer Khusro with colloquial basis in Braj, not Khari boli, the Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Muallah with colloquial base Khari boli, is it Braj, is it Khari boli, is it as Dinesh Jain and George Cardona say an informal name for the shared grammar and lexicon of some dialects of the upper Ganges Valley? I have accepted the POV of my interlocutors that it is a language, not a dead name for a language, Urdu. But the tags are about the scripts, which the sources say nothing about. In fact, those sections are not cited. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:30, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

You're still effectively saying that Hindi and Urdu have zero speakers. Not acceptable. — kwami (talk) 12:46, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Of course not. They have millions of speakers, but they are not Hindustani speakers. They are speakers of Hindi-Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: No, these edits (made with frivolous and erratic edit summaries and citations with wrong attributions) do not represent the consensus. You still want to push your POV about the narrow definition of Hindustani, only garnished with minor cosmetical changes. As it stands, it is still one editor against the remaining contributors to this page and this discussion. –Austronesier (talk) 12:50, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Well disabuse the exquisitely cherry-picked fragments of the current citations by expanding each to the fullest extent of what they are attempting to say. That is all I did. The current ones take the Central Indo-Aryan bit but not the Muslim bit. They take colloquial but add scripts from out of thin air, without a citation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The fact that Hindustani is written in two scripts, Devanagari and Perso-Arabic, is a non-controversial and well-known fact. I have added more references to the article corroborating this. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 20:33, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

BTW, I've at least partially fixed (I hope) the dialects in the info box. Unless I'm mistaken, Khariboli (Delhi dialect) is the dialect basis of the standard, but is not a distinct language from neighboring dialects. Dakhini also, I believe, is mutually intelligible. These would then be dialects of Hindustani. "Hindi dialects", however, is just a redirect to the Hindi Belt, which covers all the languages lumped under the name 'Hindi', not just Hindustani. If we have specific articles on other dialects of the language, they should also be listed, of course. — kwami (talk) 12:53, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Kwami, there is nothing called Hindustani. It is the POV developed on this page. No wonder the page is reduced to citing fragments of citations. Anyway, I will engage you on email, where I think gradually I might be able to explain my position a little better. I remain firm in my opinion that this page has in effect come to espouse a current India-related-POV (though I don't mean that any editors involved in creating it are Indian, or necessarily even subscribe to that POV). That POV is attempting to loosely redefine Hindustani as a way to mask India's vastly depleted literacy in Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The article as it stands now does not reflect any POV, but simply reiterates what a consensus of linguists teach, that Hindustani is the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent, having two mutually intelligible standard registers, Hindi and Urdu. My recommendation is that any correspondence with respect to this article take place on-site, so that others can also offer their input and thoughts. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 21:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Fowler, it's disappointing that you still can't see past your political ideology to recognize that this article is about the national language of India and Pakistan, which, incredibly, you maintain doesn't exist. It's like edit-warring to rewrite the article on India to be about George Bush's cat, because the country "India" doesn't exist (Pakistan's eastern neighbor being "Bharat"). I've given up. You are evidently unwilling or incapable of understanding this elementary point, and are wasting all of our time. If you continue to mangle the article to turn it into what appears to be political propaganda, claiming bullshit "consensus", then I will request ANI to have you blocked from editing it altogether. Its a shame you won't use your time and energy to improve the coverage of Urdu on WP at an encyclopedic level. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Why don't you try. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

(I'm new and a bit lost, but i think @Austronesier: was suggesting what i said on the Talk:Hindustani language page would be more usefully placed here.) I think it should be called "Hindi and Urdu". The term "Hindustani" belongs in the intro, but not the title. I think the best term to use in the page name is "Hindi and Urdu" because.:

• The names Hindi and Urdu are far more recognisable to most English speakers than Hindustani.
• It seems the most diplomatic and unbiased since whether they count as one language is controversial.
• native speakers don't usually call it Hindustani, including when speaking in fluent articulate English.
• as far as I recall, Hindustani more specifically refers to a (shared) ancestor or the language(s)?
• Who goes first in Hindi Urdu is a bit fraught but Hindi first is justified by both number of speakers and alphabetical order. (I tend to call it Urdu-Hindi, but the reverse order is more justifiable.)
• It gives a neater page URL than a hyphen or slash would if we called it Hindi-Urdu or Urdu/Hindi

Disclaimer: i came here because i'm trying to learn Urdu and it's history, and i've ended up contributing a lot because i figure when i can't find something here i should share what i find elsewhere rather than hoarding it in my private study notes. So i am unqualified to say whether they are currently two languages, dialects, or registers, but i do think the current name is inappropriate, if nothing else, it is not the name that someone new to the topic would be looking for, and this is the justification for using words such as 'alphabet' instead of 'abjad' in pages like Urdu alphabet.

Some of the sources in the intro to justify the use of "Hindustani" are way out of date. One is over 140 years old, published in 1879. That can tell us about the history of the language, but not whether it's the same language now or what to call it now. Tok Pisin diverged from English about that long ago, you go find some examples of tok pisin on youtube and see how much you understand, i'm not saying Hindi-Urdu is not one language, just a source from 150 years ago tells us nothing about the current state.

a merger with the article Hindi Urdu controversy could be useful? it's kind of central to the topic, and would be useful to have here in the main article.

Irtapil (talk) 17:11, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Split into Hindi and Urdu

The text says but after the partition of British India in 1947,[12] the literary language was split into two standardised registers, Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu.[13][14][11][15] But, as far as I can figure out, one reference (13) says 18th century while the others don't specify a time for the split. Regardless, our text gives the impression that neither Hindi nor Urdu existed prior to the partition of India, which, imo, is not the case. If we're talking about standardization rather than existence, then, perhaps, the text needs to be rewritten to make that clear. --regentspark (comment) 16:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

You are right. Khestwol (talk) 16:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments User:Khestwol and User:RegentsPark. I've done some editing to clarify the introduction. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 23:45, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear Anupam, As in several places, you have only partially quoted from or paraphrased your sources, I have added what was left out in your selective paraphrasing. I have left the quotes in, for now, so we can all decide here the best way to paraphrase them. I hope this helps. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:55, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@RegentsPark:@Khestwol: Your implicit question is answered in this section below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:10, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Devanagari and Perso-Arabic

Please, add that Hindustani was first written in Perso-Arabic script and then in Devanagari as well. - Anaguaydf (talk) 22:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC) blocked sock - Kautilya3 (talk) 14:45, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Anaguaydf:  Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. GoingBatty (talk) 00:42, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Hindustani was name for Urdu, which was developed around Delhi. and Urdu was written in Perso-Arabic (we all know that), In the late 18th- and early 19th centuries, after British attempts at standardization, it was identified with Urdu, and became, along with English, from 1837 to 1857, an official language of India under Company rule .

"We may now define the three main varieties of Hindōstānī as follows:—Hindōstānī is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also the lingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Dēva-nāgarī characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name 'Urdū' can then be confined to that special variety of Hindōstānī in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, 'Hindī' can be confined to the form of Hindōstānī in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only be written in the Dēva-nāgarī character." Anaguaydf (talk) 10:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, the terminology used here is in line with Grierson's. Tariq Rahman calls this language "Hindi", and reserves the term "Hindustani" for the British standard of the 19th century. Once you sort out terminology, the edit request is not valid. Prior to the advent of Urdu in the 18th century, the Hindustani/Hindi was written in both the scripts for day-to-day usage. Its literary use was however only in Deccan and only in the Perso-Arabic script. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:30, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I am afraid we have interacted with this individual before (quack). –Austronesier (talk) 10:37, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Tariq Rahman—if in fact, he says Hindi/Hindustani was written in Nagari before Urdu was in Perso-Arabic—is not Nagari literate. As I've already remarked somewhere, his book, which I have now read to chapter 6 on Austronesier's recommendation is useful, but in my view, not citable evidence for issues of early Hindi/Hindustani; neither is Grierson, obviously, because it is dated. Rahman's Nagari examples are based on transliteration and translation help from Hindi scholars and on citations to secondary sources about Hindi. For his arguments about Islamicization and elitism, which are insightful, but not without issues, please read an extended review of the book by Arjumand Ara of the Department of Urdu, University of Delhi. In any case, what concerns us here is the province of Hindi scholars such as Vasudha Dalmia at Berkeley, now retired, Francesca Orsini at SOAS, the late Allison Busch at Columbia and most of all Imre Bangha at Oxford, who says, in "Rekhta: poetry in the mixed language:"

We have seen so far that Rekhta poetry in the Persian script was cultivated in the Deccan, in Sufi circles in north India and was patronised by the Mughal court already in the sixteenth century. In this section we will see that the same genre was taken up by Hindu religious poets in the second half of the sixteenth century. Since we have scarce material at our disposal, it is difficult to tell exactly under what circumstances Rekhta in the Nagari script emerged. ... Indeed it is the linguistically most adventurous Sant poet, Dadu Dayal (1544–1603), who not only used elements from different languages or dialects with confidence but composed poems in Rajasthani, Gujarati, Braj, Panjabi, Persian and Sindhi. His use of Khari Boli may have been prompted by the similar practice of the Sufis and the increasing popularity of Rekhta in the Mughal court. His literature is attested in early manuscript material and his Khari Boli muktakas can be considered to be the earliest extant examples of Nagari Rekhta. The following song, rather Sufistic in content, is already present in a manuscript from 1636 and no substantial variant readings exist to it:

In other words, is there any manuscript in Hindi/Hindustani in the Devanagari script that predates the above-mentioned Khari boli muktakas? If not, then as I have suspected, Khari boli written in the Devanagari script emerged a full century after it did in the Perso-Arabic script, and maybe even later, if it appeared in the Perso-Arabic earlier. This mirrors the emergence of modern standard Hindi a full century after Urdu—for which by the way there is no need to use the redundant, "Modern Standard Urdu,"—had spread throughout the declining Mughal empire as a lingua franca. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:19, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

These are not fully proofed. the fact is that Before the standardization of Hindi, although India's official language was Urdu (Hindustani) and English, while when Tariq called it Hindi, it was the time when Urdu was called Hindoi, Hindustani, Hindi, Lashkari, Lahori, and many other names - Anaguaydf (talk) 14:38, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

References

References

Requesting small help

Hello many greetings,

Requesting your proactive contribution and support in updating Draft:Aurats (word) in relation to the related languages you know well.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 03:16, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Developed vs. reinforced

What's the matter? The citation on the history claims "resulted from Muslim hegemony." while the text is claiming "reinforced by the Muslim rule", it should be released or the other word rather than "reinforced". Najjarite (talk) 04:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

In the first place: what's wrong with "reinforced"? And per WP policy, we are supposed to describe things in our own words. WP:Close paraphrasing borders on plagiarism.
The version "the increasing linguistic diversity that was released by the Muslim rule" doesn't make sense. How is diversity "released"? –Austronesier (talk) 11:52, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

The sentence "increasing linguistic diversity that was resulted from Muslim hegemony." should be "increasing linguistic diversity that was developed by the Muslim rule. (Or any other term)" because reinforced means "strengthen" while developed doesn't means probably "reinforced". Najjarite (talk) 15:47, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Actually, I think we should get rid of the "linguistic diversity" business, which doesn't make any sense. It was Delhi ruling class, and so people ended up having to learn the Delhi language in order to converse with them. That is all there was to it. Whether they were Muslim or not makes little difference. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:54, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Well, the whole thing started with this addition[4], and the current version is an attempt to paraphrase what two of these sources (the others were unrelated to the topic) state. I don't know if the emerging Hindavi was class-based, or rather a common vernacular as a product of the confluence of cultures and languages in the Dehli area. Quoting Hans Dua: "This mixing of cultures [following the Muslim conquest] provided the contact situation for the emergence of Hindustani as a lingua franca". @Najjarite: What about "was brought about"? –Austronesier (talk) 17:33, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, contact language and lingua franca make sense. But "linguistic diversity" doesn't. That is part of the reason we are struggling to paraphrase it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

"Linguistic diversity" is the term used in Rosen (2011). I guess it is supposed to mean something like "multilingual setting or environment" ← maybe this expression works better? –Austronesier (talk) 19:07, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Saaf, Khaalis, and Shuddha

Hi,

According to the article: "Urdu is spoken and learnt, and Saaf or Khaalis Urdu is treated with just as much respect as Shuddha Hindi.".

But, what are Saaf or Khaalis Urdu and Shuddha Hindi?

Those terms are also mentioned on Romanization:

In Pakistan: Standard (Saaf or Khaalis) Urdu is the "high" variety, whereas Hindustani is the "low" variety used by the masses (called Urdu, written in nastaʿlīq script). In India, both Standard (Shuddh) Hindi and Standard (Saaf or Khaalis) Urdu are the "H" varieties (written in devanagari and nastaʿlīq respectively), whereas Hindustani is the "L" variety used by the masses and written in either devanagari or nastaʿlīq (and called 'Hindi' or 'Urdu' respectively).

Does anyone know what those terms mean?

Best, A455bcd9 (talk) 20:15, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I found this long answer on the wordreference Forum: "The common factor in the above statements is that shuddha Hindi is "Sanskritised" Hindi." And this website: "At Language Must we focus on instilling Hindustani in our students. However, based on a sound understanding of the language, we offer further specialisations in its standard registers: "shuddh Hindi" and "saaf Urdu"." A455bcd9 (talk) 06:56, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

To add to above answer,

• "shuddh Hindi" or High Hindi or Standard Hindi ie MSH, is Hindustani stripped off Arabo-Persian vocab and laced with Sanskrit ones
• "saaf Urdu" or High Urdu or Standard Urdu ie MSU, is Hindustani stripped off Indic vocab and laced with Arabo-Persian ones

Mostly the grammar of both MSH & MSU is same.--Fz^tc_s 07:05, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@A455bcd9 and Faizhaider: Obviously, we should change the wording then, either by adding an explanantion, of by replacing the terms with an apt English equivalent. "Is treated with respect" is vague and unencyclopedic, and also needs to be rephrased. Most importantly, however, is to add a reliable source. @Fz: do you have an idea for a good source? –Austronesier (talk) 07:41, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

That link is an Indian quick-learn site for beginner's (whatever you can absorb in four weeks) Hindi-Urdu. Saaf Urdu is an Indian word for the Urdu Indians cannot understand, as opposed to the "Urdu" of Bollywood songs which is really Hindi with one Perso-Arabic word thrown in among every 12. There is nothing called MSU, only MSH.

PS Then there is Ali Akbar Natiq the young genius of Urdu poetry (sitting here alongside Kishwar Naheed) who even the saaf Urdu speakers of India will not understand. But they should have no worries as they have not heard of him. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:24, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Shuddh Hindi is high register Hindi, which has a large number of literary Sanskrit words in place of more colloquial words. Saaf or Khaalis Urdu is high register Urdu, which has a large number of literary Perso-Arabic words in place of more colloquial words. Compare the language of some verses from the Hindi poet Nirala and the Urdu poet Ghalib. A Hindi educated person could have trouble understanding Ghalib’s verses, and an Urdu educated person could have trouble understanding Nirala’s.Foreverknowledge (talk) 08:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Southern vs southern

@Getsnoopy: First "southern" is not a common noun; it is an adjective. There is no set rule in the English language on capitalizing it in combinations. The OED for example in its entry "southern" has several combinations, such as "Southern Cone" (the countries of South America below the Tropic of Capricorn), "South Gothic," "Southern Indian," (now historical, North American Indian of the Cree nation), "Southern Oscillation," but "southern belle," "southern beech," suggesting that if the second word in the collocation is conventionally capitalized in the context, so it "Southern." Webster's Unabridged, however, the final arbiter of AmE, has the "Southern Alps," "southern armyworm," "southern balsam fir," "Southern Baptist," "southern blight," but "Southern blot." I'm suggesting there is no hard and fast rule. It is pointless making breezy edit summaries with lavish claims. If MOS does have such a rule then you should say that, and just that, in your edit summary. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:04, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: It is an adjective Yes, a common adjective. The rule is that unless the adjective is in a proper name or used in a distinctive sense by convention (e.g., "Southern Cone", etc. like you mentioned), you lowercase the adjective. I don't know why you'd bring up AmE on an article that uses Indian English (let alone the fact that Webster's Unabridged is most definitely not the final arbiter of AmE; Merriam-Webster is). All of that notwithstanding, it is overwhelmingly South India (as evidenced by the article title) as a distinct region of India per almost every reliable source; there is no such equivalent called "Southern India", so it is "southern India". MOS agrees.

There are no lavish claims; just facts. I even told you that that is how it was before an editor went in and changed it, which is supposedly what you were trying to retain. Saying things like also if my previous edit clashes with the predominant form in *this* page, then by all means revert it, along with your behaviour on other articles, makes me wonder if you're edit warring for the sake of edit warring. Like I've said before: when in doubt, take to talk first. Getsnoopy (talk) 01:01, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Webster's Unabridged is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. "Merriam" is just the company that long ago purchased the rights to Noah Webster's dictionary. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "Merriam-Webster dictionary, any of various lexicographic works published by the G. & C. Merriam Co.—renamed Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, in 1982—which is located in Springfield, Massachusetts, and which since 1964 has been a subsidiary of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Among the dictionaries are Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961), which contains more than 476,000 entries and provides the most extensive record of American English now available." Since 2002, Webster's Unabridged has been available online to subscribers. It is the online version that I have used (not the highly abridged Dictionary by Merriam-Webster (which is freely available). Similarly, I have used the online version of OED (for subscribers). As for OED, as I've indicated earlier, of the 63 times it uses the term "S/southern India" in its definitions (not its examples of usage which are many more), it capitalizes "Southern India" 17 times. What this indicates is that it might have a preference, but it doesn't have a rule.

In my understanding, "Southern India" is the orthographically defined region of India below the Narmada river or the Vindhya range, just as Northern India is the one above (the same latitudinally as "Hindustan," which in addition was bounded by the Sutlej river on the west and Ganges basin around Benares State in the east; it is this region in which the Hindustani language was spoken as a lingua franca in the 18th and 19th centuries). Similarly, more accurately, Dakhini was spoken in Southern India, not South India, a region which came to be defined in the current sense after the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 of India along linguistic lines. Earlier, especially in British times, the terms Northern- and Southern India were more commonly used. (To that extent, the Wikipedia redirects of "southern India" and "peninsular India" to South India are inaccurate.) I am of the view, in the context of "Dakhini," the capitalized "Southern India" is more accurate; southern India is less precisely defined. I am on vacation and have been advised to be firmly on vacation for my mental health; I just wanted to clarify what I meant. I will defer to Johnbod, who I see is on this page, in any future discussion. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:18, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

PS see these references old and new for "Southern India" and the Vindhyas or the Narmada. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: No, "Webster's Unabridged" almost always refers to the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, which is the desk dictionary for many publications in the US such as the New York Times. While Merriam-Webster was the original company that continued Noah Webster's legacy, other companies like Random House have published dictionaries using his name after there was a court battle and the copyright on the name was genericized. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, on the other hand, indeed is the one published by Merriam-Webster is considered to be the final arbiter on AmE. But none of that is neither here nor there.

As for the actual orthographic conventions, they change with time. While there might be old sources which used "Southern India" as a distinctive region, they are either outdated or in a minority today, which would amount to WP:UNDUE. It is likely because there were not state lines defined back then as they are today. This is why "southern India" can include modern-day Maharashtra, while "South India" definitively does not. Either way, @Johnbod seems to have resolved this issue in a way that makes this discussion obsolete, so I'm leaving it here. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Getsnoopy: Desk dictionaries, now programmed into a newspaper's computers, are generally collegiate dictionaries. Reporters of various skills work under deadline pressures during which excessively detailed dictionaries are not helpful. The NY Times Stylebook says, "spelling: Words listed in this manual without explanation should be spelled and capitalized or lowercased as shown. For words not listed, spelling is governed by the latest edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary (John Wiley & Sons). If that dictionary shows more than one spelling of a word, use the one that is given with a full definition. If a word appears neither in this manual nor in the New World, consult the latest printing of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (G.&C. Merriam Company), but only for spelling, not for usage. and again word division When a word must be divided at the end of a line of type in print, use the breaks shown in the latest printing of Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which are generally programmed into The Times’s computers." The AP's is Webster's New World Collegiate published by Houghton Mifflin. For words not in this collegiate, the AP recommends American Heritage Dictionary, latest edition also published by Houghton Mifflin, the Concise OED, and Webster's Third International, Unabridged, Merriam-Webster, Springfield, Mass. and for geographical names, the National Geographic Atlas of the World." Webster's Unabridged Dictionary—note WP's redirect—published by G. C. Merriam, the corporate heirs of Noah Webster, goes back to 1864, and has appeared in many editions thereafter, which among language enthusiasts are distinguished by the labels Webster's Second, Webster's Third. The Random House Unabridged goes back only to 1966. It cannot be the go-to dictionary for the label "Webster's Unabridged." See Webster's Dictionary: Competition. Note the "unabridged" is in quotes.

As for "Deccan," I have agreed to it in the interests of moving on, but "Deccan" now is a geographical term, the Deccan plateau (see India#Geography) which includes only part of Southern India, i.e. absent the coastal Eastern and Western Ghats (see India#Geography). Dakhani came to be spoken in the coastal regions as well. See the map of the Mughal Province of Sira. Still, I consider Johnbod's resolution to be a very nice one as Dkahani did begin life in the Deccan Sultanates. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:40, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think both versions are acceptable, but in this case surely it makes more sense to say "in the Deccan"? Johnbod (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree, apart from reducing the steam pressure of the boiling disuccsion, it would also be more faithful to the source without running into danger of close paraphrasing. –Austronesier (talk) 17:13, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Done that, then Johnbod (talk) 17:30, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Thank you for arbitrating this discussion. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Back to the main topic

Thanks Johnbod. For further improvement, I might add this. This page has always given short shrift to that source. The source says, "As Muslim rule expanded, Hindustani speakers traveled to distant parts of India as administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans. As it reached new areas, Hindustani further hybridized with local languages. In the Deccan, for instance, Hindustani blended with Telugu and came to be called Dakhani." Earlier, the same source says,"Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century AD in and around the Indian cities of Delhi and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony. ... Hindustani was initially used to facilitate interaction between the speakers of Khari Boli (a regional dialect that developed out of Shauraseni Apabhramsha and is now considered a variety of Hindi) and the speakers of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic who migrated to North India after the establishment of Muslim hegemony in the early AD." But the lead of this page says, "Hindustani emerged as a contact language around Delhi, a result of the increasing linguistic diversity that occurred due to Muslim rule, while the use of its southern dialect, Dakhani, was promoted by Muslim rulers in Southern India." The Lord forbid that any purposefulness be attributed to Muslims, let alone any hegemony granted. The southern dialect just happened to be there and the Muslim rulers promoted it. Tiptoeing around "Muslim," euphemistically devaluing the Muslim contribution, has been the governing principle of this page since 2007. But maybe they will oppose you less if you choose to do anything about it. All the best. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:49, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: With all due respect, I don't see the things you see here. As someone who did a lazy effort at paraphrasing the source I feel personally attacked when you say that this paraphrasing is aimed at "euphemistically devaluing the Muslim contribution". You need more rest. The way you use the word "they" here is alarming. All the best! –Austronesier (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I had no idea that you had done any paraphrasing. But if you consider that source to be a good source, why don't you and Johnbod do a faithful paraphrase of that source for the whole lead? The source's section on Hindustani is but two pages long. It is more readable and accurate than the lead currently in place. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:19, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

We have been over this before. The lede accurately reflects a multitude of sources that describe Hindustani as a contact language between Hindus and Muslims. In the past, the sentence neutrally stated "During the period of Islamic administrative rule in India which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani." It looks like this was recently changed to "During the period of Delhi Sultanate, which covered most of today's India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh and which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani." I wouldn't have any objection if this was changed to the former wording. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 18:42, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Anupam: Can you get hold of a copy of Kuiper's The Culture of India? I actually think that you will agree with the narrative presented there as NPOV. It does not collide at all with the "philosophy" of the current consensus version of the article, and it is indeed well-written. Personally, Kuiper's text is not my source of choice (since I lean more towards Christopher King's strictly historical and non-retroactive/non-anachronistic narrative and terminology), but I can recommend the text as a good model to follow without having to alter the current framework.

And I am fine with either versions you have mentioned. Less is more, so the earlier version is more appealing, unless one has a Pavlovian allergic reaction to the word "India" ;) –Austronesier (talk) 19:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comments User:Austronesier. I already have a copy of the book and agree with you that it provides a good summary of the development of the Hindustani language. I also think that the book Hindi, Urdu & Bengali by Richard Delacy and Shahara Ahmed does too, and the article nicely reflects their summary of Hindustani history. I agree with you that less is more, and so if you'd like to go ahead and do the honours, that'd be great! Kind regards, Anupam^Talk 19:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Kuiper's section on Hindustani

Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century AD in and around the Indian cities of Delhi and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony. In the 19th century its use was widely promoted by the British, who initiated an effort at standardization. Hindustani is widely recognized as India’s most common lingua franca, but its status as a vernacular renders it difficult to measure precisely its number of speakers. Hindustani was initially used to facilitate interaction between the speakers of Khari Boli (a regional dialect that developed out of Shauraseni Apabhramsha and is now considered a variety of Hindi) and the speakers of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic who migrated to North India after the establishment of Muslim hegemony in the early 13th century AD. Hindustani’s popularity increased as a result of its use by poets such as Amīr Khosrow (1253–1325), Kabir (1440–1518), Dadu (1544–1603), and Rahim (1556–1627), the court poet of Akbar. Its use by Sufi saints such as Baba Farid (flourished late 12th century) and various poets of the Natha tradition (which combined practices from Buddhism, Shaivism, and Hatha Yoga in an effort to reach immortality) also increased its popularity. Though Khari Boli supplied its basic vocabulary and grammar, Hindustani also borrowed freely from Persian. Among the Persian words that became common are many concerning administration (e.g., adalat ‘court,’ daftar ‘office,’ vakil ‘pleader,’ sipahi ‘soldier,’ shahar ‘city,’ kasba ‘small town,’ zila ‘district’), dress (e.g., kamiz ‘shirt,’ shal ‘shawl’), cosmetics (e.g., itra ‘perfume,’ sabun ‘soap’), furniture (e.g., kursi ‘chair,’ mez ‘table,’ takht ‘dais’), and professions (e.g., bajaj ‘draper,’ chaprasi ‘peon,’ dukandar ‘shopkeeper,’ haqim ‘physician,’ dalal ‘broker,’ halvai ‘confectioner’). Hindustani also borrowed Persian prefixes to create new words. Persian affixes became so assimilated that they were used with original Khari Boli words as well. The process of hybridization also led to the formation of words in which the first element of the compound was from Khari Boli and the second from Persian, such as rajmahal ‘palace’ ( raja ‘noble, prince’ + mahal ‘house, place’) and rangmahal ‘fashion house’ ( rangi ‘colouring, dyeing’ + mahal ‘house, place’). As Muslim rule expanded, Hindustani speakers traveled to distant parts of India as administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans. As it reached new areas, Hindustani further hybridized with local languages. In the Deccan, for instance, Hindustani blended with Telugu and came to be called Dakhani. In Dakhani, aspirated consonants were replaced with their unaspirated counterparts; for instance, dekh ‘see’ became dek , ghula ‘dissolved’ became gula , kuch ‘some’ became kuc , and samajh ‘understand’ became samaj.

Please paraphrase this portion faithfully in Summary style. I've left out the latter-most third. Hindi, Urdu & Bengali: Phrasebook & Dictionary by Lonely Planet, Shahara Ahmed, Richard Delacy with the blurb, "your passport to the most relevant phrases and vocab for all your travel needs. Get more from your multi-country trip with easy-to-find phrases for Hindi, Urdu & Bengali." seems to be a travel book. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

If Johnbod can help out, all the better. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:53, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Nope. Richard Delacy teaches Hindi-Urdu at Harvard University and has taught the language at other leading academic institutions. As such, that makes him qualified to discuss its history. In Hindi, Urdu & Bengali, he gives a good introduction to Hindi-Urdu for those unfamiliar with the language. The lede of this Wikipedia article should do the same, which it does. This is what the text says:

Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. That means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets (and watch the same Bollywood films) have no problems understanding each other -- they'd both say yeh kitne kaa hay for 'How much is it?' -- but the written form for Hindi will be यह कितने का है? and the Urdu one will be یہ کتنے کا ہے؟ Hindi is written from left to right in the Devanagari script, and is the official language of India, along with English. Urdu, on the other hand, is written from right to left in the Nastaliq script (a modified form of the Arabic script) and is the national language of Pakistan. It's also one of the official languages of the Indian states of Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. Considered as one, these tongues constitute the second most spoken language in the world, sometimes called Hindustani. In their daily lives, Hindi and Urdu speakers communicate in their 'different' languages without major problems. ... Both Hindi and Urdu developed from Classical Sanskrit, which appeared in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan and northwest India) at about the start of the Common Era. The first old Hindi (or Apabhransha) poetry was written in the year 769 AD, and by the European Middle Ages it became known as 'Hindvi'. Muslim Turks invaded the Punjab in 1027 and took control of Delhi in 1193. They paved the way for the Islamic Mughal Empire, which ruled northern India from the 16th century until it was defeated by the British Raj in the mid-19th century. It was at this time that the language of this book began to take form, a mixture of Hindvi grammar with Arabic, Persian and Turkish vocabulary. The Muslim speakers of Hindvi began to write in the Arabic script, creating Urdu, while the Hindu population incorporated the new words but continued to write in Devanagari script.

There is no need of a rewrite, other than what User:Austronesier and I agreed to. Thanks, Anupam^Talk 20:01, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Richard Delacy was a a preceptor at Harvard A preceptor at Harvard is a temporary language teaching appointment, especially for freshman classes. He is has been a Lecturer at Wellesley since Fall 2018. A Lecturer is not a tenure-track or tenured faculty appointment. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

"Other than what Austronesier and I agreed to?" But there are many people in the discussion either in this section, or in a discussion of the same topic upstairs: Najjarite, Kautilya3, Getsnoopy, Johnbod, and me. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:36, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

...and I am decisively not here for a while after feeling this special kind of draft again... –Austronesier (talk) 21:24, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I have highlighted in italics, the EB's description which is not represented in our page. Definitely, a Muslim hegemony was necessary to turn Hindustani into a lingua franca. No Hindu hegemony would have created that. The Hindu elites would have just learnt local languages instead of imposing their own language on the locals. So, yeah, definitely, hegemonies are us. No wonder the Tamils hate us. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:46, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Kathleen Kuiper, who was a Senior Editor at Britannica, and who has edited Culture of India from various Britannica articles, wrote the "Hindustani section" section with the precedent of two signed articles in Britannica: the Vocabulary section of Indo-Aryan languages by Sanskritist and linguist George Cardona:

Excerpt from Cardona on Persian vocabulary in Indo-Aryan, Britannica

"The two most important sources of non-Indo-Aryan vocabulary in New Indo-Aryan are Persian (including Arabic items introduced through Persian), the court language of the Mughals, and English. The Perso-Arabic vocabulary permeates every aspect of New Indo-Aryan vocabulary, especially in the midlands (Uttar Pradesh through the Punjab). There are, of course, Hindi-Urdu words proper to Islām: Hindi kuran “Qurʾān,” ʿīd (name of a holy day), nəmaz (certain prayers), məsjid “mosque,” as well as the word for “religion,” məźhəb. In addition, there are numerous Perso-Arabic military and administrative terms (kila “fort,” səvar “horseman,” ədalət “court of justice”); architectural and geographic terms (imarət “building,” məkan “house,” məhəl “palace,” duniya “world,” ilaka “province”); words having to do with learning and writing (kələm “pen,” kitab “book,” ədəb “literature, good manners”) and with apparel (jeb “pocket,” moja “socks,” rumal “handkerchief”) and anatomy (khūn “blood,” gərdən “neck,” dil “heart,” bazu “arm,” sər “head”). Indeed some of the most common vocabulary is of this origin: tārīkh “date,” vəkt “time,” sal “year,” həfta “week,” umər “age,” admī “man,” ɔrət “woman,” and others. Even the grammatical apparatus of postpositions and conjunctions reflects Perso-Arabic influence; e.g., -ke bad “after,” əgər “if,” məgər “but,” ya “or.” The colloquial language used by any Hindu or Muslim communicating in Hindi-Urdu will contain a large number of such words. There have been efforts to polarize the two, and at times champions of Indo-Aryan have tried to replace Perso-Arabic vocabulary with Sanskritic words. The style that tends toward eliminating all but the most common Perso-Arabic words may be called High Hindi, written in the Devanāgarī script, as opposed to High Urdu, which retains Perso-Arabic of long standing, uses Persian and Arabic for learned vocabulary and is written in the Perso-Arabic script. ...

and C. M. Naim's (see his latest book) Britannica article on Urdu literature

Excerpt from Naim on Urdu literature, Britannica

Earlier varieties of Urdu, variously known as Gujari, Hindawi, and Dakhani, show more affinity with eastern Punjabi and Haryani than with Khari Boli, which provides the grammatical structure of standard modern Urdu. The reasons for putting together the literary products of these dialects, forming a continuous tradition with those in Urdu, are as follows: first, they share a common milieu, consisting of Ṣūfī and Muslim court culture, increasingly dominated by the life and values of the urban elite; second, they display wholesale acceptance of Perso-Arabic literary traditions, including genres, metres, and rhetoric; third, they show an increasing acceptance of Perso-Arabic grammatical devices and vocabulary; and fourth, they tend to prefer Perso-Arabic forms over indigenous forms for learned usage. Apart from themes and metaphysics, the influence of Ṣūfī hospices and royal courts can be seen in two practices that were essential to the development of Urdu poetry (and also unique to the Urdu milieu in the medieval period) and that still exist in modified forms. First, Urdu poets generally chose an ustād, or master, just as a Ṣūfī novice chose a murshid, or preceptor, and one’s poetic genealogy was always a matter of much pride. Second, poets read poetry in private or semiprivate gatherings, called mushāʿirah, which displayed hierarchies, status consciousness, and rivalries reminiscent of royal courts. Urdu literature began to develop in the 16th century, in and around the courts of the Quṭb Shāhī and ʿĀdil Shāhī, kings of Golconda and Bījāpur in the Deccan (central India). In the later part of the 17th century, Aurangābād became the centre of Urdu literary activities. There was much movement of the literati and the elite between Delhi and Aurangābād, and it needed only the genius of Walī Aurangābādí, in the early 18th century, to bridge the linguistic gap between Delhi and the Deccan and to persuade the poets of Delhi to take writing in Urdu seriously. In the 18th century, with the migration of poets from Delhi, Lucknow became another important centre of Urdu poetry, though Delhi never lost its prominence. The first three centuries are dominated by poetry. Urdu prose truly began only in the 19th century, with translations of Persian dāstāns, books prepared at the Delhi College and the Fort William College at Calcutta, and later with the writers of the Aligarh movement. ...

All the best. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:53, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Given what Naim has said about Deccani having more affinity with Punjabi and Haryanvi than with Khariboli, it is linguistically erroneous to label Deccani as a dialect of Hindustani and Urdu as is done in this article, the Urdu article, and the Deccani article. It would be akin to labeling Braj or Awadhi as dialects of Hindi, which is usually avoided on Wikipedia. It’s fine to call Deccani part of the Urdu literary tradition, but since the grammatical base is not the same, it shouldn’t be considered Hindustani or Urdu from a purely linguistic point of view.Foreverknowledge (talk) 07:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Foreverknowlegde: Most scholars characterize Dakhani differently, e.g. Schmidt, who has studied historical and modern Dakhani:

In AD 1327 Panjābī-influenced Khaṛī Boli was transplanted to the south of India along with the migration of the inhabitants of Delhi to Aurangabād in the Deccan, at the order of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq. In the fifteenth century it became a literary language, known as Dakhanī (‘southern'), Hindavī, Hindī, or Dehlavī, in the Deccan kingdoms of Gōlkunḍā and Bījāpur. Aside from a few specifically Panjābī features, Dakhanī is an archaic form of Urdu showing strong affinities to the modern spoken Urdu of the artisans of Old Delhi, which is also known as Karkhandāri Urdu. (Leila Schmidt (2003). "Urdu" in Cardona & Jain (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages. London: Routledge.)

Also Masica calls Dakhani a "dialect" of Hindi–Urdu, which latter he strictly used for our "Hindustani" in the narrow sense (i.e. excluding Braj etc.). So for most scholars, Dakhani still well falls into the scope of the topic of this article.

@Anupam: Delacy is not NPOV in that he classifies 8th century Apabhraṃśa literature as Old Hindi. Many scholars, e.g. McGregor, Shapiro, Y. Kachru, do not trace Hindi-Urdu to MIA. In the simple Chatterji model, Śaurasenī Apabhraṃśa is the ancestor of a wider scope of Central IA lects (W. Hindi). So Delacy essentially echoes claims for the earliest literature of Hindi in the wider sense, but not of Khaṛī Boli-derived Hindustani. For Kachru, the history of Hindi-Urdu begins with "the language spoken around Delhi-Meerut which began developing around the twelfth or thirteenth century as a result of contact between the local inhabitants of the region and the invading armies of Afghans, Arabs, Persians, and Turks." (Yamuna Kachru (2006). Hindi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) –Austronesier (talk) 10:43, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Kauravi

I don’t believe it’s correct to call Kauravi a dialect of Hindustani, as is currently done in the infobox of this article. A specific dialect of Khariboli spoken in parts of Delhi was taken up by the ruling Muslim elite and became the basis of the Hindustani lingua franca, and later Urdu and Hindi. The rural dialects of Khariboli (sometimes called Kauravi in academic usage) are not grammatically or phonologically identical to Hindustani. So essentially Hindustani and Kauravi are varieties or dialects of Khariboli. It seems Grierson’s outdated nomenclature of “Vernacular Hindustani” for Kauravi caused someone to label Kauravi as a dialect of Hindustani. Foreverknowledge (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)