Is There a "Correct" Urdu? Dialects Explained by Dr. Rizwan Ahmad | Module 2 | Rekhta Learning

[00:00:09]I'm generally very excited about the entire course, but this particular um lesson I'm super excited because variation is something that I love. Um as a social linguist, we love to see variation and we talk about variation.

[00:00:26]We research about variation. So [snorts] this is a very special uh video um that I'm going to be creating today. One of the facts of any living language which cannot be disputed is that it has variation. What does this mean? This means that either there are many ways of pronouncing the same word or there are different words for the same thing. In this video, we will learn about how languages vary or how language varies and what is the difference between language and dialect with specific reference to udu because this is something that is not clear um to a lot of people to understand variation in language. Let's take an example from English. In English, the word water is pronounced very differently in countries such as UK, USA and India. In the UK it is pronounced as water. But in American pronunciation and even in Canada it is pronounced as water. But people in India pronounce it in a third way which is neither the American way or the British way. They pronounce it as water. This means that the pronunciation of water shows variation. In linguistics it is not called mistakes. I mean just imagine if the British say that the whole of America and Canada are pronouncing the word water incorrectly in language. The correctness is based on how people use language. Since Americans began to pronounce this word differently from the British, it has become correct in the American English. This means that there does not have to be one correct form.

[00:02:12]And this is very very important.

[00:02:14]Sometimes we always look for one correct way. But we need to understand that there does not need to be one correct form. This idea of one correct form usually is based on the standard language. People tend to see any variation from the standard as a mistake. This is not right. We will look at the multiple ways of saying things as variation without necessarily looking down upon them or calling them incorrect. There are many factors that determine variation in language. For example, our language varies based on the address or the audience, the person I'm talking to. A good example is the pronoun for you. In udu in udu there are three words for the pronoun you you know it's also very interesting so what is one word in English will be pronounced will be translated as three in udu and these words are app to and to the same person may use any of these three forms or three words depending on his relationship with the person he's talking to or she's talking to if the speaker wants wants to show respect to the address, they will use app. If they would like to show closeness and intimacy, they will use tum and tu. T is the least respectful but the most intimate. This is a very interesting fact of language that what is least respectful is the most intimate.

[00:03:54]Remember beautifully captures the nuances of these three words. When you begin to be angry or run in the couplet, you don't want to give the person respect and start going down the slide of pronoun from the highest up to the lowest to with tum in between. You [snorts] cannot say that to is wrong. It may be inappropriate in some specific situations, but it's not wrong. In linguistics, this type of variation is called intrap speaker variation. Meaning the same person using different words in different situations. In linguistics, this is captured by this statement. No individual speaker speaks the same all the time. But there is a second type of variation. This type of variation in language is called intergroup variation between two groups. This is captured by the statement that no two speakers of the same language speak exactly the same way. This means that different groups of people will speak the same language differently which does not always mean incorrectly and that is an important point to keep in mind. This variation is further divided into many subcategories.

[00:05:24]Two of them are relevant for our discussion today. One is regional variation and the second is social variation. Regional variation means that there are different ways to pronounce a word based on different regions.

[00:05:39]This also includes other types of variation including those that affect grammar.

[00:05:45]This type of variation is known as regional dialect. The udu term for dialect is bulli. In any large country, regional variation is bound to happen.

[00:05:58]Udu has always had a large geographical reach. Imagine Kolkata and Dhaka in the east to areas in Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west. Similarly, it also has uh presence in Kashmir in the north to Karnataka and even parts of Kerala in the in the south. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to look at variation not as a wealth of language but as mistakes. Some of the great Udu writers were attacked for not speaking udu correctly because in their udu they used some regional features. Let's take one example. The sound kaf or the letter kaf which is pronounced as about which we have already discussed in an earlier video has a lot of variations. In Delhi and lucknau it is pronounced as kaf but in the dhani dialect which is a regional dialect because it is you know the dakan is in the south. U in the dhani dialect it is pronounced as ka. So the word ka is pronounced asa.

[00:07:11]Now the dhani dialect the dhani dialect is not limited to the pronunciation of kaya. There are other features of the dialect as well. Let's look at this um poetry from a Dani poet.

[00:07:36]Wow.

[00:07:44]Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

[00:07:52]Um in this uh by Rosak Hyderabadi he interestingly uses um Dani features but the example that I gave of uh is important. He pronounces as so that shows the regional uh pronunciation of the udu dialect. He writes poetry in standard udu but sometimes he uses the dani dialect. This one is in the dialect or bi. You hear him pronounce for in standard udu we will say which means the height or stature of popularity. This is related to the pronunciation that we talked about.

[00:08:37]There are differences also related to grammar. For example, in udu the plural of is not which we use in in the north but similarly the word for a standard he is itch. So those are three features that he uses in his poetry that are not used in a standard udu but only used in the boli or the dialect uh that we call dakani udu. These variations are not new. They have been there for centuries.

[00:09:11]Nasir din hashmi has an entire book on dakudu. Here is a couplet of one of the um great um poets called who lived in the early 17th century. He says in this sh you see the plural of hat is hata and not hat in which we use in other parts and b is ba. Another grammatical feature of dhani dialect of udu is that it does not use nay with past tense. In standard udu we say manikai but in dani we would say the differences between standard udu and dhani is quite prominent. Sometimes dialect variation may not be as prominent and still there are differences even between delhi udu and lacna udu which are both considered to be standard. Um and both of them actually fall in northern India. Some examples of the differences are uh for example the word sas breath in lucknau it is feminine so you say lambi saslo but in Delhi it is masculine so people udu speakers in Delhi would say in lucknau the word fata is masculine but in Delhi it is feminine so you say But in luckno you would say manifhat.

[00:10:49]Similarly in luckno the word aos is masculine but in Delhi it is feminine.

[00:10:55]So these these are all examples of variation and we shouldn't be uh fixated on looking for one correct form that oh this is correct but the other one is incorrect. This is all wealth as I said of the udu language. Another example of regional variation in Udu is the Udu spoken in the Punjab region. Many people from Lacnau and Delhi have made fun of the dialect. The estigmatization of the Punjabi Udu has more to do with the control and power over Uru than the Udu language itself. It is noted in many books that even Dr. Muhammadbal whose poetry today is undoubtedly one of the finest poetry ever produced by any uru poet was not spared. A point of attack against was that he couldn't even pronounce his own name correctly or properly as a Punjabi. He used to replace kaf with kaf which happens even today and would pronounce his own name asbal.

[00:12:05]In addition to the variation in the pronunciation of kaf, there are many other linguistic features also that distinguish udu spoken in the punjab from other regions. A major grammatical difference is in the use of the article nay and actually I find it very fascinating. While in standard udu as we mentioned earlier um the particle nay is used only with the past tense. uh in the udu spoken by the Punjabis it has some new usage. For example, in standard udu say but in Punjabi udu they might say.

[00:12:51]So you can see the difference between the syntax of the Punjabi udu and um and standard udu. Now this form is no longer limited to spoken dialect. This interesting use of nay is not only in spoken dialect but some poets have started to use it in their poetry as well. Here is uh a young poet from Pakistan Hafi who is quite popular on social media. U his uh poetry contains some examples of this. He says Now pay attention to in Delhi and we would probably say but again this is a regional variation.

[00:13:44]Another [snorts] dialectal variation in Udu is based on social factor. So what we discussed earlier was based on region you know north, south, east, west and so and so forth. But now we are discussing a variation that is not based on region but within the same city it's based on social factors. So unlike regional dialects such as dakani and punjabi udu there is a bully or dialect based on social class within the same city. This means that we are not talking about two different geographical regions but two different communities living within the same region. One good example of this is the dialect spoken by the workingclass people in old Delhi. The name of the dialect is Khandari dialect. Khandari is the word Khandari is derived from khana which means workshop referring to basically people's occupation. So Khandari people are the people who were engaged in some u um occupations that are related to workshops. Gopichandarang has studied the dialect and has identified some interesting linguistic features. For example instead of kaha in standard udu the word kaha is pronounced as kia. So for example you would say which means he said that now meaning did is pronounced.

[00:15:14]So in kandari dialect would be man.

[00:15:20]The progressive forms of the verb with ing in English is also pronounced differently. In standard udu for example you would say but in khakandari dialect you so you know the difference here is raha and ria. The kandari dialect has another very interesting uh linguistic phenomenon in which actually two sounds are flipped one of them is replaced with the other. This is known in linguistics as metaththesis.

[00:15:52]Some of the examples are so the standard udu is pronounced as from which we have the word actually you know the the the the sweet um that we eat. Lat is pronounced as nalat. So you can see l the sound l and n have been swapped. Mis the standard udu mis is pronounced as mijaz mijaz. So Z has been swapped with J L standard is L and ML is MBA. In all of these cases, what you see is that there are two sounds. One of them has been swapped with the other. The last one is common in other areas too by the way. So even in the area that I come from, some people say matbal instead of matlab.

[00:16:40]The older forms of verbs.

[00:16:43]Another feature of khandari is that the older forms of verbs such as ayo, jao, caillo found in the poetry of mir and galib have actually disappeared from a standard udu but they are still found in kakandari dialect of udu. While doing my field work um I realized that many people try to not speak to you in kakandari because for some reason the dialect does not have the prestige. It has some sort of stigma attached to it.

[00:17:12]People who look down upon this dialect of Khandari do not realize that actually this dialect has preserved some features of udu that have disappeared from a standard udu. So the two features that I mentioned um that exist in Kakandari dialect uh but have disappeared from a standard udu. I just wanted to read uh two u couplets from uh Galib and M.

[00:17:42]M says um this form is not used in uh modern standard uru. Similarly, Galib says Now here also you see kao. Now in modern standard udu you would say cay. So I really see this as an important point that the features that have disappeared from uh standard udu still survive in in kandari dialect. And that's one reason for us not to look down upon regional variations. But actually we should treasure this as the wealth of the Udu language. Time to wrap up. In conclusion, in this video we have discussed variation in Udu and we have paid really close attention to [music] regional variation known as regional dialect or BI. [music] We have learned some features of Dan and Punjabi udu.

[00:18:54][music] We have also discussed a social dialect of Udu known as Khandari spoken in [music] Old Delhi. Uh we have also showed in this video that variation is wealth of language and should not [music] be looked down upon. In fact, some of the features used in dialects are older forms which have disappeared from standard udu [music] and they only survive in dialects. If anything, we [music] should be really thankful to those who speak these different dialects for preserving the features that have actually disappeared from standard udu.

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