Persian and Urdu

The Persian language and Urdu have had an intricate relationship throughout the history of the Urdu language. Persian historically played a significant role in the formation of modern Urdu, and today acts as its prestige language.

Persian was brought to the Indian subcontinent by Turko-Persian rulers from the west in the region’s medieval period. Persian’s effect on Urdu is due to its historical status as official and literary language under many of these rulers, as well as lingua franca of much of the subcontinent. This was part of Persian’s larger role as lingua franca and prestige language in Greater Iran and beyond throughout Asia’s medieval history.

Persian was displaced by Urdu in colonial-era South Asia, and is today used mainly in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Urdu is currently the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, and an officially recognised language in India.

Overview

Hindustani (sometimes called Hindi-Urdu) is a colloquial language and lingua franca of Pakistan and the Hindi Belt. It forms a dialect continuum between its two formal registers: the highly Persianised Urdu, and the de-Persianised, Sanskritised Hindi.Urdu uses a modification of the Persian alphabet, whereas Hindi uses Devanagari. Hindustani in its common form is often referred to as Urdu or Hindi, depending on the background of the speaker/institution. This situation is fraught with sociopolitical factors and controversies, in which Persian plays a part. The common linguistic position is to use Urdu as the term for the register, and Hindustani for the spoken, common language.

Hindustani bears significant influence from Persian. In its common form it already incorporates many long-assimilated words and phrases from Persian, which it shares with speakers across national borders. As the register Urdu, it bears the most Persian influence of any lect in the subcontinent, featuring further vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation influences. The latter form of the language is associated with formal contexts and prestige, and is deployed as the medium of written communication, education, and media in Pakistan. This happens in more restricted settings in India, where the de-Persianised register Hindi is more widely used for these purposes; Urdu appears in the social contexts and institutions associated with the Muslims of India, as well as in literary circles. It is one of India’s 22 scheduled languages, and is given official status in multiple Indian states.

History

Persian and Urdu (Hindustani) are distinct languages. Persian is classified as Iranian, whereas Urdu is Indo-Aryan. They fall under the larger grouping of the Indo-Iranian languages, and hence share some linguistic features due to common descent.

However, the majority of influence from Persian is direct, through a process often called Persianisation. Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia, Persian was introduced into the Indian subcontinent. The Delhi dialect of the Old Hindilanguage and other dialects of South Asia, received a large influx of Persian, Chagataiand Arabic vocabulary. The subsequent Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate gave way for a further continuation of this. The basis in general for the introduction of the Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianised Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.

This lexically diverse register of language, emerged in the northern subcontinent, was commonly called Zaban-e Urdu-e Mualla (‘language of the orda – court’).

Unlike Persian, which is an Iranian language, Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, written in the Perso-Arabic script; Urdu has a Indic vocabulary base derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit, with specialised vocabulary being borrowed from Persian. Some grammatical elements peculiar to Persian, such as the enclitic ezāfe and the use of pen-names, were readily absorbed into Urdu literature both in the religious and secular spheres.

Hindustani gained distinction in literary and cultural spheres in South Asia because of its role as a lingua franca in the subcontinent as a result of the large number of speakers the language has, both as a first and second language. A prominent cross-over writer was Amir Khusrow, whose Persian and Urdu couplets are to this day read in South Asia. Muhammad Iqbal was also a prominent South Asian writer who wrote in both Persian and Urdu.

Sample comparison

The following is a comparison between Iranian Persian and formal Urdu, using text from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both are in the Nastaliqcalligraphic hand.