SV: interesting experience

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Lambodara [SMTP:sb009h at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU] skrev 31. august 2000 02:10:
>
> As an amatuer indologist (and now a laboring sanskrit student) i always
pay close attention to all my encounters with Indian culture.  This past
weekend i was at my local convenience store where the clerk has become a
good aquaintence over the past year.( he was born and raised in India)  I
was telling him of my travel plans for this fall and my intention of
learning rudimentary hindi so that i could communicate better when in major
cities in the north.  His response was immediatly shocking to me.  He told
me at great length how though most people believe they are speaking hindi,
they are actually speaking Urduu.  This seems a bit of a rediculous claim
considering that none of the hindi liturature i have seen displays an
arabic alphabet. so my question is this: is there any value to this claim?
Also, is this a reletively common claim?

There is a "middle form" called Hindustani, which is used by many people.
Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language in the sense that they
share a common grammar but are written in different alfabeths and have
partly divergent vocabularies, Hindi drawing on Sanskrit and Urdu on
Persian and Arabic. The more education a person has, the more Sanskrit (and
less Persian/Arabic) or Persian/Arabic (and less Sanskrit) you will find in
his language. Uneducated people probably speak versions of Hindi and Urdu
that are very close to each other. So your friend is not entirely off the
track.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone: +47 22 32 12 19
Fax 1:  +47 22 32 12 19
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Email: lmfosse at online.no