Urdu and Hindi are classified as dialects of the same language rather than separate languages, as they share the same roots and have a high degree of mutual intelligibility. While Urdu has absorbed some vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, its fundamental structure remains the same as Hindi. Politically and culturally, however, Urdu and Hindi have come to represent different identities for Muslims and Hindus respectively in South Asia, causing their linguistic similarities to be overlooked.

1. The Most Mutual intelligible
languages: Urdu and Hindi
Presented by:
Muhammad Azam
FA14-REL-002

2. Different Views about Urdu
• It Shares it roots with Persian
• it’s pretty much the same language” as Hindi.
• Urdu isn’t the same as Hindi…Urdu is in fact almost a
mix of Hindi/Farsi.
• Urdu vocabulary contains approximately 70% Persian and
the rest being a mix of Arabic and Turkish.

3. Different Views about Urdu
• When linguists describe language groups, they talk
about language trees. Every language has roots. It has
sister branches with which it shares common
ancestors, and just because it absorbs some
vocabulary from another language doesn’t mean that
its fundamental structure is changed.
• For example, our use of Japanese words like “sushi”
and “karaoke” doesn’t mean that English is closely
related to Japanese.

4. Languages and Dialects
• Urdu is technically classified as an Indo-European
language on the Western Hindi branch of the
language tree. It does not only share roots with Hindi,
but linguists actually classify Hindi-Urdu as one
language with four distinct dialects: Hindi, Urdu,
Dakhini (spoken in northern India) and Rekhta (used
in Urdu poetry).

6. Languages and Dialects
• Dialects differ from each other in the same way languages
do:
– syntax (structure)
– phonetics (sounds)
– phonology (systems of sound changes)
– morphology (systems of grammatical changes)
– semantics (meaning)
• Two ways of speaking diverge into two different
languages due to the degree of difference rather than the
types of differences.

7. Languages and Dialects
• Heather Carreiro, who has lived in Morocco and Pakistan
• I’ve crossed the Indo-Pak border multiple times, and as long as
I remember to swap Salaam alaikum for Namaste when
greeting people and shukriya for dhanyabad when thanking
people, nobody in India ever questioned my Hindi. At the
intermediate level, I experienced 100% mutual intelligibility.
• I could understand Hindi speakers, and they could understand
me. Most people in India asked me where I had learned Hindi,
and when I responded that I had studied Urdu in Pakistan they
were surprised.

8. Languages and Political-Cultural
Identity
• Hindi and Urdu both originated in Delhi and have roots in
Sanskrit. After the Muslim conquest by Central Asian,
invaders in the 11th and 12th centuries, the new rulers learned
the local tongue.
• These rulers spoke Persian and Turkish and wrote their
languages in the Arabic Nastaliq script, so when they started
speaking Hindi-Urdu they wrote this new language in the
Nastaliq script as well.
• By the 16th century, it had developed into a dialect of its own
termed Urdu with a prominent literary culture revolving
around the royal court.

9. Languages and Political-Cultural
Identity
• Because it was used by Muslim rulers and became largely used
by the Muslim population, a number of Farsi, Turkish and
Arabic loan words made their way into Urdu.
• Hindi, on the other hand, retained its religious and formal
vocabulary from Sanskrit and utilized the
traditional Devanagari script.
• Nowadays, a Muslim Urdu-speaking imam and a Hindu priest
may have difficulty discussing deep theological topics with
one another due to these differences in vocabulary, but for
normal conversations they would be able to understand each
other just fine.

10. Languages and Political-Cultural
Identity
• From a linguistic standpoint, the idea that Urdu is more closely
related to Arabic than Hindi is simply ridiculous. Urdu itself is
only the native language of about 10% of the Pakistani
population. Most families who speak Urdu as their first
language emigrated from India during the 1947 partition.

11. Languages and Political-Cultural
Identity
• In South Asia it is more the idea that Urdu and Hindi are
different languages that represent different cultures that
prevails over their linguistic similarities as sister dialects.
• We often choose to believe and promote what makes sense in
our worldview, and when people come in and question the way
we define ourselves or our culture we aren’t very likely to
change the way we think about things.