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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3977 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I am proudly tetralingual! I speak English, Bengali, Hindi and Urdu.

(Let's not quibble about the fact that Urdu and Hindu are pretty much the same language with a different script, that's beneath us)

It seems my brain hyperfixated on English since early childhood, or at least after I spent a good chunk of time in the States. I speak and write it more fluently than 99.999% of native speakers, and certainly you'll be hard pressed to find an Indian in India who speaks it better.

In contrast, my ADHD made me give less than zero shits about learning other regional Indian languages. They had to be drilled into my head with enough force to crack my thick skull, and I can't say I've ever read any literature in them outside of the school curriculum, barring road signs and skimmed newspapers.

I can't say I'm particularly interested in learning new ones, it seems like a lot of pain for minimal payoff unless I intend to shift over, maybe I could justify German or some of the Nordic languages, since there's concrete benefits to being a practising doctor there.

But I'm pretty sure that ubiquitous real-time translation is almost here, so people can rattle off whatever the hell they like, and can be sure that the recipient understands it.

(Let's not quibble about the fact that Urdu and Hindu are pretty much the same language with a different script, that's beneath us)

Not knowing either, my mental model is that the spoken languages map in the same way that American English and British English map. Different vocabulary for various things, but once you internalize the truck/lorry pairing (for example) you're okay. Is that the case?

The difference between the standard varieties is increasing over time as Urdu speakers add more Persian and Arabic loanwords while Hindi speakers make every effort to purge the ones acquired during Mughal times and to replace them with older Sanskrit vocabulary, but this takes a while to trickle down to the way the average person speaks.

From what I can tell, they sound nigh-identical, even more commonality than different English accents across the pond.

Urdu has additonal arabic loan words, but most Hindi speakers understand them fine, when I met a lot of Pakistanis for the first time, there was no obvious way of telling they spoke a different language.

The colloquial dialect of Hindi and Urdu are very similar. But their more formal registers have sufficient differences in vocabulary to confuse a casual Hindi speaker a bit.

I remember stumbling on a news report in Urdu and finding that while I understood everything that was being said, I had to infer the meaning of quite a few unfamiliar Persian/Arabic origin words by context.

Possible reasons for a difference in opinion.

In the order of fluency, I can speak English, Kannada and Hindi with my grasp over Hindi primarily being through the Bookish register and some exposure to the colloquial one during undergrad. I also do not consume Bollywood movies/music which I've read tends to use Hindi that leans slightly more towards Urdu vocabulary.

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