Hindustani

All languages evolve. Continuously. Sometimes they evolve with time. Or they evolve with human migration. The etymology and history of the English language and the Hindi language are endlessly fascinating. The Hindi language more so. Consider this: The land of 'Hindustan' once panned from Eastern part of present day Iran all the way to Burma. After the Seleucid Greeks over-ran the northwest part of it, the Turks migrated, partly for trade and in search of the famed wealth. They brough the Turki language and then later adopted the Farsi or the Persian language. This remained the language of Northern modern India and morphed with successive movement of the Afghan and Mughal emperors. It then merged with the ancient Sanskrit language of India into Urdu sometime in the 16th century. How Hindi emerged is not as certain and linguists actually classify both Hindu and Urdu similarly. Hindi differs primarily in its script, being Sanskrit/Devanagari driven while Urdu continues to use the Persian script. Hindi, one may argue, has differences emanating from a colloquial link to the dialects of North India, mainly Braj and avadhi. Yet, viewed from the to they are similar languages. Simply put, all Bollywood movies contain strands of both languages, with movies made in earlier part of the century much more Urdu.

So, one is always amused how language continues to be used as a tool of us vs them dialogues politically and personally. Consider today's news on http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\01\07\story_7-1-2009_pg1_12.

According to the Daily News of Pakistan, the lone terrorist held by India was interviewed in Hindi and gave his deposition in Hindi and not Urdu. So, the paper argues, he must be Indian and not Pakistani. This must be of curious satisfaction to the Pakistani readers looking for reasons that India is bluffing and all the terrorists in this heinous act, were, in fact, Indian.

Pick any language: the story is the same. The English of the Irish vs the Queen's English. The Filipino tagalog, derived from the Spanish, vs the Spanish. The magnificient Catalan language now banned from Spain for formal teaching though linked historically to the Spanish language.....