‘Deccani Urdu,’ which is a colloquial, corrupt and slang form of Urdu has no literary sanctions. For example, people use words like sankal for zanjeer, kunda for katora, baiko for aurat, kaiku for kyun, aldarian for daantna, palarian for rona, nhyali for bistar, etc.
Bangalore:Mr. Maqbool Ahmed Siraj is a familiar name among the editorial writers of South India. A native of Bangalore, Mr. Siraj earned his post graduate degree in Journalism from Madras University in 1978 and soon after joined the Indian Express daily as its correspondent; he remained with this publication for about six years. He had served several other media houses before joining BBC’s Urdu World Service as a correspondent for Karnataka region. He has been with the BBC for about 16 years now.
Mr. Siraj is also a recurrent journalist at Deccan Herald and The Hindu. He is on the editorial board of Islamic Voice English monthly magazine.Apart from his impressive writing in Urdu and English languages, Mr. Siraj also knows Persian, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil. He spoke to Karnatakamuslims.com on a variety of issues ranging from literature and journalism to education and employment. Following edited excerpts are first part of his conversation.
KM: Tell us something about the language Urdu?
Mr.Siraj: In today’s world, it is very rare to see people with love for a language. They feel very great about their ability to speak English, but they are ignorant about the same language’s roots. Their conversation is mediocre, just sufficient to communicate with a doctor, confectioner or a baker. But if you ask them to speak on issues like Right to Education, Right to Information etc. they are a big zero. Linguistic training is not being imparted to the children at home. Nowadays, students opt for the market savvy courses like B.com, BCA, BSc, BBM etc. nobody joins M.A in Kannada or Urdu. Study of Journalism, C.A, Law are among rare choices. These are the subjects which are neglected by Muslims as these subjects require a high level of expertise in language to study. But our children today, want fast and quick money.
Coming back to Urdu language, to write excellent Urdu, one needs to know Persian which enriches Urdu. The present society is losing value of language and culture. Each one of us is in a race to beat the other. It is saddening to note that people belonging to Muslim society are cut off from their own language. Today’s generation has grown unaware of Urdu and lacks expertise in any language they adopt (such as English).
KM: Do you mean to say we should not use English as a medium for communication?
Mr.Siraj: We must first know the languages spoken around us, which can give us a job or employment and know the languages which have been handed down to us by tradition such as Kannada and Tamil. Muslims are learning English, Kannada and other vernacular languages, but they are unaware of their own linguistic traditions. Recently, I got a wedding invitation from a Muslim girl’s parents; her name was printed as Tanziya Begum on the invitation card. Irony is that Tanziya means ‘taunting’. This shows how her parents were unaware of the meaning of the name she had given to their own daughter. Her parents must have thought that a good sounding word like Tanziya must be good name for their loving daughter. Now she has got married with the same name.
KM: What is your opinion about Urdu language spoken today in most parts of Karnataka, including Bangalore?
Mr.Siraj: There are very few people in Karnataka who speak standard Urdu these days. Most of them speak ‘Deccani Urdu’ which is a colloquial, corrupt and slang form of Urdu and has no literary sanction. For example, people use words like sankal for zanjeer, kunda for katora, baiko for aurat, kaiku for kyun, aldarian for daantna, palarian for rona, nhyali for bistar, etc. When I was working as an educational advisor in an orphanage, to my amusement, I found over 300 Deccani words used by workers and followed by the students. I was forced to provide a converter from Deccani Urdu to standard Urdu, so that the basic literary language could be instilled at the initial stages of learning.
People responsible for educating children themselves are unaware of the usage of suffixes, prefixes and their Persian or Arabic origin, which enriches Urdu. The cultural degradation among Muslims is because of their growing unawareness of any language in a perfect sense. While teaching a language to the children, stress should be laid upon phonetics, reading, repetition and grammar.
Today, focus is given on style but not substance. There is more style in our lives than substance, which must change. Nowadays, we concentrate upon looking good, even though we are not good looking.
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S.Afshan Azhar, KMNN
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