Dhakhni is spoken in the Deccan plateau of India. Just as Urdu developed
in Delhi, Dhakhni developed in South India due to the mixing of various
Indian based languages and Persian based languages. The term Dhakhni is
perhaps an umbrella for a group of dialects spoken by certain
communities of Hindus & Muslims in the Deccan region. Thus, Dhakhni
dialects are an amalgam of Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati,
Kannada, Telugu, Arabic, Persian.Turkish and Malayalam.
Dhakhni was
the lingua franca of the Muslims of South India, chiefly living in
Hyderabad state and further south. Though it is considered as a dialect
of Urdu, it constitutes the traits of a different language in its own
sense. Dhakhni was widely spoken across the South Indian peninsula with
subtle changes in the dialect as you go down south away from Hyderabad.
Dhakhni
Urdu mainly spoken by the Muslims living in these areas can also be
divided into 2 dialects, North Dhakhni spoken in a wide range from South
Maharashtra, Gulbarga and mainly Hyderabad while the South Dhakhni is
spoken along Central Karnataka, Bangalore, North Tamil Nadu extending up
till Chennai,Nellore in Andhra Pradesh and along kerala. More than ten
thousand
families along kerala, still using dhakhni urdu as communicative
language
in their daily life. This tongue is used extensively in the spoken form;
when it comes to writing and literary work, standard Urdu is used.
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Globally URDU has touched new
heights, not only to become the most recognized Indian language in the Gulf and
even in the UK. In addition, it has developed new bases in other
English-speaking countries like USA, Canada and Australia where Urdu-speaking communities
and generally people of Indian and Pakistani origin have settled down.
A review of the situation of Urdu in 12 states with large concentration of Urdu speaking population shows that the position of Urdu in the southern states of Maharashtra, AP and Karnataka is much better than its position in the northern Hindi-speaking region namely UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarkhand, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. In the Hindi-speaking region Hindi and Urdu continue to face each other, although Urdu has given up all its pretension of being the ‘lingua franca of the Sub-continent,’ and the Urdu speaking community in the country has willy-nilly accepted the superior status of Hindi (‘the elder sister’), because it is now the official language of 9 states in North India which together account for about 80%, of the Hindi speaking population of the country.
The critical problem for Urdu lies in the fact that unlike Hindi, it is not the mother tongue of the majority of the people of any state. In fact, of all the original Schedule 8 Languages, Sindhi and Urdu are the only languages, which are ‘homeless’ as they are not the principal language of any state. In the South it continues to compete with Hindi even numerically, but Hindi has the advantage of being taught as the official language of the Union which is expected to take the place of English as the link language in due course. In these states Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil & Malayalam are the principal languages of the state; but Urdu is widely understood & spoken and taught at the school level. In fact the average South Indian does not and cannot differentiate between spoken Urdu and spoken Hindi. He is more concerned with the spoken language, which comes alive on the electronic media and in the so-called ‘Hindi’ films.
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A review of the situation of Urdu in 12 states with large concentration of Urdu speaking population shows that the position of Urdu in the southern states of Maharashtra, AP and Karnataka is much better than its position in the northern Hindi-speaking region namely UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarkhand, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. In the Hindi-speaking region Hindi and Urdu continue to face each other, although Urdu has given up all its pretension of being the ‘lingua franca of the Sub-continent,’ and the Urdu speaking community in the country has willy-nilly accepted the superior status of Hindi (‘the elder sister’), because it is now the official language of 9 states in North India which together account for about 80%, of the Hindi speaking population of the country.
The critical problem for Urdu lies in the fact that unlike Hindi, it is not the mother tongue of the majority of the people of any state. In fact, of all the original Schedule 8 Languages, Sindhi and Urdu are the only languages, which are ‘homeless’ as they are not the principal language of any state. In the South it continues to compete with Hindi even numerically, but Hindi has the advantage of being taught as the official language of the Union which is expected to take the place of English as the link language in due course. In these states Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil & Malayalam are the principal languages of the state; but Urdu is widely understood & spoken and taught at the school level. In fact the average South Indian does not and cannot differentiate between spoken Urdu and spoken Hindi. He is more concerned with the spoken language, which comes alive on the electronic media and in the so-called ‘Hindi’ films.
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