Urdu: Cultures and Communities Historical Background Urdu

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Urdu Cultures and Communities
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Historical Background

• Urdu developed as a lingua franca in South Asia
  in the 16th and 17th centuries around the major
  Indo-Muslim cities of Delhi and Hyderabad.
• Hindi and Urdu have common conversational
  vocabulary and syntax.
• Urdu is written in Nastaliq script (a
  Perso-Arabic script) that goes from right to left
  and borrows its high vocabulary from Arabic and
  Persian.
• Even though the colloquial varieties of Hindi and
  Urdu are similar, their formal and literary
  varieties are mutually incomprehensible due to
  different sources of vocabulary, cultural
  references, and religiously marked language.

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Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Issues

• The historical development of Urdu as a lingua
  franca had/has implications for who
  self-identifies as an Urdu speaker/heritage
  learner
• Colonial and Post-Colonial language policies in
  both India and Pakistan
• Ethnic, regional, gender, religious, and class
  considerations

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Where are Urdu Speakers Today?

• India
• Pakistan
• Post 1947 large migration of Urdu speakers to
  Karachi/Lahore
• United Kingdom and other Former British Colonies
• England-London, Bradford, and Manchester, 1950s-
• Canada-Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, 1970s-
• United States-most Metro areas
• NYC, NJ, LA, Chicago, Houston, NC, Seattle,
  Atlanta
• Persian Gulf Countries
• (since the 1970s SAs provided skilled labor,
  managers, and merchants in the wake of the oil
  boom)

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Major Stages of South Asian Migration

• Early 20th Century- Punjabi farm workers to
  California- Lodi, CA
• 1960s to1980s-Professionals, engineers,
  academics, doctors, etc., from upper-middle
  classes of urban centers of SA
• 1990s-Less well educated, more entrepreneurial
  class migrants from a wider cross-section of
  South Asian regions and classes
• 1990s-present-Highly skilled MBAs, Software and
  IT industry professionals imported or trained in
  the US

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Urdu Heritage Communities in the US

• Major metro centers around the country have Urdu
  speaking populations.
• Most do not live in urban enclaves, except in the
  case of Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, Queens,
  and Devon Avenue in Chicago.
• Urdu speakers are ethnically diverse
• UP, Hyderabadi, Mohajir, Punjabi,
• Most Urdu speakers will identify themselves as
  Muslim, on a varying scale or observance of
  practices

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Urdu Speakers Attitudes Toward Heritage Language
Preservation

• While there are many Urdu speakers who claim the
  language as an ethnic identity, such as Mohajirs
  coming from Karachi, Hyderabad, or Lucknow, many
  also claim other ethnic and linguistic
  identities-Punjabi, Sindhi, Pathan, etc.,
• An Urdu heritage student may be a Pathan, who
  speaks Pashto with his/her parents and Urdu with
  family friends Uncles/Aunties
• English as the colonial and post-colonial
  language of preference in home countries detracts
  from the value of studying Urdu beyond the home

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Where is Urdu taught in the US?

• Higher Ed-most major Universities around the
  country teach Urdu or Hindi/-Urdu
• Most of these are major universities, Ivies, some
  state schools, very few community colleges (De
  Anza College)
• Community and State colleges are where we have
  the largest pop of Heritage students

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K-12

• Schools
• Not taught in Public schools
• One Charter school in Chicago area has taught it
  at the HS level since 2000
• Community
• Not many secular settings except one in CA,
  Urdu Writers Association
• Masjid-complicated by most parents desire to
  ensure children learn to read sacred
  language-classical Arabic (situation is very
  similar to Jewish Hebrew Schools)
• Most efforts are private small group classes done
  in the home, with materials imported from
  Pakistan or India

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Next Steps

• Creating awareness and advocacy in communities
  for maintaining Urdu competency-where do we want
  to see Urdu language capacity in 5 years?
• Highlight the real world benefits to specific
  groups who could be potential advocate partners
  with higher ed and k-12
• Urdu materials for k-12 instruction for US
  students