Go “Lashkari-Urdu”!

And frankly, I like it!

Urdu in Back to the Future, morphs into “Lashkari” all over again.

The evolution of Urdu was always a bridge language. Hand it to the folks who evolved it first and then gave it the grammar and the rules.

Then came the few generations who wanted to make it standstill language. The great poets and prose writers.

And then came along the generations who wanted it for the national language in Pakistan. Here Urdu and the untenable demands for Urdu as a national language went off the rails. And has not gotten back on the rails as yet.

Strangely, in the same time period, Urdu went heavy in borrowing loan words from English. And now with even more recent advent of “Urdulish” and “Engdu”, even in Urdu newspapers, it is hard to tell where Urdu ends and English begins, at least amongst the “git-pit” folks. Pick a news paper of today and compare it with any from earliest days and you will know exactly what I am talking about.

And thus, it has remained, as PMA points out, the language of the “git-pit” (if anyone is not familar with this term, well, the closest translation can be yuppies, but not exactly). The urbane, the suave, the cultural elite. But this is a fake position. Urdu was never that. It was language of the common folks who made the system work.

So, the proposal is simple.

Urdu moves along, one more time to for the greater good of Pakistan and starts to absorb (and get absorbed) regional languages. Each linguist area at first could possibly start the process in it’s own area until the medium of education moves from pure “khalis” Urdu to the kind of Urdu-Punjabi already spoken in Lahore. The difference will be that it will move from spoke to a written language in newspapers, official transcirpts, and text books.

Really, this exists as spoken language in Lahore and urban centers of Punjab, except that you will not see it Urdu newspapers, etc.

The process is as simple as getting it out there in print. In text books, newspapers and official transcripts. And this process can start tomorrow! In each of the regional areas, the entire setup exists. It is mind over matter!

The spill zones (areas joining each linguistic area) will become the bridge zones for the larger, newer and richer vocabulary of Urdu.

And lo and behold, the Urdu will fix the Pakistani problem of mass education in a diversified land of many languages. And with accurate transliteration standards, Urdu can move to be easily taught to those who do not know the script of Urdu. And in all of this, I am thinking of Google translate which will also continue to imporve.

More and more books in this “Lashkari Urdu” will get translated and made available. More and more population centers will adopt it. It might even solve the problems of the whole region as other joining nations just might get on the bandwagon of this great “Laskkari Urdu”.

Sometimes the idea is so simple, it makes sense.

I have been thinking about this all day and and as I type, I am getting even more excited about this.

If Urdu can borrow words from English then what forbids it to borrow words from regional languages? We are not snobs. Are we?

I am not sure if anyone else has suggested it, since Pakistan is has amazing number of problem solvers, but if not, here it is. I am sure others can make it better.

Really, all we have to do is to let Urdu be what it always was. A dynamic and fluid language, fired up and ready to go.

Yes, it will shock the conscious of a few to hear and see, but then, that is exactly what it was for generations that preceded us.

Go “Lashkari-Urdu”!