TED Community » Ahmer Kureishi

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• A reply on Conversation: Let us bridge the great Urdu-Hindi divide (caused by the two registers using mutually illegible scripts)!

  Jan 6 2012: Azad, thank you for the succinct articulation of what HB is.
  
  Now, we have convergence in that we are both trying to help bridge the Hindi-Urdu gulf, but there are fundamental points of divergence.
  
  ONE, HB thinks in terms of 're-unified Hindi-Urdu'. My project looks to make each register universally legible.
  
  TWO, albeit it embraces Devanagari and Urdu, HB still prefers Roman. My project, not so -- the idea being to catch the people where they are, as they are -- and to deliver them what they need. (I personally have a difficult time processing Urdu in Roman - only manage the shortest Short Messages. More than a phrase of Roman Urdu in a chat session puts me off.) This should allow me to have my Urdu in Urdu -- and you to have the same page in Roman, and others to have it in Devanagari. To look at it another way, the idea of my project is to do away with the need of learning (and unlearning) scripts.
  
  THREE, HB has a vision as to how its vocabulary should be. (This is not to say I have a problem with the HB vision of vocabulary; in all likelihood, that is the direction a global Urdu-Hindi register would take.) My project puts all its faith in the goodness of people.
  
  Bollywood movies, for instance, does not use the lexicon it does to please any particular audience; it simply draws on Mumbai's pluralist language tradition. The hope is that once the script divide is bridged, websites and etexts will automatically be as Bollywood movies -- universally accessible to speakers of all registers. This media space will then become a great big Mumbai -- and 'Ooper Wala' will make more sense than God, Bhagwan, Khuda, etc.

• A reply on Conversation: Let us bridge the great Urdu-Hindi divide (caused by the two registers using mutually illegible scripts)!

  Jan 5 2012: Thank you very much, Azad :) Very excited to know about your "Hamari Boli" connection. You're just the kind of person my project needs to attract early on.
  
  The divide is indeed deep - consider the fact that the language does not have a name both registers can agree on. Hamari Boli is indeed a highly interesting project - which is why I chose to include the link in the presentation.
  
  However, my idea is to embrace the conventional scripts rather than sidestep them. The hope is that in time, a neutral style will emerge of its own once people from both sides of the divide have adequate opportunities for interaction.
  
  Lexical variations do not bother me -- all lexicons of both Urdu and Hindi are integral to the language -- they enrich it. The Bollywood lexicon, for instance, is far from identical to the colloquial Pakistani Urdu, but we all understand it. My project looks to achieve the same level of accessibility for all lexicons through transliteration. It is conceivable that some Urdu-Hindi lexicons will be unintelligible to speakers of some other lexicons - but they should not remain mutually illegible!
  
  Your lament as to the unavailability of programming expertise is spot on -- and one of the reasons why I had to float this conversation. Let us see how this unfolds. Failing all else, I can always brush up programming skills and crank the code myself.
  
  Please do tell me more about your Hindi-Urdu Reform & Modernization Initiative. I would very much like to work with "Hamari Boli" and contribute what little I can.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Let us bridge the great Urdu-Hindi divide (caused by the two registers using mutually illegible scripts)!

  Jan 5 2012: :) Thank you Khayam - but this one is wide of the mark: we are not talking about translation - the name of the game is transliteration (of course there would be transformation rules for presentation in addition to transliteration).
  
  And I firmly believe we can manage three-way transliteration that would round-trip any which way.

• A reply on Conversation: As a trilingual or bilingual, what role does language play in the creation of your identity? Which language do you think in?

  Jan 4 2012: All my languages.

• A comment on Conversation: If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe how would it communicate with us?

  Jan 4 2012: Your question makes sense. It is all very plausible and indeed probable. Now, without further ado, would you please take me to your leader? :)
  
  On a different note, Gerald O'brian has a point: If they are smart, they should know how to communicate with us. If they don't know how to pull it off, well, they are not intelligent enough.
  
  On the other hand, why should we assume intelligent aliens are eager to make contact? If extraterrestrial life is anything like life on earth, the right thing to do would be to hunker down and keep lookouts, never be visible. And if such is the universe, our own eagerness to reach out may well prove to be our terminal folly.

• A comment on Conversation: As a trilingual or bilingual, what role does language play in the creation of your identity? Which language do you think in?

  Jan 4 2012: This looks relevant: The gift of tongues | The Economist http://econ.st/ydVtJE

• A comment on Conversation: As a trilingual or bilingual, what role does language play in the creation of your identity? Which language do you think in?

  Jan 4 2012: That sounds like a great conversation in the making.
  
  A language is a window on the world; and the more windows you have, the better you are able to grasp the world. I grew up speaking Urdu and the local (Attock-Rawalpindi) flavor of Punjabi -- hardly two languages given they are almost totally mutually intelligible. (English came along in the sixth grade.) And yet, I think I get what you mean.
  
  I think in each of the languages I speak - the subject matter appears to be a factor. There would be others.
  
  The 'moving in and out' part is true, but I would like to add that your worlds move with you; your perspectives from the other windows never leave you, and I am not complaining.