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Tag Archives: Learning Urdu

Common Greetings and Farewells Posted by on Jun 23, 2018

When you start learning a new language, one of the main things you may want to know is how to greet people and say farewell. It’s natural to want to want to know the basics on addressing others politely when you’re learning a language and common greetings and farewells are a great way to do…

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Conversational Urdu: بول چال کی اردو Posted by on Jun 4, 2018

When learning a language, especially a South Asian one such as Urdu, it is important to appreciate differences in registers. A register simply refers to a social level of speech, like the formal speech you would use in a term paper or while delivering a presentation at work as opposed to the informal/colloquial speech you…

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Coke Studio Pakistan Posted by on Apr 26, 2018

Inspired by my recent post on Transparent Language’s Hindi blog about Coke Studio India, I wrote this companion post on Coke Studio Pakistan. I was introduced to Coke Studio through my Pashto lecturer while in college and have been hooked ever since. The songs she shared with me were all from Coke Studio Pakistan, a…

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Kaifi Azmi’s “The Son of Mary” (Part 2) Posted by on Mar 28, 2018

This week, I will go into more depth with the poem we discussed last time: “The Son of Mary” (ابنِ مریم) by renowned poet and lyricist Kaifi Azmi (کیفی عظمی). In this second half of the poem, Azmi’s tone becomes progressively more intense and combative, as you’ll see in the following lines. Comment below if…

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Kaifi Azmi’s “The Son of Mary”/”کیفی اعظمی کی “ابنِ مریم Posted by on Mar 21, 2018

This week, let’s return to another of the unforgettable poet and lyricist, Kaifi Azmi’s, poems. Similar to “Daera/The Circle” (دائره), Azmi uses his knowledge of diverse belief systems and cultures to enrich his verse and complicate his philosophical stance. This quality of Azmi’s poetry, in addition to his seemingly simple, yet at times abstruse and…

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Kaifi Azmi’s “The Circle” Posted by on Feb 20, 2018

Kaifi Azmi (کیفی اعظمی, or Sayyid Akhtar Hussein Rizvi, as he was born) is one of Urdu’s greatest poets (شاعر/shaayar) and remains legendary to this day as a poet capable of expressing the subtlest of sentiments with uncanny astuteness and daring. You may recognize his name from that of Shabana Azmi, a famous Indian actress who…

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A Short History of Urdu / اردو کی چھوٹی سی تاریخ Posted by on Feb 15, 2018

Urdu is widely known as the national language (قومی زبان/qaumi zabaan where “zabaan” is a fem. noun) of Pakistan, but it is also one of India’s 22 official languages (سرکاری زبان/sarkaari zabaan). Modern Standard Urdu, once commonly known as a variant of Hindustani (ہندوستانی), a colloquial language combining the modified Sanskrit words found in Hindi…

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