URDU AND THE NEW YEAR.

December 31, 2007 by 8 Comments

We’ve been out spending New Year’s Eve with the kids and grandkids, and I’m too replete and tuckered out to do any fancy posting, so I’ll just point you towards Mark Liberman’s roundup of the history of Urdu (word and language) and wish you all a very happy 2008!

Comments

  1. bulbul says
    December 31, 2007 at 10:23 pm

    Happy new year, hat and everybody else!

  2. mj says
    January 1, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Happy new year to you too!

  3. John Emerson says
    January 1, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    “Ordo”, etc., is also found in Mongol and might either be a Mongol borrowing from Turkish or a Turkish borrowing from Mongol. I actually would be able to settle that question if I was with my books. The “Ordos” at the bend of the Yellow River is from the same root.
    I believe that the “hoard” / “horde” confusion contaminates our understanding of the word “horde”, since a “hoard” is thought of as a heap or shapeless pile of gold, silver, and jewels. But the Mongol horde’s primary advantage over the Muslim and European armies it faced was its far superior organization. Chinggis Qan was an institutional reformer and the Mongols were efficiency experts.

  4. David Marjanović says
    January 2, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    I believe that the “hoard” / “horde” confusion contaminates our understanding of the word “horde”, since a “hoard” is thought of as a heap or shapeless pile of gold, silver, and jewels.

    Would surprise me, because in German Horde has the same meaning as in English, while the (nowadays obsolete) cognate to hoard is Hort, which ends in a loud, unambiguous [t] (and has the same meaning as in English, except that there’s a connection to “storage”).
    No idea why the h first shows up in Polish.

  5. Stuart says
    January 4, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    Another interesting read, thanks LH! Urdu was the language my Dad learned at boarding school near Rawalpindi in the late 30s and early 40s, and even though I’m learning Hindi, the beauty and poetry of Urdu, and the fact that the language is written in the right direction does appeal to me. I think your article has finally tipped me over the edge and convinced me that I must get hold of Platt’s dictionary.

  6. language hat says
    January 4, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    You know it’s available online, right?

  7. Stuart says
    January 4, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Yes, I’ve used the online version a bit, but I’ve found the reproduction a little unclear at times. Plus a language as beautiful as Urdu deserves the tactile richness of old-fashioned paper, imo.

  8. language hat says
    January 4, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    I don’t disagree—I love my paper edition! Just wanted to make sure you knew.

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