Hindi and Urdu - THE SAME LANGUAGE? (Hindustani)

This video is all about the Hindi and Urdu languages, which can be referred to together as Hindustani. It is one of the major languages of the Indian Subcontinent.

Special thanks to Utsav Maheshwari for recording Hindi audio samples, and Ali Suleman for recording Urdu audio samples.

Special thanks to: Nicholas Shelokov, 谷雨 穆, Anders Westlund, and Kaan Ergen for their generous Patreon support.

Music:

Outro song: "Circular" by Gunnar Olsen.
Intro song: "Beat Your Competition" by Vibe Tracks.

[Langfocus]

I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do!

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[abhii]

Funny thing is, Urdu is written in Arabic script, so When it comes to Arabic language, Urdu speakers can read Arabic but can't understand it but they can understand Hindi but can't read it. 😂

[caloricfoil]

So an Urdu speaker and Hindi speaker could have a coversation, but they couldn't write a letter to the other

[Drawphilic]

"Hindi and Urdu are like Purple and voilet, Both are made of Blue and red. But one has more blue and other has more red, , , Urdu has more of Persian and hindi has more of Sanskrit"
- Not me

[Drawphilic]

I'm Indian, and a native punjabi speaker. A Chinese friend of mine was learning Urdu, and he sent me an urdu sentence written with English script to check if he was right.... And I asked, "hey when did u start learning Hindi"... And he was like, *what is Hindi?*

[amysvideologs]

I went to get my nails done and girls working there were from different countries, some were Indian, some Pakistani, some Iranian, some Arab. I heard two girls speaking to eachother and I asked 'what language are you speaking?'. She said 'I call it Urdu because I'm Pakistani, she calls it Hindi because she's Indian, but it's the same language'.

[M--]

A Lebanese colleague of mine and I have 2 languages in common: French and English. One day, he received a confidential letter written in Urdu – a language he did not speak.

Knowing that I spoke Urdu fluently and that he could entrust me with confidential correspondence, he asked me to translate the letter for him.

He was shocked (and disappointed) when I told him that, although could perfectly *understand* spoken Urdu, I could not *read* its _Arabic_ script.

[It’s the same with Hindi: I can understand about 80-90% of the spoken language, but cannot read any of its _Devanagari_ script.]

To resolve our problem, I asked my Arabic-speaking colleague to read out aloud the Urdu-language letter: *He could read the letter – but could not understand what he was reading.*

I proceeded to simultaneously translate what he was reading aloud to me: *I could not read what was written – but could understand what was being read out aloud.*

*Problem solved!*

[richboyinnightgown]

I'm Pakistani and I just learned the Hindi script a few weeks ago, it was super easy since I already spoke the language. Now I can read and write both Urdu and Hindi.

[garimakilledar]

I was travelling back from the US to India and changed flights at the Dubai International Airport, where I met a shopkeeper speaking in Hindi. I got really excited and thought I found an Indian and said 'Oh! You are speaking in Hindi' (in Hindi). He replied 'No I am speaking in Urdu'. I said 'Same thing' and continued chatting with him. I felt so nice to meet someone from the same cultural background and language. He was a Pakistani.

[justiceteachesAI]

I was once talking to a girl from Pakistan & speaking Hindi. Later on, I told her I was impressed w/ her Hindu skills. She sighed & told me that she was actually speaking Urdu w/ me.

[sumanaella]

Funny thing, the national anthem of India is in bengali.

[NikhilKumar-wvto]

I am Indian and I speak Hindi, I remember when I used to see many things written in streets of India in Perso- Arabic Script, I knew that it was Urdu. By seeing that strange script, I used to think that Urdu is very difficult language. One day I saw Imran Khan(Pakistan's Prime Minister) giving a speech. I was shocked, his hindi is very good, then my parents told me what was the scene😂

[instantdominator]

It's funny how Hindi and Urdu speakers can have a conversation but can't exchange letters, whereas Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can't have a conversation but can exchange letters.

[chikuru]

i am a urdu speaker but i face no problem in communicating with a hindi speaking person.

[abcd]

Now Urdu and Hindi speakers can barely speak a sentence in their own language without including 10 English words in a 15 word sentence.

[jatikhan]

I'm a URDU speaker from Pakistan.I used to watch Indian movies and dramas.I can understand HINDI very well.

[radhakrishnannambiar]

Strangely as a South Indian from Kerala, I can very easily follow the sort of Hindi which is heavily Sanskritised. Like the news in All India Radio and Doordarshan. Because most of the Sanskrit individual words used in Sanskritised Hindi are used in Malayalam also.

But it is very difficult for us South Indians to follow pristine and pure Urdu. Because it depends heavily on Persian words.

[yazeedfallatah]

I still remember when I used to practice speaking in urdu and people would say " Oh, you speak Hindi" 😂

[parthbonde]

Imagine UK and USA had tense relations and so decided to call their languages American and British, that's basically Hindi and Urdu for India and Pakistan

[MyFatherLooksLikeAPallasCat]

I’m native Persian speaker and some of my ever favorite poetries are from Indian “Parsi-gu” poets. It’s so amazing how they admired our language to the point of creating such masterpieces, and how talented these people were.