Give a lady Urdu? (her due?)

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Give a lady Urdu? (her due?)

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In a response to my Channel 9 appearance, drloc asked:

Dear Michael, Can ya plz tell ma about Urdu Language Support in Vista and Vista Urdu Localizationz.......... THankz

Well, I have an answer now, and I think there is a pattern developing here.

So looking back at past posts on LIPs:

  • We're drowning in LIPs!
  • Microsoft, you giving us some LIP?
  • Let there be LIPs
  • Oops, we did it again
  • Oh Kannada... (ಕನ್ನಡ)
  • 'c' is for click sounds, and they're good enough for me
  • Persian? or Farsi?
  • Quechua me if you can!
  • Do they grow beets in Luxembourg?
  • I Tswana know what you're thinking

    It is my pleasure to add to the list the Urdu Language Interface Pack!

    Some interesting information about the language:

    Number of speakers:
    ~60 million native speakers, ~40 second language speakers

    Name in the language itself:  اردو

    Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. Although English (the second official language) is widely used in elite circles and Punjabi has more native speakers, Urdu is promoted and expected by the administration to eventually prevail in Pakistan. It is taught as a compulsory language up to high school and has started becoming the lingua franca.
    Urdu is also spoken in India and has official language status in Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, and in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

    From a strictly linguistic perspective, Urdu and Hindi are two standard forms of one language rather than two different languages (This phenomenon is referred to as a "diasystem" and known from language groups like Persian/Dari/Tajik, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (formerly known as Serbo-Croatian), Danish/Norwegian or Malay/Indonesian. The issue is, of course, politically highly charged, and speakers of these languages normally consider them as distinct languages). Urdu has been borrowing more from Persian, while Hindi has been using Sanskrit to extend its vocabulary, and both are written in different scripts.

    Fun facts:

    • There are large numbers of Urdu speakers outside of South Asia in countries with Urdu workers or immigrants: The United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom each have between 350,000 and 400,000 speakers.
    • The language name Urdu is related to the English word horde: Urdu started to develop under the Muslim courts which ruled South Asia from the early 13th century. The rulers, the Moghuls, originally spoke Turkish. Their word ordu, meaning tent or army, was eventually used for the language of the army - which became modern Urdu.

    Classification:
    Urdu is an Indo-European language.

    Script:
    Urdu is written with an extended Persian script (which is an extended Arabic alphabet).

    So, drloc and everyone, Enjoy!

     

    This post brought to you by د (U+062f, a.k.a. ARABIC LETTER DAL)

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    • Fascinating. Thanks for the info!
    • Since your information mentions the distinction between native and second language speakers, I wonder... if your family speaks Urdu but you are raised in a country that speaks English, and so you essentially aquire both languages at once, are they both considered to be your native tongue, or does one get automatically classed as "second"?
    • Hi Ben,

      An interesting question.... myself, I usually just let the person decide what they think their 'native' language is. But I can imagine experts in different fields such as sociology and sociolinguistics might have official definitions of the term that cause it to not be a matter off opinion?

      I should probably try to cover this in a future post....
    • Great!
      This is a definite treat for Pakistanis (like me :))
    • Back when I posted about the Punjabi and Telugu Language Interface Packs (It's not Telugu [తెలుగు] Tubbies...
    • Ok, if I could get اردو, മലയാളം, Qhichwa Simi, فارسی, isiZulu, ಕನ್ನಡ, नेपाली, Lëtzebuergisch, कोंकणी,...

    • What does the татарча (Tatar) language have in common with اردو, മലയാളം, Qhichwa Simi, فارسی, isiZulu,...

    • You know that list of languages, the one that keeps getting bigger all of the time? You know, the one...
    • Ah yes, it has happened again. As we all knew, it could not end with اردو , Inuktitut , മലയാളം , Qhichwa

    • I am wracking my brains over here in SIAO Plaza. It was easy enough to come up with interesting titles

    • Many people have been curious. I mean, there have been XP Language Interface Packs released for Mapudungun

    • Language Interface Packs are not something that Microsoft has been charging people money for. So you

    • That list, you know? The one with all of the XP Language Interface Packs? Mapudungun , اردو , Inuktitut

    • I have talked a lot about Language Interface Packs for Windows XP here in this blog. And now after having

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