THE strange thing about grammar is that the native speakers of a language do not need it, at least while learning it as a child. Native speakers instinctively know the rules that govern the use of ...

Urdu is a hybrid language that is based on the spoken languages of Northern India with a generous overlay of Arabic and Persian words. ‘Urdu’ is a Turkish word, which means a camp. When Muslims from ...

Writer, translator and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil’s critical work on Urdu progressives and other writers is well-recognised as are her translations from Urdu. In her latest book, Love in the ...

AN online encyclopaedia erroneously claims that Maulana A’shiq Ilahi Merathi was the first person to have translated the holy Quran into Urdu. This is just one example of how misleading information ...

The last two decades have transformed the ecology of literary culture worldwide, but perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in the geographically dispersed world of Urdu letters. Social media, with ...

Chairman Press Council of India,former judge Supreme Court Of India. Many of you who do not know Urdu have shown an interest in Urdu poetry. So I shall briefly tell you something about its features.

Prose poetry is a literary form that combines elements of prose and poetry to create a unique narrative voice and style. It appears as standard prose, without line breaks, but utilizes poetic devices ...

An Indian currency note is a wonder of linguistic diversity. Take a Rs 100 note, for example. The amount “rupees one hundred” is written in a staggering 17 scripts. Most of the scripts represent ...

The origins of the Urdu language is a subject on which not only linguists and political historians cross swords, but even ideologues and Gramsci’s state-intellectuals, representing a supposedly ...

Sudha Pai in 2002 stated, “If a language is not characterised by political neutrality, it too often becomes the tool by which this language group seeks to extend its domination over the minority ...