Two Sides of The Coin: Is Technology Distorting Urdu?

(For PC World Pakistan)

A recent report I came across online, spoke of the adverse affects of technology, on Urdu. The report went on to say that the rising trend amongst youngsters in Pakistan to type in a lately developed, ‘shorthand style’ (of sorts), has led to an increased popularity of Urdu written in the Roman script. The popularity has apparently led to the ‘alteration’ of Urdu and led the younger generation of native Urdu speakers to forget, or even no longer understand the script that Urdu is usually written in.

But where is this script-deforming, language-ruining, Roman Urdu written? For the most part, Roman Urdu is today used by native Urdu speakers in writing SMS on their mobile phones, or online on popular social media websites when users write messages for others using Roman Urdu. Here is one example of an SMS that I found online written in Roman Urdu:

“Dua apne lye mangna ibadat hy or dusron k lye mangna khidmat hy. Ibadat se jannat mlti hy or khidmt se Allah.” Translated, it means that ‘asking God for something for one’s own self is prayer, and asking for a boon for others is helping them. Prayers help you gain Heaven while helping others helps you find God.’ The poetry itself has little meaning here however, it is quite true that writing Urdu in this way and script is becoming increasingly popular amongst the younger generation in Pakistan also.

Simply look around and you will realize that technology has come into our lives and changed it in many ways. Cell phones, computers, laptops, the Internet, television… are all instances of how much of our time we spend using technology in our daily lives. Youngsters concerned more with enjoying themselves than with anything else, spend almost all their spare time in a world where technology plays a very important, if not the supreme role.

And it is for this very reason that the cell phone, Internet and computers play a very important role in the life of most youngsters… including those who belong to Pakistan. Consequently, SMSs, chats and ‘Facebooking’ as we refer to it in the local lingo, are of prime interest to most of our youngsters. It is for this reason also that it is the youngsters, more than anyone else who have been affected by technology.

But while on the one hand technology has had many beneficial affects on people, it has had some adverse affects also, one of which is the impact technology has had on Urdu language. Considering how language and communication are some of the most important tools human beings possess, it is important to understand that a language must evolve to stay alive. But evolution is not synonymous with distortion, and honestly, do we need to play around with the script that has been given to us? A journalist, Nasir Mohammed, said, “Had it not been for the Bollywood film industry, the Urdu language would have joined the ranks of dead languages.” Or at least, Urdu would have been dead in India.

And considering that, how about also realizing the fact that while most of our younger generation does type loads of text messages or Facebook statuses in Urdu written in the Roman script, it is probably one of the few ways which still keeps a large proportion of the youngsters connected to their mother tongue? In an effort to promote Urdu, a language spoken by roughly 60 million people in 20 different countries worldwide, Dr Sarmad Hussian, a professor and head of the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing, programmed Urdu as a computing language in the Nastaliq Naqsh script.

The project started in the February of 2007, and continued for three years. Funded by the IDRC, the International Development Research Center in collaboration with the NUCES, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, this project aimed to make Urdu a computing language. The benefits of doing so would be that nearly 60 million people would be able to access the information available on the Internet. But today, of the 60 million who ideally should have benefitted from the incorporation, how many are actually using the script? Unfortunately very few either utilize it when typing out a document on Microsoft word, or even when we are trying to put up something online.

English is the lingua franca online, and we have, for the most part adapted ourselves to using it to suit our purposes. That said, not only has writing Urdu in the Roman script become exceedingly common, it has also popularized Urdu poetry and the language as a whole, to quite a great extent. People, and here I am referring to most urban, Pakistani students, who would otherwise have chafed at reading one of the classic poets of their native tongue in the original script, are quite willing to read any couplet by Ghalib, or even of regional language poets such as Waris Shah, over SMS or Facebook in Roman Urdu.

Not only has technology and the writing of local poetry, sayings and quotes in the Roman script popularized them, but made them more accessible to an increasingly ‘Minglish’ speaking youthful audience. For the rest of it, none of us can stem the tides of change. An online survey suggested that a very large percent, 37% Pakistanis, loved sending Urdu SMS in English. Isn’t it better to use these 37% to try and preserve not just Urdu but all our regional languages in any way possible rather than have them fade away and die because we were too orthodox to allow them to be written in the Roman script?