A few notes:

  • Whenever I talk about a word’s etymology, I’m getting it from Wiktionary, unless otherwise noted.
  • I transliterate Hindi/Urdu words as I bring them up; these transliterations are just so non Hindi/Urdu speakers can get an idea how words are pronounced. I’m not using any systematic approach to transliteration, so certain aspects of pronunciation will be lost if you’re only reading my Latin transliterations.

One of the conversations from my time studying Hindi in Mussoorie has stuck with me over the last several months. Walking from the language school to our usual lunch spot in Landour, one of my fellow students mentioned to me an interesting phenomenon she had recognized. In written Hindi, writers would often substitute equivalent Urdu words in order to keep their readers engaged, much like how writers in English will use synonymous words to keep their writing from sounding too repetitive.

Before continuing, let me clarify what I mean by “Hindi” and “Urdu” words. Most words in Hindustani are derived from either Sanskrit or Persian and Arabic. When I talk about “Hindi” words, I’m talking about words that have been derived (or in some cases just taken directly) from Sanskrit. Similarly, when I talk about “Urdu” words, I mean words that have been derived from Persian and Arabic. What’s confusing about this is that people who identify as Hindi speakers will most certainly use many “Urdu” words, and vice versa. One of the distinguishing factors between Hindi and Urdu as spoken and written languages is that Urdu tends to use, on the whole, more Persian/Arabic derived words while Hindi, on the whole, tends to use more Sanskrit derived words. (Of course, not all words in Hindustani are derived from Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic. Take the word कमरा (“kamra”) or “room”, for example. This comes from Portuguese câmera or “chamber”, which in turn comes from Latin. Another, possibly more interesting example is the word संतरा (“santara”) or “orange”, which is derived from name of the Portuguese town Santarém.)

I’ve now been speaking and reading Hindi long enough to actually be able to see what my fellow student was talking about. Moreover, I think that this phenomenon is not just limited to substituting equivalent Urdu words in written Hindi. What follows is series of observations about the way I’ve seen synonyms being use in both written and spoken Urdu/Hindi.

I have distinct memories of High School teachers encouraging me and my fellow students to diversify our choice of adjectives in our writing. Instead of “good” or “nice”, I was told, we should be using “splendid” or “pleasant”. Importantly, I was also encouraged to not repeat the same descriptors over the course of a short span of text. In written Hindi, the same idea seems to apply; writers will substitute synonymous adjectives in order to keep their texts interesting. Where Hindi seems to diverge from English is in the fact that writers will also regularly substitute synonymous nouns.

These substitutions might be an equivalent Hindi or Urdu word, like swapping समाचार (“samachar”) for ख़बर (“khabr”), or “news”, or simply one of the many other synonyms in which the language is awash. In one recent BBC Hindi article I was reading, for example, the author substituted पत्र (“patr”) for चिट्ठी (“chitthee”) (“letter”, as in a piece of correspondence) in the space of two sentences. Both of these are “Hindi” words, with पत्र being much closer to Sanskrit, and less common in informal settings. We might even see ख़त (“khat”), the Urdu word for letter, though I suspect that this might not be as common as the others. I’ve seen this sort of substitution in spoken Hindustani as well. Speakers seems to move between equivalent words without even noticing. Perhaps, as a native English speaker, I do the same. However, I think that words in Hindi have more direct synonyms than in English: Do we have three to four direct, commonly used synonyms for the word “letter” in English?

As I’ve been talking with more people in Hindi, I’ve had the chance to observe the intersection between linguistic identity and synonym choice. People who identify as Hindi speakers will regularly use words of Persian or Arabic origin without necessarily calling them “Urdu” words. These words are simply part of the Hindi lexicon. Some words, however, seem to take on an almost shibboleth quality, identifying the speaker as an Urdu or Hindi speaker. Two examples of this are the words “लेकिन/لیکن” (“lakin”, or “but”) and “तलाफ़ुज़/تلفّظ” (“talafuz”, or “pronunciation”). I’m not 100% sure of the Devanagari spelling of “तलाफ़ुज़”, so feel free to hit me up on Twitter with a correction. लेकिन comes from Arabic by way of Persian, and has Sanskrit derived equivalents (“परंतू” and “किंतु”). However, most people, in my experience, do not use the words “परंतू” or “किंतु” in conversation. The word तलाफ़ुज़, however, is quite the opposite; most people use the Sanskrit derived “उच्चारण” (“ucharan”). Furthermore, using the word तलाफ़ुज़ identifies you as an Urdu speaker, much like (though perhaps not as strongly as) using the greeting “السلام عليكم” (“assalaam alaikum”). Unlike, perhaps, a native Hindi speaker, I experience no instinctual difference between words like तलाफ़ुज़ and उच्चारण. Having spent time around Arabic, however, I find it interesting when people strongly identify तलाफ़ुज़, but not लेकिन, as an Urdu word, seeing as both are, in my mind, of Arabic/Persian origin.

Straying a little from the topic of synonyms, it seems to me that pronunciation, in addition to synonyms, can be a means of signaling linguistic identity. Take the word सबज़ी/سبزی (“vegetable”), for example. Most Hindi speakers will pronounce this as “subzi”, but some will say “subji”. For Urdu speakers, it is almost invariably pronounced “subzi”. In written Hindi, I’ve found that Devanagari letters like क/क़, ख/ख़, ज/ज़, and फ़/फ are often used interchangeably. If we forget the dot in “ज़” (“z”), it becomes “ज” (“j”), potentially explaining why some folks say “subji” instead of “subzi” (here I wonder if writing informs pronunciation, or the other way around). In Urdu, the difference is not a dot, but an entirely different letter: “ز” vs “ج”, potentially explaining why you’d not be likely to hear an Urdu speaker say “subji”. Certain sounds present in the Urdu writing system, like “ع” are simply absent from the Hindi version of Devanagari. We can see this in words like “बाद/بعد”, where the “ع” turns into a “आ”. If we were to pronounce “بعد” as written, as a voiced pharyngeal fricative, IPA letter “ʕ” (note that in Urdu the ع is not always pronounced this way), whoever is listening would likely identify us as an Urdu speaker.

I’ve only been learning Hindi for around a year, so I imagine that some of the impressions I’ve shared here will develop, or change entirely as I continue to delve deeper into the language. In particular, I’m quite wary of the notion that Hindi has more commonly used synonyms for nouns as compared to English, as I feel that I am subject to some sort of cognitive bias. It would be interesting to devise some means of testing this hypothesis.