आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

[muckefuck]

पुस्तकालय pustakaalay, ਪੁਸਤਕਾਲਾ pustakaalaa, کتاب گھر / ਕਿਤਾਬ ਘਰ kitaab-ghar, دارالکتب daarulkutub "library"

So far, there's been great unanimity in the vocabulary I've been presenting, but that isn't by design. It's a by-product of the fact that I've been sticking mostly to basic vocabulary, which tends to show little difference between Hindi and Urdu (and Panjabi, in most instances). But you don't have to stray very far into the realm of "higher vocabulary" before you start hitting divergences.

The word किताब / کتاب / ਕਿਤਾਬ kitaab for "book" (from Arabic via Persian) will be understood anywhere, but that doesn't mean it's always the preferred usage. Shapiro's Primer, which explicitly teaches the sort of "shuddh-Hindi" found in the Indian educational system, ignores it completely in favour of पुस्तक pustak (a direct borrowing of Sanskrit पुस्तकं). (Always a bit more practical, McGregor alternates between the terms, but with noticeable bias towards पुस्तक.)

ਪੁਸਤਕ pustak is also the first translation listed in the Mahan Kosh Panajbi lexicon and enters into more compounds and collocations in the Singh Brothers dictionary than ਕਿਤਾਬ. But the latter is the only term used by Shackleton in his basic Panjabi grammar; it also beats out its Sanskritic rival 44,700 Ghits to 8,820. Perhaps needless to say, but Teach Yourself Urdu recognises only كتابيں kitaabeM and not *پستكيں pustakeM.

Since all the common terms for "library" basically equate to "book house", it's not surprising to find divergent NIA equivalents. The second element in the Hindi word listed above is Sanskritic आलय aalay "abode" (as in हिमालय Himaalay "abode of snow"), which has the Panjabi form ਆਲਾ aalaa. Panjabi ਪੁਸਤਕਾਲਾ gets about ten times the hits of ਕਿਤਾਬ ਘਰ kitaab-ghar which is literally a "book house", but I suspect that's because only Indian Panjabis commonly use Gurmukhi. Pakistani Panjabis rarely write their language and, when they do, many words are indistinguishable from their Urdu cognates. (کتاب گھر kitaab-ghar is, naturally, good Urdu as well.)

It's impossible to determine easily the relative frequency of کتاب گھر and دارالکتب in Urdu because the latter is lifted wholesale from Arabic. Literally, it is a "dwelling place (daar) of books (kutub)". If you're wondering about the different spelling here, it's because this word incorporates an Arabic "broken plural", a usage typical of higher registers of Urdu, Persian, and other Arabic-influenced languages.

And if this terminological richness weren't enough, there is also the recent English loan लाइब्रेरी / لايبريري / ਲਾਇਬਰੇਰੀ laaeebreree. I'm not sure exactly what niche it fills in the respective languages' ecologies, but certainly the related borrowing लाइब्रेरियन / ਲਾਇਬਰੇਰੀਅਨ laaeebrerian seems to be giving native coinages like पुस्तकाघ्यक्ष pustakaadhyaksh ("book supervisor") and ਪੁਸਤਕ ਪਾਲ pustak-paaL ("book protector") a run for their money. (I have to confess, I was kind of hoping for "library-wallah" myself.)

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

You know, in actual usage, I've only seen kitaab in Hindi ... I know there's a whole "Sanksritization" that's still sweeping through Hindi, but kitaab doesn't seem any less common.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised: Hindi textbook always seem to err on the side of too much Sanskritisation. Shapiro seems quite proud of it, in fact, telling the reader outright in the preface to his Primer, "This book is not a manual of colloquial Hindi." At least he's forthright about it, however, unlike McGregor who teaches shuddh-Hindi without really working the reader that that is what he's doing. (Though he does to some extent alternate between किताब and पुस्तक.)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

FWIW, "kitaab" is used in my Teach Yourself Devanagari book too.

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

The newsagent's near my house proudly advertises itself as a "news wallah" on its sign. It makes me a little happy every time I walk past.

[pne.livejournal.com]

What does NIA stand for?

Since short vowels aren't shown in Urdu orthography, کتاب گھر can of course be read kutub-ghar as well if one is feeling fancy.

Despite the alif in the first word? Wouldn't one have to write it کتب گھر for that reading to be licit? (Though given what Yiddish does to Hebrew loans, I wouldn't be surprised if Urdu took similar freedoms with Arabic/Persian loans as regards symbol-to-sound mapping.)

Also, I keep having to remind myself that "gh, kh" do not represent fricatives in this context....

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Crap, how could I have overlooked that? I'll correct the entry accordingly.

BTW, "NIA" could be either "Neo-Indo-Aryan" or "Northern Indo-Aryan". I use it loosely to mean "Hindi-Urdu, Panjabi, and other varieties very similar to them".

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Yes, but pustak-paal brings to mind images of a many armed God, choose your skin color, swords aplenty, ready to behead anyone who misfiles a text.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me more like a book's best buddy.

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

"But the elephant-headed one, protector of scholars, *told* me it was OK to bring the modakams into the stacks!"

[donncha22.livejournal.com]

The first term for library that came to mind when I started reading your article was "kitaab khaana", which must have been fairly current back when I lived in India. I think it would be "kutub khaana" in "suddh Urdu" ;-).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be "Urdu-e-Khaalis"?