n his foreword to the 2022 edition of Shan-ul Haq Haqqee’s dictionary, Farhang-e-Talaffuz, linguist and lexicographer Dr Rauf Parekh rightly stated that once a language adopts a foreign word, the new word becomes its own and that word’s grammatical relations and semantic shades will now be governed by the new language. For instance, if English borrows a word from French, it will be the Englishmen who will determine the usage and pronunciation of that borrowed word. Insisting that the borrowed word retain its original French pronunciation and grammatical nuances shows one’s utter lack of understanding of how languages work and evolve.

Languages change with time and the common speakers of the language are the fundamental drivers of the change. However, for several reasons, scholars sometimes actively try to interfere in the natural evolution of the language by prescribing to the general public how a particular word should be used or pronounced.

In the case of Urdu, perhaps the words borrowed from Arabic mostly become the source of contention among linguists and common people. Some linguistic scholars are touchy when an Arabic word is misspelt or mispronounced. This is because often a slight mispronunciation in Arabic words results in a change in meaning.

I remember in my childhood watching the television host Quraish Pur, who was a highly learned person, unlike the breed of television hosts that we have today, holding a Bait Baazi programme with students of various universities competing. One of the contestants recited a famous couplet by Iqbal that starts with Kabhi Ae Haqiqat-i-Muntazar Nazar Aa Libaas-i-Majaz Mein. However, he made a slight mistake. Instead of reciting Muntazar, he uttered Muntazir. Quraish Pur rejected it and did not award any points to the contestant for that couplet, which perhaps resulted in his loss.

Changing muntazar into muntazir inverts the meaning: the latter denotes someone who is waiting for someone or something: the former means someone or something for whom the other person waits. If Zaid is waiting for Bakar, Zaid is muntazir and Bakar is muntazar. Since Urdu has borrowed both words from Arabic, literary scholars are justified in reprimanding the masses if they mispronounce any of those because allowing such errors to become a norm will cause a semantic confusion.

However, this raises a question. How can one define all the parameters under which linguists will be justified in denouncing certain usage or pronunciation of words?

For example, late Arabic scholar from Pakistan, Syed Rizwan Ali Nadvi, does not condone the pronunciation qameez, which is a very common word in Urdu used to denote both the long shirts that are worn over shalwar and the dress shirt worn with trousers. The word came from Arabic, in which it is pronounced qamees, ending in suad instead of zuad.

These days, almost everyone pronounces it qameez. As it is such a common word, the experts should now accept the collective decree of the speakers of Urdu who want to pronounce it with ‘z’ sound in the end instead of ‘s’. Nadvi, however, says it cannot be accepted under any circumstances.

In one of his essays that he wrote to highlight faults in Haqqee’s Farhang-e-Talaffuz, Nadvi seems to argue that qamees occurs in the holy scripture and its spelling must never be changed.

Nadvi wrote a couple of essays to denounce Farhang-e-Talaffuz, which was compiled by Haqqee with the focus on Urdu pronunciation. Haqqee even invented new pronunciation signs for the dictionary to denote vowel sounds of Urdu that the existing signs failed to aptly show. For example, the traditional zair, zabar and paish cannot be precisely used to show Yae-e-Makhloot of Hindi words that comes in words like pyar (affection) or kya (what). If a zair is placed on kaaf in ‘kya’, it will be pronounced as kiya, which is the past of the verb karna (do). Haqqee has attempted to resolve this problem by placing a jazm on the kaaf of Kya, which is a novel intervention as jazm always comes after zabar, zair or paish.

Languages do change with time and the common speakers of the language are the fundamental drivers of the change.

Farhang-e-Talaffuz literally means the dictionary of pronunciation. It was first published in 1995 by the Muqtadra Qaumi Zaban, which has now been renamed as Idara Farogh-i-Qaumi Zaban. Various literary scholars praised Haqqee’s efforts for preserving the Urdu pronunciation through the dictionary. However, when it came to words of Arabic origin, Haqqee perhaps could not accurately record their pronunciation or meaning, inviting the wrath of Nadvi, who seems to be somewhat puritan in his approach towards language.

As per Dr Parekh, Nadvi first attempted to get his critical piece published in a periodical of the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu but due to its overtly harsh language that called for recalling all the copies of the dictionary from the market, the Anjuman decided not to publish it, prompting Nadvi to publish it himself in the form of a booklet. Later, the Muqtadra Qaumi Zaban published that piece in its periodical with some amendments.

Nadvi highlights not only incorrect pronunciation of Arabic words but also incorrect meanings. For example, he points out that the word inshiqaq, which is also the name of a Surah in the Quran, was described as transitive, meaning to tear or break something, but actually it is intransitive and used when something breaks or is torn by itself without the action of any foreign agency. He points out that masadir (root words) like inshiqaq under the Bab Infi’aal are intransitive but Haqqee made them transitive in their meaning. He cites other similar words like insilakh, inshirah and intifaa whose meanings were incorrectly shown as transitive in the first edition of Farhang-e-Talaffuz.

He also criticises Farhang-e-Talaffuz over the inclusion of many Arabic words that he believes are never used in Urdu. He suggests that Haqqee included those words in the Urdu dictionary just to impart the impression how well he knew Arabic, a claim that Nadvi attempts to disparage in the first essay and the five subsequent essays that he wrote to denounce Farhang-e-Talaffuz.

The tone got more scathing in those subsequent pieces and they could not be published in Nadvi’s lifetime. The Arabic scholar died in 2016.

Later, Dr Parekh was able to get the manuscript of those essays and got them published in 2024 in a book titled Farhang-e-Talaffuz: Aik Tehqiqi-o-Tanqidi Mutal’ia.

Dr Parekh also included in the book two responses by Haqqee that he penned after the publication of Nadvi’s first critical piece. Though he is a lexicographer himself, Dr Parekh has avoided taking sides in the feud between Haqqee and Nadvi. However, on some occasions, he agrees with Nadvi’s criticism. He also highlights that Haqqee made many changes in the second edition of the dictionary and corrected some faults pointed out by Nadvi. That being said, Dr Parekh does not seem to have the puritan mindset of Nadvi. He explains in the footnotes where he thinks Nadvi falters in his assessment.

The compiler is also not rightfully happy with ad hominem attacks or controversies that Nadvi and Haqqee have tried to create in their pieces. Nadvi, on one occasion, says Haqqee plagiarised Haqqee’s father’s unpublished dictionary without sifting unnecessary words out of it. On the other side, Haqqee says compiling a dictionary is a thankless job and claims that a dictionary compiled by his father was eventually published after his death with the name of Maulvi Abdul Haq as the compiler.

Notwithstanding these controversial claims, the book is a useful resource to understand how Arabic words operate in Urdu and how much care should be taken to employ them in Urdu speech and writing.

However, Nadvi appears to be too strict on many occasions. His take on qameez has been discussed earlier in this piece. He is unhappy with the prevalent pronunciation of many other words.

Sha’oor (conscience) is another such word. Nadvi wants Urdu speakers to pronounce it as shu’oor with a paish on sheen rather than zabar as this is the standard pronunciation of the word in the Arabic language. In this case, he fails to appreciate the fact that it is not comfortable for the Urdu speakers to pronounce two rounded vowels paish on both sheen and ain, especially when the Urdu speakers pronounce ain like alif so it becomes a vowel itself.

Even the famous poet Anwar Shaoor, who does not take the art of language and poetry casually and believes that one needs to learn the poetic art from an expert before writing verses, pronounces his takhallus as shaoor.

Nadvi is also critical of words that are coined in Urdu using the morphological rules of Arabic. For example, he criticises the entry of istiqdaas in Farhang-e-Talaffuz and claims that there is no such word in Arabic. He criticises the writers who coined it on the pattern of other Arabic words of Bab Istif’aal like isti’maal, istighfaar, etc. He then checks the dictionary of the Urdu Lughat Board and finds istiqdaas there as well, along with a reference of its use in an Urdu book. A common Arabic word, taqaddus that is also used in Urdu, could have been used in lieu of istiqdas in the passage cited by the Urdu Lughat Board, he says.

Dr Parekh seems to disagree with Nadvi on this broad point. In his foreword to Farhang-e-Talaffuz, Dr Parekh defends such coinage, mentioning with other words the word muraghhan that is used to describe food with lots of oil. Muraghhan appears to be an Arabic word as it follows the pattern of Mufa’al but it is a coinage of Urdu speakers and is widely used in Urdu.

Nadvi even rejects such coinage of words by credible poets like Mir and Zauq. He is of the view that poets are often compelled to make new words or distort existing words to overcome the restrictions of meter and rhyme; therefore, such new words employed by poets once or twice should not make way into dictionaries.

One of the very interesting common mistakes in pronouncing Arabic words that has been described in the book is the names of two Islamic months commonly pronounced by the Urdu speakers as Jamadi-ul-Awwal and Jamadi-ul-Aakhir. Nadvi says both the names start from Jumada with a paish on jeem and khara zabar on chhoti ye. He then adds that the gender of Jumada is feminine, so the adjective following it must also be feminine. Hence, he prescribes Jumada Al-Oolaa and Jumada Al-Aakhirah as the correct pronunciations. Whereas Haqqee has correctly mentioned Jumada, Nadvi says that he committed a grave error by attaching masculine Awwal and Aakhir with it.

Given the general decline of linguistic sensibilities in our society, coupled with the tilt from the prescriptive to the descriptive grammar in academia, it seems improbable that the Urdu speakers will abandon Jamadi in favour of Jumada anytime in the near future.

Farhang-e-Talaffuz

Author: Syed Rizwan Ali Nadvi

Publisher: City Book Point, 2024

Price: Rs 900

The reviewer may be reached at bilal89ahmed@gmail.com