University offers new Urdu program

The University is set to expand its South Asian Studies certificate program’s linguistic offerings with a new Urdu language program, which will be offered for the first time next fall.

Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, is spoken by about 104 million people worldwide. Despite some vocabulary differences, it is similar to Hindi and frequently used among Muslim populations in some regions of India.

The Urdu program, the establishment of which faculty and students have recently demanded, will offer introductory level courses in fall 2012. Each Urdu section will contain 10–12 students, and the language may be taught alongside Hindi in one class, because the two are mutually intelligible.

According to history professor and acting SAS director Gyan Prakash, the program may teach participants the Devanagari-based Hindi script in the first year’s course and the Persian and Arabic-based Urdu script in the second.

Advanced courses in Urdu and Hindi literature will not be offered initially but will follow in the third year of instruction, according to Prakash. Students pursuing the SAS certificate will have the option of using the language to fulfill the certificate’s requirements.

“For the last couple of years, there’s been a growing demand from students, particularly from graduate students, I must say,” Prakash noted. Graduate students who study the history or religion of the region find that they need the language in the course of their studies, he said. In the past, graduate students wishing to study Urdu have had to take language courses at Columbia University or the University of Pennsylvania, unless they learn it during a summer trip to India or Pakistan. “So that was the initial impetus,” he said.

Undergraduate students and faculty members have also urged the introduction of the program, Prakash said.

Because many students are unaware of Urdu’s global importance or its relation with Hindi, “there is some persuasion that we have to do to students and convince them that it is an important and interesting language to learn,” he explained. However, he said that the program hopes to see 10 or more students enrolled in the new Urdu courses next fall.

Joe Barrett ’14, who spent a year in India as part of the Bridge Year Program, sent several letters to the University requesting the introduction of Urdu classes and more advanced Hindi courses last year.

“I think the general problem,” Barrett said, is that “our current Hindi-Urdu program is pretty shallow.” Noting that Hindi instruction at Princeton currently does not extend beyond two years, Barrett expressed disappointment at the SAS’s lack of literature courses, which he said would appeal to Bridge Year participants as well as students from or with familial roots in Pakistan or India.

“The fact that Princeton doesn’t have advanced-level language classes is kind of depressing, because that’s how many people speak it and how important both India and Pakistan are both economically and politically,” he added.

Barrett said he had heard positive reactions to the new program and planned to participate in it himself in the coming year.

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Because of Pakistan and India’s growing global importance, it is imperative that Princeton work on expanding its South Asian Studies program, Shikha Uberoi ’13 said.

“We need to be two steps ahead of the game as the leading university and take charge of the South Asian Studies program,” Uberoi explained. Instruction in South Asian regional languages, such as Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, South Cambodian and Thai are critical to this advancement, she noted.

But aside from the geopolitical considerations, “it is such a vibrant part of our globe,” Uberoi said.

Current funding for the SAS program varies from year to year but would need to expand to support the additional faculty positions that the SAS would someday like to see added for instruction in the region’s music, film and religious history, Prakash said.

“For the limited needs that we have at the moment, we have enough funding, but actually what we want is a great deal more,” Prakash said. He added that the program wants to add more faculty, but “that’s the kind of big commitment that the University needs to make,” he said.