South Asian Languages Taught at SOAS - Urdu
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and one of the official languages of India. It is one of the most widely-spoken languages of South Asia, and has acquired a wider distribution in other parts of the world, notably the UK, where it is regarded as their major cultural language by most Muslims from Pakistan and northern India.
In its everyday spoken form it is fundamentally similar to Hindi, though distinguished from it in script and in higher vocabulary.
Besides its important role as the chief vehicle of Islam in South Asia, Urdu has a rich secular literature, whose poetry is closely based on Persian models.
Courses:
Our Urdu curriculum is currently being revised; please contact us for up-to-date information. We currently offer the introductory course Urdu Language 1, and also the half-unit course Literacy in Urdu (designed for those who have an Urdu-speaking background but do not know the script; also suitable for students of Hindi who wish to be able to read and write Urdu as well as Devanagari). Introductory courses in Urdu language are not designed for students with an Urdu-speaking background. Urdu is also taught in the Language Centre.
Contacts:
Dr Amina Yaqin (ay@soas.ac.uk); Mr Naresh Sharma (ns19@soas.ac.uk); (or the Language Centre (languages@soas.ac.uk).
Suggested reading
- M.A.R. Barker, Spoken Urdu (3 vols), Ithaca NY 1975.
- D. Matthews, Teach yourself Urdu, London 1999.
- C.Shackle and R.Snell, Hindi and Urdu since 1800, London 1990.
- D.J.Matthews, C.Shackle and S.Husain, Urdu literature, London 1985.
- Pritchett, Frances W., Nets of awareness: Urdu poetry and its critics, Berkeley 1994.
