Learn about vowels in Urdu
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Intro |
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| Antoni: Does Urdu have any vowels? |
| Shazia: And what's the best strategy for reading? |
| Antoni: At UrduPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: little Maryam is learning how to read with her mother. She tries spelling out a word: |
| "b-o-o-k" |
| Maryam Ijaz : ک ت ا ب (kaaf tay alif bay) |
| Dialogue |
| Maryam Ijaz : ک ت ا ب (kaaf tay alif bay) |
| Shabana Ijaz: !کتاب (kitaab!) |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Maryam Ijaz : ک ت ا ب (kaaf tay alif bay) |
| Antoni: "b-o-o-k" |
| Shabana Ijaz: !کتاب (kitaab!) |
| Antoni: "Book!" |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: The Urdu language is written in a script called |
| Shazia: نستعلیق (Nastaliq). |
| Antoni: This has Arabic and Persian influences, and, as such, can be challenging for new learners of the language to master. Certain letters represent sounds that have no equivalent in most languages written in the Latin alphabet. For example, the sound related to the letter |
| Shazia: قاف (qaaf). |
| Antoni: In this lesson, we'll focus on vowel sounds. Urdu counts ten vowel sounds. Three of these are short vowel sounds, while the rest are long vowel sounds. There are no standalone vowels in Urdu, which means that they are either omitted or result from the combination of two letters. |
| First, let's see the short vowels. In writing, the short vowels are omitted. However, you can find them represented by symbols called |
| Shazia: اعراب (eyraab) |
| Antoni: or "diacritics." Diacritics are marks placed either above or below a letter in a particular word to indicate how it should be pronounced. You can find diacritics almost exclusively in books for children because usually you're supposed to guess where to place the short vowel sounds. |
| Antoni: Long vowels, on the other hand, are indicated using the letters, |
| Shazia: ا (alif), و (wao), ی (choti ye), and ے (bari ye), |
| Antoni: which are ideally modified by diacritics. This means that, especially at the beginning, both in the case of short and long vowels, you cannot always say how a particular word should be pronounced unless you know the context. To understand this better, let’s take a closer look at the dialogue. |
| Do you remember what word little Maryam was trying to read? |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Shazia as Maryam Ijaz : ک ت ا ب (kaaf tay alif bay) |
| Antoni: Now do you remember how her mother corrects her by pronouncing the word correctly? |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Shazia as Shabana Ijaz: !کتاب (kitaab!) |
| Antoni: This word shows you clearly how vowels work in Urdu. Little Maryam wasn't able to spell out the first vowel in the word |
| Shazia: کتاب (kitaab) |
| Antoni: because it was not marked at all, or indicated with a diacritic. She could read the second vowel sound represented by |
| Shazia: ا (alif), |
| Antoni: but she couldn't understand that the sound was a long sound, as the diacritic was missing. The rest of the long vowels are indicated through the letters |
| Shazia: و (wao), ی (choti ye), and ے (bari ye). |
| Antoni: To wrap up, let's see an example word for each vowel. Pay attention to the native speaker's pronunciation. First is the short "a" sound |
| Shazia: اکیلا (akela) |
| Antoni: meaning "alone". Next is the short "i" sound, as in |
| Shazia: دِن (din) |
| Antoni: which means "day." Next up is the short "u" sound, as in |
| Shazia: گُل (gul) |
| Antoni: which means "flower". Now, let's look at the long vowel sounds. The first is "a", as in |
| Shazia: صابر (Sabir), |
| Antoni: which means "patient." Next is "ee," as in |
| Shazia: اُمید (Umeed), |
| Antoni: which means "hope." Next is "oo," as in |
| Shazia: جُھوٹ (jhoot), |
| Antoni: which means "lie." Next is "o," as in |
| Shazia: کو (ko), |
| Antoni: which means "to." Next is "au," as in |
| Shazia: اولاد (aulaad), |
| Antoni: which means "children." Next is "e," as in |
| Shazia: تیل (teil), |
| Antoni: which means "oil." Last is "a," as in |
| Shazia: عینک (ainak), |
| Antoni: which means "glasses." |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you learned that the Urdu alphabet doesn't have stand alone vowels. However, the Urdu language has ten vowel sounds, when writing is either omitted, as in the case of the short vowels, or indicated through the letters |
| Shazia: ا (alif), و (wao), ی (choti ye), and ے (bari ye), |
| Antoni: as in the case of long vowels. In both cases, you have to guess the pronunciation or rely on diacritics. However, since native speakers don't use diacritics, the best strategy is to train your ear as much as possible, before mastering the writing. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Shazia: !الوداع (alwida!) |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Shazia Ashfaq (Urdu), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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