Re: A New Accent, Political Boundaries and Accents,

Lars Henrik Mathiesen scripsit:

> But are colloquial Hindi and Urdu really intelligible to monoglot
> speakers of the other language?
Yes, I think so.

> Urdu is essentially Hindi with most of
> the Prakrit-derived lexicon replaced by Arabic loans... or so I've
> been told.
That exaggerates the case.  There are many Persian and Perso-Arabic
loans in Hindi, and no Hindi speaker could do without them.  Urdu has
more, yes, and has fewer loans from Sanskrit (Hindi began as an attempt
to Sanskritize Urdu, basically), but most of the different vocabulary
is learned/technical terms.  At the colloquial level, I think there
is no real barrier other than whatever the speakers want there to be.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_