By TCN News,
Aligarh: Inaugurating a three-day national seminar on “Structure of Contemporary Urdu & Tracing the Footsteps of Urdu Grammatical Traditions”, the Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Prof. Sibghatullah Farooqui on 2nd February said that Urdu occupies a unique unusual position in the Indian linguistic scenario. Born in the Indian soil and a product of an intimate interaction between the linguistic currents of Indo-Aryan and Perso, Arabic, Urdu genetically belongs to the Indo-Aryan family of languages and has been for centuries a language of the people of all faiths.
The three-day national seminar is being organized by the Department of Linguistics, AMU in collaboration with Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language, New Delhi and Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.
AMU VC Prof. Sibghatullah Farooqui inaugurating the National Seminar on Structure of Contemporary Urdu & Tracing the Footsteps of Urdu Grammatical Traditions at AMU on 2nd Feb. 2012
AMU VC Prof. Farooqui maintained that the language did not remain confined to one particular region. Due to migration of population, historical events such as shift of capital, preaches and propagation of the Sufi thoughts and to a certain extent, literary acceptability, the language got transported to many parts of India.
While welcoming the delegates from all parts of the country, Prof. S. Imtiaz Hasnain, Chairman, Department of Linguistics highlighted the achievements of the Department and said that the Department enjoys the privilege of being a member of the prestigious UGC-SAP and it has now entered the second phase of DRS. Every year the Department organizes international and national seminars and conferences on socially relevant themes and issues of national significance, be it impact of globalization on language or problems of Language, Culture and Identity in a multilingual context, on role of linguistics in communication and new theories of literary criticism.
Prof. Hasnain said that the Department has also been actively involved in conducting various projects and has completed six major projects sponsored by the UGC, Ministry of Information Technology and Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.
The Director of the Seminar, Prof. Khateeb S. Mustafa said that at least thirty scholars from different nooks and corners of India are expected to coverage and deliberate on the themes on various issues involving the structure of Urdu, convergent features of different dialects of Urdu is also of the focused area of the seminar.
He said that Joan Joshua Ketelaar’s grammar was the first grammar ever written on Hindustani Language. His medium was Dutch language and he had spent nearly thirty years in India as the Trade Director of Dutch East India Company.
In his presidential address, Prof. Qazi Afzal Husain, Dean, Faculty of Arts said that most of Urdu grammars were written by the Europeans for their own interest. Mr. Gilchrist’s Urdu dictionary is an example of his great contribution.