Obviously, part of the reason that Roman Urdu has taken off is because of the hegemony of the Western alphabet in our world today. The Roman alphabet is darn near universal. Indonesians and Turks recognized this long ago and forcibly converted their alphabet to Roman letters under the hands of enlightened despots. Urdu, however, is being pushed into the same position, except by the hand of Silicon Valley. The second reason that Urdu-speakers are turning to Roman transliteration is because we—can I use that pronoun?—hate writing and reading in naskh. See the above comparison to Braggadocio in English. It isn’t that you can’t make the letters out; but it is cognitively dissonant and interferes with the essential ease of language. The disinterest in naskh creates a feedback loop to Roman Urdu. And the whole thing is happening in silence.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 03:18:56 +0000
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