St. Louis based Washington University has launched an Urdu website featuring for the first time a web-based Nastaliq font that displays whether or not it is installed on the user's computer.
Called Intermediate Urdu (http://urdu.wustl.edu/) the website is most useful for people with "a basic knowledge of Urdu or those who have taken two semester of language course in any university system," Indian-American principal investigator M. J. Warsi told IANS.
The beauty of the site is that it utilises web-based Nastaliq font so that Nastaliq is natively displayed on the site without requiring the user to download an appropriate font, he said.
"It took us a year and half to complete the project," said Warsi, a gold medalist from Aligarh Muslim University and a West Bengal Urdu Academy award holder, who teaches in the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at the university,
"Intermediate Urdu comprises 16 interactive reading passages with corresponding audio and English summaries, dynamic online quizzes, and thirteen video interviews of Urdu scholars," he said underlining the importance of the site.
"All content is directed towards students at the intermediate level and preparing them for advanced level proficiency," Warsi said.
"This work has a great significance for development in the field of language pedagogy."
"We have plans to make 'Advanced Urdu' and then 'Beginning Urdu' websites to complete the sequence of Urdu learning," Warsi said.
Featured on the site are among others a speech of Maulana Azad, Bagh-o-bahaar, Alif Laila.
The website was developed with a grant from the South Asia Language Resource Centre at the University of Chicago.
Warsi was recently conferred with Hindi- Urdu literary award for his contribution in the field of Hindi-Urdu language and linguistics at the 22nd International Hindi-Urdu literary conference in Lucknow.
Click here to visit the site
Comments
tinkerbell10 said
That is so useful...thanks ...That is so useful...thanks Sanity...:-)
Though i do wish they would also have a tab for transliteration into Roman ....:-(
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”I have to stop saying "How stupid can you be?" I think people are starting to take it as a challenge."
sanity said
yo wlcm tinku. Yup u can ...yo wlcm tinku.
Yup u can suggest them in that site.
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ohh I am still a stranger for many others. :)
tinkerbell10 said
I think i will....it will be ...I think i will....it will be such a great help....for people like me who can understand Urdu to a large extent but cannot read the script...
and Mathboy comes up with such lovely essays - its a shame if i cant read it in Urdu...:-(
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”I have to stop saying "How stupid can you be?" I think people are starting to take it as a challenge."
sanity said
yup tinku ur right. There are ...yup tinku ur right. There are many who understands urdu well but could not read it.
If you are looking for a personal urdu teacher u can contact me. lol just kidding. You can contact ghazalz baji, suzain etc.
If you could able to read arabic then learning urdu is very easy.
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ohh I am still a stranger for many others. :)
ghazalz said
Really inspiring! That's a ...Really inspiring!
That's a great sharing sanity! Thanks for sharing!
tinkerbell you're welcome any time as sanity offered :)
samahat said
Good to see the news... ...Good to see the news... Thanks for sharing Sanity!
mathboy said
Thanks sanity for sharing ...Thanks sanity for sharing this. A great initiative indeed.
Tinker, My intuition says that sooner or later someone is going to take a stab at it. There are millions of people who speak Urdu well but can't read Urdu in Urdu script. Some people I met amazed me with their language ability, pronunciation, great vocabulary and fluency in Urdu. I was further amazed upon knowing that they can't read Urdu script.
Latest MS Word provides Urdu language facility where you can type and edit documents in Urdu. This drove Urdu software Inpage out of the market. I am optimistic that Google or Microsoft might come up with some solution to this soon.
sanity said
Thank you ghazalz baji, ...Thank you ghazalz baji, samahat, mathboy. :)
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ohh I am still a stranger for many others. :)
tinkerbell10 said
Thanks all of you for the ...Thanks all of you for the offer to help me learn to read...;-))
MB - i also hope and pray that they come up with something soon.....;-)
___________________________________________
”I have to stop saying "How stupid can you be?" I think people are starting to take it as a challenge."
suzain said
very informative....... ...very informative.......