Customer Reviews

Urdu: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book fills and important hole in the literature: a solid, up-to-date, in-print grammar of the Urdu language. I have used it to supplement my study of other Urdu texts.

I have a few minor quibbles with the book:

1) The Urdu transcription system is not given explicitly. Reference is made to R. S. McGregor's Urdu Study Materials, an out-of-print book published in India. While it may be readily available in major centers of learning or through interlibrary loan, I think that reference to an out-of print book for something as significant as the transcription system should be avoided. Perhaps in future editions the system should be included in the text.

2) Sections appear where reference is made to 'ko' marking objects and 'ko' marking subjects. I'm not sure that this is the best way to address the use of 'ko', since it is more a comment on peculiarities of English grammar than any feature of Urdu. In Russian there are similar impersonal structures that use dative objects for what we would consider subjects in the English translations. A simpler approach to the issue of 'ko' might be to say that it marks dative objects, which may, however, be translated into English by words having different grammatical roles in the corresponding English sentence.

Incidentally, I also have the "Teach Yourself Urdu" book and have found it of value, though not for its grammatical descriptions, which don't seem to me to be a distinguishing strength. I have collected the Urdu texts of the dialogues into a notebook that I find useful for rapid reading practice.

This is a reference grammar of a traditional informal type. It provides much information about how different things are said, including such specialized constructions as dates and times, with numerous examples. It has a detailed index and a fair amount of cross-referencing. Examples are provided both in Arabic script and in romanization.

A small complaint is that the romanization is not explained. Instead, a reference is given to another book, one that can hardly be expected to be on every student's shelf.

The main problem with this book is that it is weak on analysis and generalization. It is appropriate that a book intended for non-linguists learning Urdu should avoid excessive use of technical terminology and formalization, but the author's descriptions of grammatical constructions are so vague that one often cannot tell what is possible and what is not, or when exactly the contruction or form is used. For example, in native Urdu noun phrases, most modifiers of the noun precede the noun. In particular, genitive phrases precede the noun, so that "Rahim's daughter" is "Rahim kii beTii" that is: Rahim GEN daughter. Urdu also has another construction, the izaafat construction, which is borrowed from Persian. In this construction, the order is reversed. The izaafat equivalent of the above would be: "beTii e Rahim": daughter of Rahim. So, is the izaafat construction simply a variant of the Noun Phrase in which the order of possessor and possessed is switched, otherwise like other, native, Urdu Noun Phrases? This book never answers that question. In fact, the answer is no. izaafats cannot have any other internal modifiers, such as adjectives or relative clauses. This is but one example of many. You get a general idea of what a construction looks like, but all too often you don't get enough information to be able to use the construction with any confidence or to have a good idea of what to expect.

Similarly, I found the explanation of when the different tenses and aspects of the verb are used to be excessively vague. Some technical terms, such as "habitual" and "punctual" are used, but rather sloppily, not in their established technical senses.

The book does not justify the analysis given, even where the reader may wonder about it. For example, "experiencer" subjects typically take the postposition ko. Schmidt refers to these as "dative subjects". Some readers will wonder if these are really subjects. There is evidence that they are, for example the fact that they can be antecedants of apnaa "self", but this is not discussed.

All in all, there is a good deal of useful information in this book, but it is not the sort of detailed, comprehensive, reference grammar that answers all, or at least most, of the questions one has about a language.

A great book. It does what it says. Clear, easy to understand. It says that this book is not for complete beginners, but it could be, given only that said beginners are not complete idiots. I bought another book, a 'teach yourself' book, which I needn't have, given that this book suffices.

Mr. Poser's review missed the point of this book, I think. Having studied from Barker off and on over many years, I passed over Essential Urdu both at conferences and libraries until the other day when I checked it out just to.... check it out. I haven't been able to put it down; I even read it while I'm cooking.
Despite the reviewer, Mr. Prendergast, who said the book was good for beginners, too, I believe it is my vague familiarity with Urdu which gives the book so much impact on my understanding of how the language works. IMHO, only a linguistically sophisticated person would grasp the import of the fascinating structures found in everyday Urdu, let alone in the many borrowing from Arabic, Persian, Hindi, English, and so on. (One of my great frustrations is that when I trot out a new Urdu word for, say, school registration, my friends say, "Oh, we just say 'registration'").

To be fair to Mr. Poser's complaints, I do believe it is my wide if not deep readings in linguistics plus my study of Barker and others, including the Russian Klyuyev, that allow me to 'fill in' some of the gaps he cites. So, indeed, it may not be for beginners.

But let me cite some elements of the book that I found so enlightening and helpful. The sections on particles and interjections, courtesy forms,
time and dates, and causatives were particularly useful to me. Let me be clear here, I am comparing this book to all other such manuals; it could be that all in this series are as careful about covering as many aspects of speech as possible, but my experience of many years in using grammar manuals of many languages is that these elements are often skipped or slighted, or, at least, not presented in a compact way.

And I think it is this latter point that is both a strength and a bit of a put-off in the book. The long pages of forms are not a way to learn those forms; they must be learned through use, not memorization. But as Prof. Schmidt lays the paradigms out, it does clarify them for the person who already has some of the forms internalized through use.

So, for me, reading and annotating this book for my use has been a series of epiphanies. I especially liked the examples of how the play of transitive/intransitive and causative forms allows a range of expression typically represented in English by totally different words. In teaching Spanish, I found it important to explain how Spanish vocabulary, smaller in toto than that of English, supplements meaning through derivation. This section explains how causatives do that in Urdu (not to say Urdu's lexicon is small by any means!).

I recall when an eminent scholar of Urdu was so kind as to e-mail me about my on-again, off-again study of the language and tell me that the language was pretty simple. When I responded that the morphology may be simple compared to Russian or Latin, but that Urdu more than compensates in the complexity of word-formation and syntax. You have only to read Prof. Schmidt's helpful gathering of ways to express obligation, probability, and so on, to realize that.

The features Mr. Poser wants delved into more would be appropriate, IMHO, for one of Routledge's Comprehensive series, and that is a hint to Routledge.

It's a grammar book, so it can't be all fun (but really, after "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" can this be an excuse anymore?). Good reference book when things don't make sense, but not a good way to learn Urdu. The fonts get strange in the Kindle version, so get it in hard copy instead.

I am an american born Pakistani who only began to learn Urdu late in life (age 18 or so). 10 years later, I am somewhat proficient in the language, but not fluent by any means. Through my years of speaking and book study, this book answers most of the many questions which I have had and which no one (not even my parents, who are native urdu speakers and also speak english well) has been able to answer to my satisfaction. I felt like I had an epiphany each day that I read this. I highly recommend this book for those attempting to learn the language on their own without formal classroom experience.

One caveat, to which I allude in the title of my review, is that this book is not for beginners. I recommend a simpler book first which will familiarize you with the language. After that, this book provides excellent further study. It is the best resource I have found on the market.

This book is much too difficult for a beginner with no knowledge of pronunciation or knowledge of the sound of the language.
NOT A BEGINNER'S BOOK!