د ر و ا ز ہ
Darvazah: A Door into Urdu
By Afroz Taj and John Caldwell
خوش آمدید
Welcome
Darvazah – A Door Into Urdu is an interactive, multimedia Elementary Urdu learning website. We invite you to explore the site and try out the various lessons and learning resources. If you are ready, go to the next tab: “How To Begin.”
About the Project
The Darvazah site is available to anyone in the world at no charge. Whether you are an independent learner or enrolled in a formal Urdu language course, you will find many resources here to enhance your language learning. Darvazah is designed as a stand-alone, comprehensive language course, but it also complements other Urdu-learning textbooks and curricula.
The site consists of 24 multimedia lessons designed to provide the equivalent of two full semesters of university-level language instruction. By working your way through the materials presented here, you will learn basic spoken and written Urdu.
Each lesson is an integrated module that includes short films, grammar notes, glossaries, cultural notes, “video-professors,” interactive activities, and other learning resources. The lesson movies were filmed in India, Pakistan, and the United States using native speakers and students. Every fourth lesson (i.e. Lessons 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24) is a review lessons which does not include new grammar topics but rather supplementary glossaries and activities. Upgrades to the site are currently in progress, and additional learning resources and exercises are being added periodically.
Because Urdu and Hindi are essentially the same language in their colloquial spoken forms,
we have created a parallel Hindi learning site called “A Door Into Hindi.” [https://tajhindi.unc.edu] In both sites, we have deliberately combined traditional Hindi and Urdu contexts, much as they overlap in India and Pakistan. Although some words may appear odd when used in the “wrong” context (e.g. “Namaste” in Pakistan), we believe that an attempt to segregate Hindi and Urdu would be misleading and counter to the lived linguistic experience of people in South Asia.
Whether you are a student or teacher of Urdu, your input is welcome in the form of suggestions, questions, or comments. We envision this project as collaborative and adaptive, so if you would like to share your own Urdu teaching materials, we would be happy to add links to this site. Please send your communications to us at the email addresses below.
Course Designer
Dr. Afroz Taj
Associate Professor, South Asian Studies
Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
taj@unc.edu
Project Manager
Dr. John Caldwell
Teaching Associate Professor, Hindi-Urdu
Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
john.caldwell@unc.edu
Throughout this project, we have had much help, input, and encouragement from our official collaborators Rupert Snell, Phil Lutgendorf, Herman Van Olphen, Susham Bedi, and Frances Pritchett, as well as many other colleagues around the world. The project was initiated by funding from the International Research and Studies Program of the US Department of Education and supplemented by the North Carolina Center for South Asia Studies. Subsequent technical support has been provided by the Office of Information Technology at North Carolina State University and the Office of Arts and Sciences Information Services (OASIS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It would be impossible to list all of the people who have contributed to “A Door Into Hindi” and “Darvazah” but a partial list is included below. We would especially like to thank the many students who have worked as web designers, media editors, and guinea pigs, as well as the many volunteers in India and Pakistan whose talents are featured in the Lesson films. We send a special word of thanks to Arfaeen Iqbal and Marriala Consultants in Pakistan.
Collaborating Institutions
- The University of North Carolina South Asia Section in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- North Carolina State University Hindi-Urdu Program in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
- The Carolina Asia Center
- The North Carolina Center for South Asia Studies
- The Triangle South Asia Consortium
We would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their suggestions, advice, input, guidance, hard work, and/or moral support throughout this project: Tej Bhatia, Frances Pritchett, Daisy Rockwell, Rupert Snell, Shamsur Rahman Farooqi, Sean Pue, Arfaeen Iqbal, Abdul Hameed, Khawar, Grace Clark, Rita Akhtar, and the USEFP staff, Stephen Poulos and the South Asia Language Resource Center, Nilakshi Phukan, Claire Lampe, Chandra Mohan, Sandeep Hattangady, Qaiser Abbas, Amy Wilson, Samuel Eisen, Edward McDermott, Christine Corey, Gang Yue, Ruth Gross, Jan Bardsley, Lori Harris, Linda Zhang, Amanda Tueting, Paula Cherry, Missy Seaton, Tony Burgin, Tony Stewart, Hal Levin, Pamela Lothspeich, Shaheen Parveen, Matt Osment, Lars Sahl, Melissa Stewart, Tim Hensley, and the Center for Language Engineering (Pakistan).
How to Begin
Every student has a different learning strategy. If you have never studied a foreign language before, you will have to discover what learning strategy works best for you.
“Darvazah” contains twenty-four lesson units as well as an Urdu alphabet learning module. Most Lesson units are integrated modules that consist of:
- A Lesson Movie with subtitles
- A transcript of the Lesson film dialogue
- A Lesson glossary
- A set of Lesson grammar topics
- Culture Notes
- Interactive language-learning activities
Every fourth lesson (i.e. Lessons 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24) is a review lesson that does not include new grammar information but rather supplementary glossaries and activities.
Lesson Media
Each Lesson contains links to media resources mounted on YouTube. You will need a reliable broadband internet connection in order to access the media. The Lesson movies include optional subtitles in Hindi and Urdu. You may use the tools provided by YouTube to pause, rewind, and slow down the films. Each Lesson unit also contains a transcript of the film dialogue with links to the Glossaries, Grammar units, and Culture Notes.
Activities
The Lesson Activities active the expressions and vocabulary words contained in the lesson. These may be attempted orally or in writing. Some activities are designed for use with conversation partners or small groups. We encourage you to undertake the written activities by hand rather than trying to learn how to type in Urdu.
The Urdu Writing System
While it is possible to learn Urdu without learning the Urdu writing system (Devanagari), this site assumes that you will learn how to read and write in tandem with learning how to speak and understand. We have created a simple Alphabet Module to guide you through the writing system. You should try to write the Lesson 1 written homework assignments in the Urdu script. In Lessons 1, 2, and 3, each glossary word is linked to an animated spelling movie. Click on the word to see and hear how the word is spelled. By Lesson 3 you should be somewhat comfortable reading and writing in Urdu.
Learning a new alphabet requires using visual memory for shapes, which is another skill that many of do not use regularly. We highly recommend that you make flash cards for yourself: each card should have one Urdu letter on one side, and on the other side, something that will help you remember the sound of the letter. Beware of online flashcard apps that generate the “sound” of the letters: most of these are not correct.
The Urdu fonts used in this website are Unicode based, which means that they should display correctly in all platform and browser environments. Most devices should be able to display the Urdu alphabet without any special apps or settings. Please see the table below to check whether the operating system and browser combination on your computer is displaying the Urdu font properly. The word in the left column [text in Unicode font] should match the word in the right column [image].
| The words in this column should look like | the words in this column |
| سلام |  |
| آپ کا نام کیا ہے؟ |  |
| کیا آپ اُردو پڑھ سکتے ہیں؟ |  |
If the columns do not match, your browser is not displaying the Urdu font properly. (Note: Due to differences in font styles, the two columns may differ slightly in line thickness or character design, but the basic forms should be the same.) You may be able to fix this problem by installing an Urdu font like “Noto Nastaliq” or “Nafees Nastaliq”, or by upgrading your operating system, or changing browsers.
Take the Plunge
Many students prefer to begin by watching the Lesson 1 movie. We have intentionally not provided English translation in subtitles. You can use the YouTube “Playback Speed” feature to slow down the dialogue, and you may wish to turn on the Hindi subtitles to see what you are hearing. After watching the Lesson Movie, you may refer to the Movie Script, the Glossary, the Cultural Notes, and the Grammar section before watching the movie again. After you feel that you understand most of what is going on in the Movie, you may begin trying the activities. If this approach works well for you, you should use it for each new lesson. It is also possible to approach the modules in a different order, depending on your learning style.
Learning a new language requires using aural memory, a skill which many of have not used since we learned our first language. Try to memorize words and phrases by sound, before writing them down. You can hear the words in the Lesson Glossaries by click on the Ear Icon next to each word. Once you have the words and dialogue “in your ear” you should then look at the Alphabet Module. Go back and forth between the Lessons and the Alphabet Module so that each reinforces the other.
Now, whenever you are ready, you may proceed to Lesson 1.