Javed Akhtar demolishes claims about purity of Urdu with just one sentence. Find out what he said

The 78-year-old illustrated this point by speaking a sentence in Urdu that had words from 10 languages. Interestingly these words are commonly used by people across the Indian subcontinent.

The sentence was: “Ek makan ke kamre mai ek gora-chitta aadmi, ek nanha munna bacha balti se nahaye. Bawarchi ne nashta diya, nashte mai urad ki daal aur toast tha. Admi ne chik hatai, sandook khola aur usme se pistol nikala. Dewar se bandook utari aur bahar rickshay mai baith ke chala gaya aur baccha bebas dekhta raha.”

Javed Akhtar’s masterclass in Lahore on the problem with the idea of a ‘pure language’. @Javedakhtarjadu pic.twitter.com/VWWmb6r4yu

— Ayush Tiwari (@sighyush) February 21, 2023

Akhtar said that words like makan (meaning house) was Arabic, while words like kamara (room) are Italian, chittta means fair skinned im Punjabi, and nanha means young in Gujarati. He also mentioned that daily use works like deewar (wall) and nashta (breakfast) are from farsi or Persian, while bawarchi (cook) and sandook (trunk) are Turkish. He further added that urad is a Tamil word, rickshaw has Japanese origins, and bebas (helpless) comes from Sanskrit.

He argued that language is not formed overnight and it’s a slow long process in which new words keep getting added to one’s vocabulary. A clip in which Akhtar is making this point is going viral on Twitter.

Commenting on Akhtar’s explaination a Twitter user wrote, “Amazing depth of knowledge he has. Pure delight to listen to Javed Ji”.

Another person remarked, “His immense knowledge about his field makes me wonder if our generation clouded by modern tech could ever be this good.”