Urdu Resources

[Anonymous]

I am looking for an owner for this thread. If you want to manage and update this first post for this language, let me know.

[Speakeasy]

Missionary Language Board of Pakistan (MLB) Urdu Course
The Urdu course to which I referred in the preamble of this discussion thread was written and published under the auspices of "The Missionary Language Board of Pakistan (MLB)." Although my copy of the course indicates "Revised 1982. Reprinted March 1990", published by the MLB in Murree, Pakistan, my searches of the internet have not yielded any information on this organisation, leaving me to conclude that it has since been dissolved. As far as I can tell, the course was published in 1952, and perhaps earlier, revised in 1958 and accredited to the Reverend J.H. Hewitt, and further revised and expanded in 1982. The course components appear to have included:

MLB Course Book, Urdu-1, accompanied by six audio cassettes.
MLB Course Book, Urdu-2, accompanied by six audio cassettes
MLB Reading Primer
MLB Preliminary Reader
MLB Reader
MLB Manual (no description available)
MLB Syllabus
Verb Form Drill Sheets
Flash Cards of Model Sentences
Making A Sound Start in Urdu, by Peter Grainger
Helpful Hints for Newcomers to Pakistan, by Merle Inniger

Course Structure
This introductory course in Urdu appears to have been conceived for presentation by an instructor and for independent study. I would describe the approach to teaching as a combination of the grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods (although not to the extent of the FSI/DLI Basic courses).. The lessons are sequenced so as to introduce specific grammatical concepts, illustrated by situational conversation topics, which are reinforced by model sentences, sentence-pattern drills, and other exercises. Each lesson is coordinated with material from the readers which form part of the course materials. The explanations on grammar and usage are quite detailed. From very early on in the course, the conversations and drills are printed in Romanized and Urdu scripts; however, as the lessons progress, the script is printed in Urdu only. A series of five reviews, mini-tests, informal assessments, and progress tests are included each of the course manuals. The audio cassettes contain voice recordings in support of the conversation topics and drills.

Extract from Lesson 3

MLB Urdu-1 1.JPG

Extract from Lesson 20

MLB Urdu-1 2.JPG

Targeted Audience and Course Emphasis
These course materials were prepared with the needs of aspiring Christian missionaries to Pakistan in mind. Nevertheless, anyone seeking an basic introduction to the Urdu language could very easily and very profitably use these materials. Although a very minor portion of the materials involves the discussion of religious parables and miracles, this is done within the wider context of general language acquisition; that is, the overwhelming emphasis of the course is on acquiring practical skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Urdu.

Utility for the Independent Learner
The course instructions direct the student to the publication “Making A Sound Start in Urdu”, by Peter Grainger, particularly for the first three lessons. I have be unable to find a trace of this publication. However, my review of the main course book suggests to me that an independent learner could either (a) simply forgo this step, or (b) replace these materials with, for example, the first 10 lessons from a modern self-instruction course such as “Teach Yourself Urdu”. Alternatively, an independent learner could work with the paired set “Teach Yourself Urdu” and “Teach Yourself: Read and Write Urdu Script”, or with some similar course, and use the MLB course, drills, audio recordings, and readers as supplements to their studies.

Disposition of the MLB Urdu Course Materials
I would imagine that a few copies of the MLB Urdu Course lie buried away somewhere in the archives of universities, Christian missionary schools, and the like. However, I suspect that there would be very little commercial demand for these vintage materials. Nevertheless, in my opinion, they merit being preserved and, in that vein, I have begun digitizing my copy of the MLB Urdu-1 course and the accompanying Reader for inclusion in my personal collection. Upon completion, I would be pleased to transfer the physical materials, in exchange for postage costs only, to a “serious” collector of vintage language materials who, hopefully, would also have an interest in the Urdu language (perhaps that would be expecting too much!).

UPDATE: 28 January 2019
I finally completed the digitizing of the MLB Urdu-1, Stage-1 course manual and audio cassettes, a process which gave me an opportunity to have an in-depth look at the materials. Some additional observations and thoughts:

Audio Recordings and Methodology
Taking into consideration the condition of the materials, which was pretty rough, I managed to produce reasonably-clear MP3 files for a total duration of approximately 5-1/2 hours, which I segmented down to the individual Model Sentences, Vocabulary Lists, Verb Conjugations, and Phonetic Exercises. Although the Phonetic Exercises were on the last two cassettes, they are numbered as Lesson 1, Lesson 2, et cetera, leaving me to conclude that they are the recordings of the phonetic exercises which appear at the beginning of each lesson (in Urdu script) in the course manual.

Although the course manual includes a generous quantity of exercises, including sentence drills which are based on the model sentences and which employ elements drawn from the vocabulary lists, I would not consider this to be an audio-lingual course. Furthermore, and regrettably, either the sentence drills were not recorded at all and were meant for practice in the classroom or they formed part of a separate set of recordings.

MLB Urdu-1 Course for Self-Instruction
As I noted in my initial presentation, MLB Urdu-1, Stage-1 course formed part of a larger set of materials which were designed for presentation by a competent instructor. While the MLB Urdu-1, Stage-1 course manual contains elaborate notes on grammar and exercises for practicing the spoken language, regrettably, the recordings that accompanied the manual included, essentially, those of the Model Sentences and Phonetic Drills only. In addition, at about a third of the way through the course, the authors abandoned the Romanized script and, from that point forward, replaced it with Urdu script. As a result, I believe that using these materials (alone) for the self-instruction of the basics of Urdu would represent a daunting task. Nevertheless, these materials would represent a much-appreciated and highly-valuable supplementary resource for use in conjunction with other courses, drawn from the list of resources in my initial post, or others.


EDITED:
Typos, Formatting.
Update January 2019

[cjareck]

DLI Urdu Basic / FSI Urdu Basic (none)
Given the geopolitical importance of the region where Urdu is commonly-spoken, I was surprised by the apparent absence, either on the Yojik.eu website, or on the U.S. Government’s ERIC website, of a major DLI/FSI Basic Course for this language. Actually, I suspect that such courses do exist but that they have not yet been released to the public.

As far as DLI is concerned, somewhere on the Internet (ERIC most probably), I found "Catalog of Instructional Material" from July 1975 and there is no Urdu course inside. From the languages whose names begin with "U", they have only Ukrainian.

[Daristani]

While looking forward to Speakeasy's description of his newly purchased Urdu materials, I can confirm that the "Spoken Urdu" series put out by Spoken Language Services was indeed a reissue of the set "A Course in Urdu" by Barker, Hamdani, etc., originally published by McGill University. (The SLS reprint was in considerably reduced size, though, making the already-small letters very tiny indeed.)

Another user-friendly introduction to Hindi-Urdu is the BBC-produced book, with two cassettes, "Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal". The set of videos for it have been put on-line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZvFc7i ... vyrHWOI63i

A short review of it is here: http://www.languageadvantage.com/review ... LZsnB.dpuf

Finally, a useful site with a variety of resources for both Hindi and Urdu language and literature is:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/prit ... index.html

[Speakeasy]

Asian Languages Reading Level Rated Children’s Books

I was introduced to Let's Read: Asia's Free Digital Library for Children today. It has digital children's books in the following languages … Urdu (اردو) …[inserted: amongst numerous others]

Asian Languages Reading Level Rated Children’s Books