Urdish (or Urglish), a
portmanteau of
Urdu and
English, is the
macaronic hybrid use of English and
Urdu in
Pakistan, involving
code-switching between these languages whereby they are freely interchanged within a sentence or between sentences. The term ''Urdish'' is first recorded in 1989. Other less common colloquial
portmanteau words for Urdish include (chronologically): ''Urglish'' (recorded from 1995), ''Urdlish'' (1997) and ''Urduish'' (1998).
Many bilingual or multi-lingual Urdu speakers, being familiar with both Urdu and English, display
code-switching in certain localities and between certain social groups. When
Urdu–
Hindi is viewed as a single spoken language, the portmanteaus Urdish and
Hinglish
Hinglish, a portmanteau of Hindi and English, is the macaronic hybrid use of English and languages of the Indian subcontinent, and especially Hindi. It involves code-switching or translanguaging between these languages whereby they are freely i ...
mean the
code-mixed tongue, where the former term is used predominantly in Pakistan and the latter term predominantly in
India.
On 14 August 2015, the
Government of Pakistan launched the ''Ilm'' Pakistan movement, with a uniform curriculum in Urdish.
Ahsan Iqbal
Ahsan Iqbal Chaudhary (; born 28 March 1959) is a Pakistani engineer and politician who is serving as the Secretary General of Pakistan Muslim League (N). He is a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since August 2018. Previously, he ...
, Federal Minister of Pakistan, said, "Now the government is working on a new curriculum to provide a new medium to the students which will be the combination of both Urdu and English and will name it Urdish."
References
{{interlanguage varieties
Urdu
Macaronic forms of English
Pakistani English