The case of Persian izaafat (article written for an online forum in 2002)

Zafar Syed, ALUP, 2002

The case of Persian izaafat is Urdu/Hindi words surfaces every once in a while on
various online forums ... but the discussions never resulted in any meaningful
conclusion.
Most people would agree that the izaafat is not allowed between Urdu/Hindi
words: While you can say, "rang e gul", but "rang e phool" is a no-no. But the
(million dollar) question has always remained illusive: WHY? Why we can't use
the izaafat between two Urdu/Hindi words, or one Urdu/Hindi and one
Persian (or derived from Persian) word?

Is it a question of religious parochialism, or a case of some linguistic bias that

does not allow one "Muslim" (Persian) and one "Hindu" (Urdu) word to join
together? This theory, while appealing to some, crashes to the ground when we
consider such constructions: sheesha-ghar, ‘ ajaaib-ghar, bai-Dhangaa, bilaa-
jhijhak, bilaa-rok-Tok, and hundreds others, where one Persian/Arabic and one
Urdu word has been conjoined and which are accepted as standard Urdu. Then
what is the problem with the izaafat?

I guess I've found the answer. Here we go:

Izaafat is a Persian grammatical rule to link two words to denote a relation or

derivation. An exact English equivalent is "of". "boo e gul" is the odor of the
flower, "naala e dil" is the lament of the heart, "dood e chiraaGh" is the smoke of
the lamp, etc. I repeat: It's a rule of Persian grammar.

Now a language is a strange beast; it's at the same time the most widely used
and one of the least understood human tool. While it readily adopt, absorb,
patronize "nouns" from other languages (especially when the lending language is
spoken by a relatively powerful society: remember the Arabic saying, "Language
of the king is the king of languages"?), they are as much as adamant to borrow
alien verbs.

Even some verbs might get exchanged, but the real distinguishing character of
any language is its grammar. That's why, in order to keep its integrity, languages
furiously resist any changes to its grammar.
Consider this:

In English, one method of pluralization is to add an "s" at the end of a word. For
example, car --> cars, book --> books, home --> homes, etc. Now in Urdu/Hindi,
we can use both "car" and "cars", "book" and "books", "home" and "homes", but
we cannot use the English grammatical *rule* of pluralization by adding an "s" to
Urdu/Hindi words. We can't, for example, say, "kitaabs", "gaaRees" and "ghars".
Can we?

(Many more examples from many languages can be given)

Coming back to izaafat: it's a part of Persian grammar to show

relation/derivation. In Urdu/Hindi, we have "kaa" "ke" "kee" instead. While we can
use whole Persian phrases joined by this rule (like boo e gul) in our own
language, we can't pick a Persian grammatical principle and apply it to make, for
example, boo e phool.

This is precisely why the izaafat is not allowed in standard Urdu/Hindi.

All this, of course, in my humble opinion,