Urdu
Lingering on the blackboard in our conference room:
The words
Urdu
and
Horde.
I miss Farukkh and his passion for his homeland.
Over coffee
After the latest department politics–
What would he do, stuck in experimental physics?
What would I do, a woman in a strange land?–
We would talk of words and tensions and loneliness.
At some point he told me how the two words related,
And wrote them on the board so I could see them.
The only other words I know
That entered English from those regions
Are
Pajama
and
Shampoo.
Urdu [Hindi urdU-zaba^-n, lit., camp language](1796)
:an Indic language that is an official literary language of Pakistan and is widely used in India
horde [MF, G & Pol; MF & G, fr. Pol horda, of Mongolic origin; akin to Mongolian orda camp, horde] (1555)
pajama [Hindi pa^-ja^-ma, fr. Per pa^- leg + ja^-ma garment](ca. 1892)
shampoo [Hindi ca=po, imper. of ca=pna^- to press, shampoo](1762)
