یا پھر، "… افیئر چل رہا ہے۔"
In my experience, the loanword افیئر/afe'ar has a more narrow meaning than the English word from which it originates: it's used specifically for "(illicit) love affairs" and not really for other types of affairs (I haven't encountered the loanword used in, eg, the sense in which it occurs in a phrase like "put your affairs in order").
I would partially disagree, as in English, when a word becomes plural, things can sometimes take different shades of meaning altogether, so it is not fair to compare "affair" and "affairs" (in, e.g, "put your affairs in order"). When it comes to the usage of singular "affair," while I agree that most of the usage concerns love affairs, especially love affairs which would not be approved or tolerated or would be illicit, there do exist usages in other contexts, at least in Hindi ("tumhaaraa kyaa affair hai?" like the English "it's my affair, mind your business"). The one place where a singular affair is used in English but I haven't heard in Hindi or Urdu is the following kind of sentence that OALD gives: "Her hat was an amazing affair."
Note that "affairs" plural also does make it into Hindi-Urdu in set loan phrases like "current affairs" and "parliamentary affairs."
Good to know! I feel like my circle's language use is fairly anglicized but using afe'ar/afeyar in this way still sounds slightly "surprising" to me.
I thought the OP was quite clear in specifying the language (Urdu) in which the equivalent of the English phrase “a love affair” was sought as opposed to an “affair”. The first thing that came to my mind was “mu3aashaqsh” which is a very common word. Whether this love affair is kosher or illicit did not really cross my mind and I don’t feel it is important.
Urdu:
“Put your affairs in order”
apne mu3aamilaat ko durust karo
“It’s my affair. Mind your business”
yih meraa zaatii mu3aamilah hai. is meN apnii TaaNg nah aRaa’o”
“Her hat was an amazing affair”
us kii Topii ek laa-javaab numaa’ish thii
Current Affairs
Haalaat-i-Haazirah
Parliamentary Affairs
paarliimaanii umuur/ umuur-i-paarliimaanii
I would humbly submit that my proposal at the very beginning of #3 ("… افیئر چل رہا ہے۔") is a legitimate answer the OP's question. (If it can be simultaneously true that معاشقہ is an Urdu word and that it has Arabic origins, then it can probably also be true simultaneously that the word افیئر is an Urdu word and that it has English origins.)
I was not saying that there's anything wrong with your translation, @Qureshpor jii! I was just proposing an alternative and commenting on one aspect of it that I thought was interesting.
At least to me, this is at least somewhat important since the English word "affair" in the context of romantic relationships carries connotations of illicitness. Maybe this is not what's implied every single time the word "affair" is used in this context, but it's a rather common usage. For example, here's what Wiktionary currently has to say about the English word "affair" (emphasis mine).
1. (often in the plural) Something which is done or is to be done; business of any kind, commercial, professional, or public.
2. Any proceeding or action which it is wished to refer to or characterize vaguely.
3. (military) An action or engagement not of sufficient magnitude to be called a battle.
4. A material object (vaguely designated).
5. An adulterous relationship (from affaire de cœur, affair of the heart).
6. A romantic relationship with someone who is not one's regular partner (boyfriend, girlfriend).
7. A person with whom someone has an adulterous relationship.
8. A party or social gathering, especially of a formal nature.
9. (slang, now rare) The (male or female) genitals.
---
Returning to the OP, another option that comes to mind is the word آشنائی aashnaa'ii, which can also have connotations of illicitness:
Platts:
s.f. Acquaintance, friendship, intimacy, familiarity; connection, relationship; connection by marriage; illicit love, carnal intercourse
۱. دوستی ، چاہ ، محبت .
۲. جان پہچان ، ربط ضبط ، معرفت.
۳. اُنس ، مانوسیت .
۴. ( کسی بات سے ) واقفیت ، آگاہی
۵. مرد عورت کا ناجائز تعلق .
۶. شناوری یا پیراکی .
۷. ( تصوف ) تعلق رب کا مربوب کے ساتھ کلیۃً اور جزئیۃً جیسے تعلق خالق کا مخلوقات کے ساتھ
FWIW, the "Affaire Profumo", which had a sexual component, in the Urdu wikipedia is titled پروفومو معاشقہ, but the "Affaire Dreyfus" is titled ڈریفس معاملہ.
I am afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, @aeynn SaaHib. The OP has asked for an Urdu equivalent for a “love affair” and not an “affair”. I concur with your logic but what’s the comparative history of “mu3aashaqah” and “affair”?
Once again your leaning is towards an “affair” whereas I am focused on a “love affair”. Perhaps, I am just an innocent simpleton.😀
In this day and age, it seems this “illicitness” has been injected into words that were quite “licit” once. Maybe one could perceive illicitness in milnaa, mel, milaap….
I would be interested to know if any “illicit” thoughts crossed the OP’s mind when the question was being posed.
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Yes, I would also be interested in knowing if that's the context the OP had in mind. My understanding of the phrase "love affair" still carries illicit connotations, but maybe this is not what the OP wanted 🙂
Platts lists this illicit meaning for aashnaa'ii and it is from 1884, so "this day and age" has lasted at least 139 years...!
I would be interested to know this too, if you have any data to provide. For what it's worth, Platts (1884) does not have an entry for معاشقہ at all, and the earliest example of this word cited in the Urdu Lughat is from 1944.
EDIT: Just to add some more data, the story puraanii sharaab na'ii botal by Mumtaz Mufti (1905-1995) has several occurences of افیئر, like this one:
ان کا ایک نا ایک افئیر تو چلتا ہی رہتا ہے۔
The story griin haa'uus by Joginder Paul (1925-2016) has this:
گریٹ گبئر کی بیوی یہاں امریکہ آنے سے پیشتر وہاں کینیا میں ہی ایک جرمن وائٹ ہائی لینڈر کی بیوی تھی اور وہاں مولو سے بھی اس کا افیئر چلتا رہا تھا۔
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Yet another option, which is very common and colloquial, is X kaa Y ke saath chakkar chal rahaa hai.
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Crossed wires again, I am afraid aevynn SaaHib. I am well aware of the variety of meanings of aashnaa’ii. I was pointing to, for example, the term “fairy” being used for a male homosexual. Similarly new connotation for the word “queer”.
I am currently away from my station and do not have access to my resources. Frankly, I am surprised to see that mu3aashiqah is as recent as 1944. Is there an entry for “affair” in Platts and Urdu LuGhat? Did you find any occurrences of “love affair” in your searches? After all, the OP has asked for an Urdu equivalent for “Love affair”.
First, in the interest of making this forum community feel inclusive to all current and future members of the queer community, I'd like to explicitly express my hope that that you aren't suggesting that there's some kind of a moral equivalence between someone who happens to be attracted to people of the same gender, and someone who breaches a commitment to monogamy that they willingly entered into. I'm sure that this isn't what you meant, and I just wanted to state this clearly 🙂
Second, the word queer has been used in English in the context of same-sex attractions at least since 1894, and apparently "the word fairy appeared in the 1870s and was universally understood by the 1890s." Over a century now! These words may have been pejoratives at that time, but language and culture are perpetually in flux ("sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā," after all -- or, if you prefer Ghalib's rendering, raat-din gardish meN haiN saat aasmaaN 😉); since then, they have been reclaimed by gay liberation movements as markers of pride and have been losing their feeling of "illicitness." And in fact, quite some time has elapsed even since this reclamation began: the "Radical Faerie" movement began in the late 1970s, for example, and the reclamation of the word queer seems to have begun in the late 1980s. By now, in my circles, people of my age and younger almost don't hesitate at all to identify themselves as queer. 🏳️🌈
There is no entry for افیئر in either of those dictionaries. (In light of the literary examples quoted above, I'm not entirely sure what you might be implying by asking this question. Perhaps nothing, so I will leave it there before I inadvertently "cross wires" or "grab the wrong end of the stick" again 😅)
I did not 🙂 You might notice that I have never in this thread asserted that the entire English phrase "love affair" has been borrowed into Urdu. I asserted rather that افیئر is an Urdu word with English origins, and I would stand by this. You might also notice, if you look again at the opening post, that the request for a translation of "love affair" was followed up with the example sentence "X is having an affair with Y" (as opposed to "
As I tried to say in #11, I understand "love affair" to be essentially a synonym for "affair," except that prefixing the word "love" eliminates the non-romantic meanings of the word "affair." I don't think that "love affair" is typically used in English for romantic relationships of an arbitrary kind. For example, it does not seem to me to be all that typical to use "love affair" to describe a romantic relationship that exists between two members of a married couple. But anyway, I reiterate my hope that @99sobi will at some point tell us more precisely what kind of relationships they had in mind...!
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In this song (which is the usual kind of Sufi-pop stuff, and without any suggestion to anything "illicit"), they use the word mo3aamla(h) and yet they feel the need to specify that the "matter" is "of love".
[from "illaa allaah"]
3ishq kaa ho mo3aamla(h),
to laazim-o-malzuum kyaa.
3ishq meN jo paR gae,
to Haakim-o-maHkuum kyaa.
[from "illaa allaah"]
3ishq kaa ho mo3aamla(h),
to laazim-o-malzuum kyaa.
3ishq meN jo paR gae,
to Haakim-o-maHkuum kyaa.
From "Except Allah" (laa ilaaha illaa Allaah..... there is no god except Allah)
When the affair be of love
Then what is the connecting and the connected? [no difference between the connecting and the connected]
When those who have fallen in love
Then what is the ruler and the ruled [no difference between the ruler and the ruled]