Urdu (??nativename|??) Spoken in: ?? Region: ?? Total speakers: 61 million native,
104 million totalGenetic classification: Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Western Hindi languages
Hindustani
Urdu colspan=2 style="color: ??fontcolor??; background-color: lawngreen;">Language codesISO 639-1 —?? ISO 639-2 —?? ISO/DIS 639-3 ??2 SIL (2000) obsolete?? See also: Language - List of languages
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Urdu (اردو) is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan family which developed under Persian influence in the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire.
Taken by itself, Urdu is approximately the twentieth most populous natively spoken language in the world, and is the national language of Pakistan as well as one of the 24 national languages of India. However, Urdu is often considered to be part of a wider Hindustani language, in which case it is the fourth most populous language in the world.
In India, Urdu is spoken as a mother tongue in the northern and central states by three times the population it has in Pakistan. While Indian Muslims might ostensibly be seen as identifying more with Urdu, Hindus and Sikhs naturally speak Urdu regardless of religion, especially when they have grown up in such traditional Urdu strongholds as Lucknow and Hyderabad. Indeed, many contend that the language spoken in Bollywood films is closer to Urdu than to Hindi, especially in filmi songs.
Urdu is also spoken in urban Afghanistan. Outside the Indian subcontinent, it is spoken by large numbers of workers in the major urban centres of the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. Urdu is also spoken by large numbers of immigrants and their children in the major urban centres of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia.
Countries with large numbers of first-language Urdu speakers:
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Modern Vernacular Urdu is the form of the language that is most widespread and is spoken around Delhi, Lucknow and Lahore.
Dakhini (also known as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, Mirgan) is spoken in Maharashtra state in India and around Hyderabad. It has fewer Persian and Arabic words than standard Urdu.
In addition, Rekhta (or Rekhti), the language of Urdu poetry, is sometimes counted as a separate dialect.
In Urdu there is also a singular or a plural noun form.
Note: This page contains
IPA phonetic symbols
in Unicode.
Urdu is written in a derivative of the Persian alphabet, which is itself derivative of the Arabic alphabet. Like Semitic languages, it is written from right to left. Urdu is similar in appearance and letters to Arabic, Persian, and Pashto. In their modern incarnation, Urdu differs in appearance from Arabic in that it typically uses the more complex and sinuous Nasta’liq style of script, whereas Arabic is more commonly written in the modernized Naskh style. Nasta’liq is notoriously difficult to typeset, so Urdu newspapers were made from hand-written masters (a.k.a katib or khush-navees) till late 1980s. The daily Jang was the first urdu newspaper composed in Nasta’liq on computer. There are efforts underway to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and internet. Now-a-days, nearly all urdu newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals composed on computers via various urdu software.
Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into Roman letters omit many phonemic elements which have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin alphabet. It should be noted that a reasonably comprehensive system has emerged with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but it can only be properly read by someone already familiar with Urdu, Persian, or Arabic for letters such as:ژ خ غ ط ص or ق and Hindi for letters such as ڑ . This script may be found on the internet, and it allows people understanding the language without knowledge of their written forms to communicate with each other.
A list of the Urdu alphabet and pronunciation is given below. Urdu contains many historical spellings from Arabic and Persian, and therefore has many irregularities. The Arabic letters yaa and haa are split in two in Urdu; one of the yaa variants is used at the ends of words for a long ē sound, and one of the haa variants is used to indicate the aspirated consonants. The retroflex consonants needed to be added as well; this was accomplished by placing a superscript ط (toay) above the corresponding dental consonants. Several letters which represent distinct consonants in Arabic are conflated in Persian, and this has carried over to Urdu.
| Letter \ | Name of letter \ | Pronunciation in the IPA |
|---|---|---|
| ا | alif | [ə, ɑ] after a consonant; silent when initial. |
| ب | bay | [b] |
| پ | pay | [p] |
| ت | tay | dental [t̪] |
| ٹ | ttay | retroflex [ʈ] |
| ث | say | |
| ج | jeem | |
| چ | chay | |
| ح | badee hay | |
| خ | khay | |
| د | daal | dental |
| ڈ | ddaal | retroflex |
| ذ | zaal | |
| ر | ray | dental |
| ڑ | arr | retroflex |
| ز | zay | |
| ژ | zhay | |
| س | seen | |
| ش | sheen | |
| ص | suaad | |
| ض | zuaad | |
| ط | toay | |
| ظ | zoay | |
| ع | aein | after a consonant; otherwise , , or silent. |
| غ | ghain | |
| ف | fay | |
| ق | qaaf | |
| ک | kaaf | |
| گ | gaaf | |
| ل | laam | |
| م | meem | |
| ن | noon | or a Nasal vowel |
| و | vaao | |
| ہ, ﮩ, ﮨ | chottee hay | at the end of a word, otherwise or silent |
| ھ | do chasmee hay | indicates that the preceding consonant is aspirated (p, t, ch, k) or murmured (b, d, j, g). |
| ی | chottee yay | |
| ے | badee yay | |
| ء | hamzah | or silent |
Urdu is occasionally also written in the Roman script. Roman Urdu has been used since the days of the British Raj, partly as a result of the availability and low cost of Roman movable type for printing presses. The use of Roman Urdu was common in contexts such as product labels. Today it is regaining popularity among users of text-messaging and Internet services and is developing its own style and conventions. Habib R. Sulemani says, "the younger generation of Urdu speaking people around the world are using [Romanized Urdu] on the Internet and it has become essential for them, because they use the Internet and English is its language. A person from Islamabad chats with another in Delhi on the Internet only in Roman Urdu. They both speak (almost) the same language but with different scripts […]. Moreover, the younger generation of those who are from the English medium schools or settled in the west, can speak Urdu but can’t write it in the traditional Arabic script and thus Roman Urdu is a blessing for such a population."
| English | Urdu | IPA | Notes |
| Hello | السلام علیکم | اداب would generally be used to give respect. و علیکم السلام is the correct response. | |
| Hello | اداب عرض ہے | "Regards to you" (lit Regards are expressed), a very formal secular greeting. | |
| Good Bye | خدا حافظ | Xuda is Persian for God, and Hafiz is from Arabic hifz "protection". So lit. "May God be your Guardian." Standard and commonly used by Muslims and non-Muslims | |
| yes | ہاں | casual | |
| yes | جی | formal | |
| no | نا | casual | |
| no | نہیں | formal | |
| please | مہربانی | ||
| thank you | شکریہ | ||
| Please come in | تشریف لائیے | lit. Bring your honor | |
| Please have a seat | تشریف رکھیئے | lit. Place your honor | |
| I am happy to meet you | اپ سے مل کر خوشی ہوی | ||
| Do you speak English? | کیا اپ انگریزی بولتے ہیں؟ | ||
| I do not speak Urdu. | میں اردو نہیں بولتا | ||
| My name is ... | میرا نام ۔۔۔ ہے | ||
| Which way to Lahore | لاھور کس طرف ہے؟ | ||
| Where is Bombay? | ممبئی کہاں ہے؟ | ||
| Urdu is a good language. | اردو ایک اچھی زبان ہے |
Foreign forms such as the Sonnet, azad nazm and Haiku have also been used by some modern Urdu poets.
Probably the most widely recited, and memorized genre of contemporary Urdu poetry is Naat-panegyric poetry written in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. Naat can be of any formal category, but is most commonly in the ghazal form. The language used in Urdu naat ranges from the intensely colloquial to a highly Persianized formal language. The great early twentieth century scholar Imam Ahmad Raza Khan, who wrote many of the most well known naats in Urdu, epitomized this range in a ghazal of nine stanzas (bayt) in which every stanza contains half a line each of Arabic, Persian, formal Urdu, and colloquial Hindi. The same poet composed a salaam-a poem of greeting to the Prophet Muhammad, derived from the unorthodox practice of qiyam, or standing, during the Mawlid, or celebration of the birth of the Prophet-Mustafa Jan-e Rahmat, which, due to being recited on Fridays in some Urdu speaking mosques throughout the world, is probably the more frequently recited Urdu poems of the modern era.
Another important genre of urdu prose are the poems commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain and martyrs of Karbala, called noha (نوحہ) and marsia. Anees and Dabeer are famous in this regard.
Urdu developed as local Indo-Aryan dialects came under the influence of the Muslim courts that ruled the Indian subcontinent from the early thirteenth century on. The official language of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature, was Persian, while the language of religion was . The mingling of these languages led to a Vernacular that is the ancestor of today's . Dialects of this vernacular are spoken today in cities and villages throughout Pakistan and northern India. Cities with a particularly strong tradition of Urdu include Hyderabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and Lucknow.
The birthplace of the Urdu language is not known with certainty. Urdu literature has been found from the Delhi Sultanate. One hypothesis proposes that Urdu originated in or around Delhi over a period of several centuries, and that initially it was used and adopted by Muslims. The word urdu itself comes from the word ordu, "tent" or "army", from which we get the word "horde".
Wherever Muslim soldiers and officials settled, they carried Urdu with them. Urdu (along with Persian) enjoyed commanding status in the literary courts of Muslim rulers and nawabs, and flourished under their patronage, partially displacing Sanskrit as the language of religious intellectuals in Indian society. The prestige bestowed upon Urdu at the expense of Sanskrit was a source of irritation for many religious Hindus, and to this day there remains religiously motivated conflict between the languages that sometimes makes dialogue difficult.
The word 'Hindi' has two uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu.
Colloquial Urdu, on the other hand, basically is Hindustani; it can be argued that Standard Hindi is a form of colloquial Urdu, intentionally de-Persianized and de-Arabicized, with its formal vocabulary borrowed instead from Sanskrit. The colloquial language spoken by villagers and the lower classes of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The only important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Arab-Persian script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi. However, since independence and partition the formal registers used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, Standard Urdu uses Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while Standard Hindi uses Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official languages being heavily Sanskritized or Persianized, and nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the other standard.
These two standardized registers of Hindustani have become so entrenched as separate languages that often nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. However, there are unifying forces as well. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi", but the language used in most of them is the same as that of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally neutral Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India itself and in Pakistan. The songs, however, are typically pure Urdu, and many of the top Urdu poets make their livings writing for "Hindi" films. That is why Indian film is extremely popular in Pakistan, and Pakistani TV is likewise popular in India.