Learn The Urdu Alphabet

It stands as the tenth most spoken language in the world, with a total of 230 million speakers, including as a second language. The Urdu language is the official state language of Pakistan and is constitutionally recognized in India.

Urdu emerged in the 12th century, based on the regional languages of northwestern India, serving as a lingua franca after the Muslim conquest. The language is part of the Indo-Aryan branch within the Indo-European family of languages. The term "Urdu" was used for the first time by poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi in about 1780, although it existed under a number of names, which included Hindvi, Hindi, and Hindustani.

Urdu is very closely related to Hindi because it comes from the Indo-Aryan base, having similar phonology and grammar, hence making it mutually intelligible. However, Urdu and Hindi are quite different in their written forms and their sources of vocabulary. The script for writing Urdu is Nastaliq, which is a modified form of the Perso-Arabic script, while Hindi uses Devanagari. Most of Urdu's vocabulary originates from Arabic and Persian, while Hindi draws more from Sanskrit.

It has a long tradition of literature, mostly steeped in poetry. Its golden age was in the 18th and 19th centuries when a number of well-known poets wrote in this language. Urdu continues to play a significant role in communication and culture in South Asia and its diaspora community around the world, from the Middle East to the UK, US, and Canada.