Urdu Language

Urdu Language, national language of Pakistan, virtually identical to Hindi, and an officially recognized state language in India. The main difference is that whereas Hindi is written in the Devanagari script of India, Urdu uses the Persian-Arabic writing system.

Despite its official status, Urdu is not the most widely spoken language in Pakistan: in fact it is in fourth or fifth place (depending on the definition of “language”) with only around 10.7 million first-language speakers. There are many more speakers in India: 48 million, mainly in Uttar Pradesh state, which is predominantly Muslim in population. In total it is estimated that there are 104 million speakers of Urdu around the world, including tens of thousands in Mauritius and South Africa.

Urdu vocabulary differs from Hindi in having adopted many Persian and Arabic words. It began to diverge from Hindi in the 16th century, when India came under Islamic rule, and the focal point of the language was Delhi. Urdu literally means “camp language”. As Islamic influence spread across the Indian subcontinent under the Mughal emperors, Urdu spread with it.

Urdu only acquired official status as a separate language after partition in 1947 (before partition, the term “Hindustani” was used to refer to both Urdu and Hindi). Muslim refugees from parts of India settled in Karachi and other cities of West Pakistan. Consequently it became the language of trade, the media, and central government there. It is the first or second language of all educated urban Pakistanis, and is very widely understood in the countryside.

Compared with Sanskrit, Urdu has a greatly simplified morphology and syntax, with two genders and two basic noun cases; but the verb system remains fairly complex. The sound system of Urdu observes distinctions between aspirated (“breathed”) and non-aspirated consonants, and between dental and retroflex ones (see Phonetics).

Selected statistical data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International.