Urdu

Urdu, like Hindi, is a form of Hindustani.[26][27][28] Some linguists have suggested that the earliest forms of Urdu evolved from the medieval (6th to 13th century) Apabhraṃśa register of the preceding Shauraseni language, a Middle Indo-Aryan language that is also the ancestor of other modern Indo-Aryan languages.[29][30]

In the Delhi region of India the native language was Khariboli, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi.[31] It belongs to the Western Hindi group of the Central Indo-Aryan languages.[32][33] The contact of the Hindu and Muslim cultures during the period of Islamic administrative rule in India led to the development of Hindustani as a product of a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] In cities such as Delhi, the Indian language Old Hindi began to acquire many Persian loanwords and continued to be called "Hindi" and later, also "Hindustani".[42][43][44][45][32] In southern India (especially in Golkonda and Bijapur), a form of the language flourished in medieval India and is known as Dakhini, which contains loanwords from Telugu and Marathi.[46][47][48] An early literary tradition of Hindavi was founded by Amir Khusrau in the late 13th century.[49][50][51][52] From the 13th century until the end of the 18th century the language now known as Urdu was called Hindi,[45] Hindavi, Hindustani,[43] Dehlavi,[45] Lahori,[53] and Lashkari.[54] By the end of the reign of Aurangzeb in the early 18th century, the common language around Delhi began to be referred to as Zaban-e-Urdu,[55] a name derived from the Turkic word ordu (army) or orda and is said to have arisen as the "language of the camp", or "Zaban-i-Ordu" or natively "Lashkari Zaban".[56] The Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate established Persian as its official language in India, a policy continued by the Mughal Empire, which extended over most of northern South Asia from the 16th to 18th centuries and cemented Persian influence on Hindustani.[57][44] The name Urdu was first introduced by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780.[58][45] As a literary language, Urdu took shape in courtly, elite settings.[59][60] While Urdu retained the grammar and core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the local Indian dialect Khariboli, it adopted the Nastaleeq writing system[32][61] – which was developed as a style of Persian calligraphy.[62]

Urdu, which was often referred to by the British administrators in India as the Hindustani language,[63] was promoted in colonial India by British policies to counter the previous emphasis on Persian.[64] In colonial India, "ordinary Muslims and Hindus alike spoke the same language in the United Provinces in the nineteenth century, namely Hindustani, whether called by that name or whether called Hindi, Urdu, or one of the regional dialects such as Braj or Awadhi."[65] Elites from Muslim and Hindu religious communities wrote the language in the Perso-Arabic script in courts and government offices, though Hindus continued to employ the Devanagari script in certain literary and religious contexts while Muslims used the Perso-Arabic script.[65][61][66] Urdu replaced Persian as the official language of India in 1837 and was made co-official, along with English.[67] In colonial Indian Islamic schools, Muslims taught Persian and Arabic as the languages of Indo-Islamic civilisation; the British, in order to promote literacy among Indian Muslims and attract them to attend government schools, started to teach Urdu written in the Perso-Arabic script in these governmental educational institutions and after this time, Urdu began to be seen by Indian Muslims as a symbol of their religious identity.[65] Hindus in northwestern India, under the Arya Samaj agitated against the sole use of the Perso-Arabic script and argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script,[68] which triggered a backlash against the use of Hindi written in Devanagari by the Anjuman-e-Islamia of Lahore.[68] Hindi in the Devanagari script and Urdu written in the Perso-Arabic script established a sectarian divide of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide that was formalised with the partition of colonial India into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan after independence (though there are Hindu poets who continue to write in Urdu, including Gopi Chand Narang and Gulzar).[69][70]

Urdu was chosen as an official language of Pakistan in 1947 as it was already the lingua franca for Muslims in north and northwest British India,[71] although Urdu had been used as a literary medium for colonial Indian writers from the Bombay Presidency, Bengal, Orissa Province, and Tamil Nadu as well.[72] In 1973, Urdu was recognised as the sole national language of Pakistan – although English and regional languages were also granted official recognition.[73] Following the 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent arrival of millions of Afghan refugees who have lived in Pakistan for many decades, many Afghans, including those who moved back to Afghanistan,[74] have also become fluent in Hindi-Urdu, an occurrence aided by exposure to the Indian media, chiefly Hindi-Urdu Bollywood films and songs.[75][76][77]

There have been attempts to purge Urdu of native Prakrit and Sanskrit words, and Hindi of Persian loanwords – new vocabulary draws primarily from Persian and Arabic for Urdu and from Sanskrit for Hindi.[78][79] English has exerted a heavy influence on both as a co-official language.[80] A movement towards the hyper-Persianisation of an Urdu emerged in Pakistan since its independence in 1947 which is "as artificial as" the hyper-Sanskritised Hindi that has emerged in India;[81] hyper-Persianisation of Urdu was prompted in part by the increasing Sanskritisation of Hindi.[82] However, the style of Urdu spoken on a day-to-day basis in Pakistan is akin to neutral Hindustani that serves as the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent.[83][84]

There are over 100 million native speakers of Urdu in India and Pakistan together: there were 50.8 million Urdu speakers in India (4.34% of the total population) as per the 2011 census;[85][86] approximately 16 million in Pakistan in 2006.[87] There are several hundred thousand in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, United States, and Bangladesh.[88] However, Hindustani, of which Urdu is one variety, is spoken much more widely, forming the third most commonly spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English.[89] The syntax (grammar), morphology, and the core vocabulary of Urdu and Hindi are essentially identical – thus linguists usually count them as one single language, while some contend that they are considered as two different languages for socio-political reasons.[90]

Owing to interaction with other languages, Urdu has become localised wherever it is spoken, including in Pakistan. Urdu in Pakistan has undergone changes and has incorporated and borrowed many words from regional languages, thus allowing speakers of the language in Pakistan to distinguish themselves more easily and giving the language a decidedly Pakistani flavour. Similarly, the Urdu spoken in India can also be distinguished into many dialects such as the Standard Urdu of Lucknow and Delhi, as well as the Dakhni (Deccan) of South India.[19][46] Because of Urdu's similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can easily understand one another if both sides refrain from using literary vocabulary.[16]

Pakistan

Distribution of Pakistanis who spoke Urdu as their mother tongue at the time of the 1998 Pakistan Census

Although Urdu is widely spoken and understood throughout Pakistan, only 7% of Pakistan's population spoke Urdu as their native language around 1992.[91] Most of the nearly three million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazarvi, and Turkmen) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdu.[77] Muhajirs since 1947 have historically formed the majority population in the city of Karachi, however.[92] Many newspapers are published in Urdu in Pakistan, including the Daily Jang, Nawa-i-Waqt, and Millat.

No region in Pakistan uses Urdu as its mother tongue, though it is spoken as the first language of Muslim migrants (known as Muhajirs) in Pakistan who left India after independence in 1947.[93] Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India.[71] It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan, although the people from differing provinces may have different native languages.

Urdu is taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems, which has produced millions of second-language Urdu speakers among people whose native language is one of the other languages of Pakistan – which in turn has led to the absorption of vocabulary from various regional Pakistani languages,[94] while some Urdu vocabulary has also been assimilated by Pakistan's regional languages.[95] Some who are from a non-Urdu background now can read and write only Urdu. With such a large number of people(s) speaking Urdu, the language has acquired a peculiar Pakistani flavour further distinguishing it from the Urdu spoken by native speakers, resulting in more diversity within the language.[96]

Elsewhere

A trilingual signboard in Arabic, English and Urdu in the UAE. The Urdu sentence is not a direct translation of the English ("Your beautiful city invites you to preserve it.") It says, "apné shahar kī Khūbsūrtīi ko barqarār rakhié, or "Please preserve the beauty of your city."

Outside South Asia, it is spoken by large numbers of migrant South Asian workers in the major urban centres of the Persian Gulf countries. 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, Germany, Norway, and Australia.[101] Along with Arabic, Urdu is among the immigrant languages with the most speakers in Catalonia.[102]

Urdu has a few recognised dialects, including Dakhni, Dhakaiya, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Dakhni (also known as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, Mirgan) is spoken in Deccan region of southern India. It is distinct by its mixture of vocabulary from Marathi and Konkani, as well as some vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and Chagatai that are not found in the standard dialect of Urdu. Dakhini is widely spoken in all parts of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Urdu is read and written as in other parts of India. A number of daily newspapers and several monthly magazines in Urdu are published in these states.

Dhakaiya Urdu is a dialect native to the city of Old Dhaka in Bangladesh, dating back to the Mughal era. However, its popularity, even amongst native speakers, has been gradually declining since the Bengali Language Movement in the 20th century. It is not officially recognised by the Government of Bangladesh. The Urdu spoken by Stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh is different from this dialect.

Urdu and Hindi on a road sign in India. The Urdu version is a direct transliteration of the English; the Hindi is a part transliteration ("parcel" and "rail") and part translation "karyalay" and "arakshan kendra"

Standard Urdu is often compared with Standard Hindi.[121] Both Urdu and Hindi, which are considered standard registers of the same language, Hindustani (or Hindi-Urdu) share a core vocabulary and grammar.[122][15][16][123]

Apart from religious associations, the differences are largely restricted to the standard forms: Standard Urdu is conventionally written in the Nastaliq style of the Persian alphabet and relies heavily on Persian and Arabic as a source for technical and literary vocabulary,[124] whereas Standard Hindi is conventionally written in Devanāgarī and draws on Sanskrit.[125] However, both share a core vocabulary of native Prakrit and Sanskrit words and large numbers of Arabic and Persian loanwords, with a consensus of linguists considering them to be two standardised forms of the same language[126][127] and consider the differences to be sociolinguistic;[128] a few classify them separately.[129] The two languages are often considered to be a single language (Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu) on a dialect continuum ranging from Persianised to Sanskritised vocabulary.[117] Old Urdu dictionaries also contain most of the Sanskrit words now present in Hindi.[130][131]

Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialised contexts that rely on academic or technical vocabulary. In a longer conversation, differences in formal vocabulary and pronunciation of some Urdu phonemes are noticeable, though many native Hindi speakers also pronounce these phonemes.[132] At a phonological level, speakers of both languages are frequently aware of the Perso-Arabic or Sanskrit origins of their word choice, which affects the pronunciation of those words.[133] Urdu speakers will often insert vowels to break up consonant clusters found in words of Sanskritic origin, but will pronounce them correctly in Arabic and Persian loanwords.[134] As a result of religious nationalism since the partition of British India and continued communal tensions, native speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert them to be distinct languages.

The grammar of Hindi and Urdu is identical,[122][135] though formal Urdu makes more use of the Persian "-e-" izafat grammatical construct (as in Hammam-e-Qadimi, or Nishan-e-Haider) than does Hindi. Urdu more frequently use personal pronouns with the "ko" form (as in "mujh-ko"), while Hindi more frequently use the contracted form (as in "mujhe").[136]

The following table shows the number of Urdu speakers in some countries.

Country	Population	Urdu as a native language speakers	Native speakers or very good speakers as a second language
India	1,296,834,042[137]	50,772,631[71]	12,151,715[71]
Pakistan	207,862,518[138]	15,100,000[139]	94,000,000
Afghanistan	34,940,837[133]	–	1,048,225[133]
Saudi Arabia	33,091,113[140]	757,000	–
Nepal	29,717,587[141]	691,546[142]	–
United Kingdom	65,105,246[143]	400,000[144]	–
United States	329,256,465[145]	397,5022009-2013[146]	–
Bangladesh	159,453,001[147]	250,0002006 estimate[148]	–
Canada	35,881,659[149]	243,0902016 census[150]	–
Qatar	2,363,569[151]	173,000	–
Oman	4,613,241[152]	95,000	–
Iran	83,024,745[153]	88,000	–
Bahrain	1,442,659[154]	74,000	–
Norway	5,372,191[155]	34,000	–
Turkey	81,257,239[156]	24,000	–
Germany	80,457,737[157]	23,000	–

Syed Ahmed Dehlavi, a 19th-century lexicographer who compiled the Farhang-e-Asifiya Urdu dictionary, estimated that 75% of Urdu words have their etymological roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit,[162][163][164] and approximately 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit.[165][166] Urdu has borrowed words from Persian and to a lesser extent, Arabic through Persian,[167] to the extent of about 25%[162][163][164][168] to 30% of Urdu's vocabulary.[169] A table illustrated by the linguist Afroz Taj of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill likewise illustrates the amount of Persian loanwords to native Sanskrit-derived words in literary Urdu as comprising a 1:3 ratio.[164]

The phrase zubān-e-Urdū-e-muʿallā ("the language of the exalted camp") written in Nastaʿlīq script.[170]

The "trend towards Persianisation" started in the 18th century by the Delhi school of Urdu poets, though other writers, such as Meeraji, wrote in a Sanskritised form of the language.[171] There has been a move towards hyper Persianisation in Pakistan since 1947, which has been adopted by much of the country's writers;[172] as such, some Urdu texts can be composed of 70% Perso-Arabic loanwords just as some Persian texts can have 70% Arabic vocabulary.[173] Some Pakistani Urdu speakers have incorporated Hindi vocabulary into their speech as a result of exposure to Indian entertainment.[174][175] In India, Urdu has not diverged from Hindi as much as it has in Pakistan.[176]

Most borrowed words in Urdu are nouns and adjectives.[177] Many of the words of Arabic origin have been adopted through Persian,[162] and have different pronunciations and nuances of meaning and usage than they do in Arabic. There are also a smaller number of borrowings from Portuguese. Some examples for Portuguese words borrowed into Urdu are cabi ("chave": key), girja ("igreja": church), kamra ("cámara": room), qamīz ("camisa": shirt), mez ("mesa": table).[178]

Although the word Urdu is derived from the Turkic word ordu (army) or orda, from which English horde is also derived,[179] Turkic borrowings in Urdu are minimal[180] and Urdu is also not genetically related to the Turkic languages. Urdu words originating from Chagatai and Arabic were borrowed through Persian and hence are Persianised versions of the original words. For instance, the Arabic ta' marbuta ( ة ) changes to he ( ه ) or te ( ت ).[181][note 2] Nevertheless, contrary to popular belief, Urdu did not borrow from the Turkish language, but from Chagatai, a Turkic language from Central Asia. Urdu and Turkish both borrowed from Arabic and Persian, hence the similarity in pronunciation of many Urdu and Turkish words.[182]

Lashkari Zabān title in Naskh script

Urdu in its less formalised register has been referred to as a rek̤h̤tah (ریختہ, [reːxtaː]), meaning "rough mixture". The more formal register of Urdu is sometimes referred to as zabān-i Urdū-yi muʿallá (زبانِ اُردُوئے معلّٰى [zəbaːn eː ʊrdu eː moəllaː]), the "Language of the Exalted Camp", referring to the Imperial army[183] or in approximate local translation Lashkari Zabān (لشکری زبان [lʌʃkɜ:i: zɑ:bɑ:n])[184] or simply just Lashkari.[185] The etymology of the word used in Urdu, for the most part, decides how polite or refined one's speech is. For example, Urdu speakers would distinguish between پانی pānī and آب āb, both meaning "water": the former is used colloquially and has older Sanskrit origins, whereas the latter is used formally and poetically, being of Persian origin.

If a word is of Persian or Arabic origin, the level of speech is considered to be more formal and grander. Similarly, if Persian or Arabic grammar constructs, such as the izafat, are used in Urdu, the level of speech is also considered more formal and grander. If a word is inherited from Sanskrit, the level of speech is considered more colloquial and personal.[186]

The Urdu Nastaʿliq alphabet, with names in the Devanagari and Latin alphabets

Urdu is written right-to left in an extension of the Persian alphabet, which is itself an extension of the Arabic alphabet. Urdu is associated with the Nastaʿlīq style of Persian calligraphy, whereas Arabic is generally written in the Naskh or Ruq'ah styles. Nasta’liq is notoriously difficult to typeset, so Urdu newspapers were hand-written by masters of calligraphy, known as kātib or khush-nawīs, until the late 1980s. One handwritten Urdu newspaper, The Musalman, is still published daily in Chennai.[187]

A highly Persianised and technical form of Urdu was the lingua franca of the law courts of the British administration in Bengal and the North-West Provinces & Oudh. Until the late 19th century, all proceedings and court transactions in this register of Urdu were written officially in the Persian script. In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal in colonial India abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and ordered the exclusive use of Kaithi, a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi; in the Bihar Province, the court language was Urdu written in the Kaithi script.[188][189][190][191] Kaithi's association with Urdu and Hindi was ultimately eliminated by the political contest between these languages and their scripts, in which the Persian script was definitively linked to Urdu.[192]

An English-Urdu bilingual sign at the archaeological site of Sirkap, near Taxila. The Urdu says: (right to left) دو سروں والے عفاب کی شبيہ والا مندر, dō sarōñ wālé u'qāb kī shabīh wāla mandir. "The temple with the image of the eagle with two heads."

More recently in India, Urdu speakers have adopted Devanagari for publishing Urdu periodicals and have innovated new strategies to mark Urdu in Devanagari as distinct from Hindi in Devanagari. Such publishers have introduced new orthographic features into Devanagari for the purpose of representing the Perso-Arabic etymology of Urdu words. One example is the use of अ (Devanagari a) with vowel signs to mimic contexts of ع (‘ain), in violation of Hindi orthographic rules. For Urdu publishers, the use of Devanagari gives them a greater audience, whereas the orthographic changes help them preserve a distinct identity of Urdu.[193]

• List of Urdu-language poets
• List of Urdu-language writers
• National Translation Mission (NTM)
• Persian and Urdu
• States of India by Urdu speakers
• Urdu in the United Kingdom
• Uddin and Begum Hindustani Romanisation
• Urdu Digest
• Urdu in Aurangabad
• Urdu Informatics
• Urdu keyboard
• Glossary of the British Raj

Urdu edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Urdu at Curlie
• Urdu at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Directory of Urdu websites.
• Type in Urdu
• Urdu Scholarship-Maldonado Garcia
• Urdu Digital Library
• ترتیب وڈیزائننگ ایم پی خاؿ اردولشکری زبان