Urdu language

Indo-European - Indo-Iranian - Indo-Aryan - Central Zone - Western Hindi - Hindustani - Urdu

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Urdu is an Indo-European language which originated in the 13th century and is closely related to Hindi.

Urdu is the state language of Pakistan, spoken by 10 million Pakistanis as mother tongue. Worldwide, about 60 million mother tongue speakers exist. Including second language speakers, 104 million people speak Urdu. The language is spoken in these countries:

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Fiji, Germany, Guyana, India (48 Million), Malawi, Mauritius (64,000), Nepal,

Norway, Oman, Pakistan (10 Million), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa (170,000), Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Zambia.

Urdu is closely related to Hindi but is written in an extended Arabic alphabet rather than in Devanagari. Urdu also has more loans from Arabic and Persian than Hindi has.

Language Codes

ISO 639-1: ur

ISO 639-2: urd

SIL: URD

External links

• Introductory Urdu (Volume 1)
• Introductory Urdu (Volume 2)