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Concept
Urdu
Summary
Urdu (Nastaliq: ; ˈʊərduː; ALA-LC) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia.
It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with no official status.
Urdu has been described as a Persianised register of the Hindustani language; Urdu and Hindi share a common Sanskrit- and Prakrit-derived vocabulary base, phonology, syntax, and grammar, making them mutually intelligible during colloquial communication. While formal Urdu draws literary, political, and technical vocabulary from Persian, formal Hindi draws these aspects from Sanskrit; consequently, the two languages' mutual intelligibility effectively decreases as the factor of formality increases.
In 1837, Urdu became an official language of the British East India Company, replacing Persian across northern India during Company rule; Persian had until this point served as the court language of various Indo-Islamic empires. Religious, social, and political factors arose during the European colonial period that advocated a distinction between Urdu and Hindi, leading to the Hindi–Urdu controversy.
Urdu became a literary language in the 18th century and two similar standard forms came into existence in Delhi and Lucknow. Since the partition of India in 1947, a third standard has arisen in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Deccani, an older form used in Deccan, became a court language of the Deccan sultanates by the 16th century.
According to 2022 estimates by Ethnologue, Urdu is the 10th-most widely spoken language in the world, with million total speakers, including those who speak it as a second language.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood
Related concepts (36)
Punjabi language
Punjabi (pʌnˈdʒɑːbi; Shahmukhi: ; Gurmukhi: ਪੰਜਾਬੀ, pəɲˈdʒab̆.bi), sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It has approximately 113 million native speakers. Punjabi is the most widely-spoken first language in Pakistan, with 80.5 million native speakers as per the 2017 census, and the 11th most widely-spoken in India, with 31.1 million native speakers, as per the 2011 census.
British Raj
The British Raj (rɑːdʒ ; from Hindi , 'kingdom', 'realm', 'state', or 'empire') was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; it is also called Crown rule in India, or Direct rule in India, and lasted from 1858 to 1947. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India from the East India Company in the form of the new British Raj through the Government of India Act 1858.
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (ˌʊtər_prəˈdɛʃ; 'North Province') is a state in northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world – more populous than all but four countries – accounting for 16.5% of the total population of India. It was established in 1950 after India had become a republic. It is a successor to the United Provinces, established in 1935 by renaming of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in turn established in 1902 from the North-Western Provinces and the Oudh Province.