U is for … Urdu

Blogging from A to Z

Theme: Languages of the World

Urdu

Urdū belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken as a first language by 64 million people in Pakistan and India, and by 94 million people as a second language in Pakistan.

It is also spoken in urban Afghanistan, in the major urban centers of the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. There is a large Urdū-speaking diaspora in the United Kingdom, the United States,Canada, Norway and Australia.

Fascinating facts about Urdu

Urdu is distinguished slightly from Hindi in terms of its script and vocabulary and is thus one of the official languages of India.

Urdu has a way of saying things that mark the courteous from the unlearned and the noble from the ordinary. It is known to touch the soul the way it imparts hidden meanings in a prose or poetry like no other language can.

 

English is said to have been derived from a lot of languages. Here are some English words of Urdu origin:

Cummerbund- “waist binding”,

Khaki- dusty, grey,

Pashmina,

Pyjamas- trouser,

Typhoon- Toofan or storm and some others.
source: Wikipedia

 

The Punjabi language is very similar to Urdu. Written Punjabi can be understood by speakers of Urdu, with a little difficulty, but spoken Punjabi has a different phonology and cannot be easily understood by Urdu speakers.

The closest linked language to Urdu is Hindi. Linguists think of Hindi and Urdu as the same language, the difference being that Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Arabic script and draws on Persian.

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