Urdu(اُردُو)

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in Pakistan and India, and also in Nepal, Bangladesh and several other countries. It is also known as Modern Standard Urdu or Lashkari (لشکری), and is described as a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language [source].

In 2015 there were about 109 million speakers of Urdu in Pakistan, 15 million of whom speak it as a native language. There were about 58 million Urdu speakers in India in 2011, mainly in Jammu, Kashmir and Maharashtra states. There were about 738,000 speakers of Urdu in Nepal in 2011, and the language was spoken by about 250,000 in Bangladesh in 2003. There are also Urdu speakers in other countries, such as South Africa, Mauritius and Guyana.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Hindi, though a lot of Urdu vocabulary comes from Persian and Arabic, while Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit. Linguists consider Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. At an informal spoken level there are few significant differences between Urdu and Hindi and they could be considered varieties a single language.

Urdu has been written with a version of the Perso-Arabic script since the 12th century and is normally written in Nastaliq style. The word Urdu is Turkish for 'foreign' or 'horde'.