Urdū

Urdū belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken as a first language by 11 million people in in Pakistan and by 48 million people in India. It is also spoken in urban Afghanistan, in the major urban centres of the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia.

Urdū is also spoken by Pakistani immigrants in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia. The worldwide population of speakers of Urdū as a first language is estimated at 60.5 million people, together with second-language speakers, the number is 104 million (Ethnologue).

The name Hindi is of Persian origin. The Persians used it to refer to the Indian people and to the languages they spoke. Scholars postulate that Hindi developed in the 8th-10th centuries during the period of Islamic invasions of northern India from khari boli, the speech around Delhi which was adopted by the Muslim invaders to communicate with the local population. Eventually, it developed into a variety called Urdū (from Turkish ordu 'camp'), characterised by numerous borrowings from Persian and Arabic, which became a literary language. In the meantime, the language of the indigenous population remained relatively free of borrowings from Persian and Arabic, and instead borrowed words and literary conventions from Sanskrit. This language became Hindi.

As a result of these different influences, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and draws much of its vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdū is written in the Persian script and draws a great deal of its lexicon from Persian and Arabic. The two languages also differ in a number of relatively minor ways in their sound system and grammar. Both Hindi and Urdū have been used as literary languages starting in the 12th century. Under the influence of English, Hindi and Urdū literature flourished starting in the 18th century.

Hindi and Urdū have a common colloquial form, called Hindustani. Hindustani never achieved the status of a literary language, although Mahatma Ghandi used it as a symbol of national unity during India's struggle for independence from England.

Pakistan
Urdū is the official language of Pakistan, along with English. It is the 2nd or 3rd language for those Pakistanis for whom it is not a native language. All government, business, media, and education are conducted in Urdū.

India
Urdū is also one of the official languages of India, and has official status in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh where it is used in government administration and is the medium of instruction in primary schools. Throughout India, Urdū is typically spoken by Muslems, whereas Hindi is typically spoken by Hindus. India has several thousand daily Urdū newspapers. There are Urdū schools with their own curriculum.

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