Urdu
Language · official in 1 country
The name Urdu goes back to a Turkic word for army, ordu, and to Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla, "language of the exalted camp". Urdu grew up around Delhi on the grammar of Khari Boli, written right to left in an extended Persian alphabet and usually set in Nastaʿlīq. It is Pakistan's national language and official there with English, and India lists it in the Eighth Schedule of its constitution.
The language on record
- Own name
- اردو
- ISO 639-1
- UR
- ISO 639-3
- URD
- Script
- Arabic
- Family
- Indo-Aryan
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Urdu is official
Pakistan is the one record, where Urdu is the sole national language and official beside English. India gives it scheduled status and official standing in several states, which this list does not count.
Official beside Urdu
About Urdu
What Urdu was called before it was Urdu
Before the late 18th century the language went by Hindvi, Hindi, Hindustani and Rekhta, a Persian word meaning "to create a mixture". The poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi first used the name Urdu around 1780. English speakers of the period called it Moors, as a Swiss French soldier, Antoine Polier, noted in 1773. In 1837 Urdu replaced Persian as an official language of the East India Company across northern India.
How close Urdu is to Hindi
Urdu and Hindi share phonology, grammar and a vocabulary base drawn mostly from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and in everyday speech they are mutually intelligible. The common base is sometimes called Hindustani, with Urdu described as its Persianised standard register. Formal Urdu takes its literary and technical words from Persian and Arabic, and formal Hindi from Sanskrit, so the higher the register, the less each side understands. Since 1947 a hyper-Persianised Urdu has grown up in Pakistan alongside a hyper-Sanskritised Hindi in India, while everyday Pakistani Urdu stays close to neutral Hindustani.
Why Pakistan chose a minority mother tongue
Urdu was the national language from Partition in 1947, contested at first by Bengali, which 56% of the population spoke, mostly in East Pakistan. After East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Urdu was recognised in 1973 as the sole national language, with official recognition for English and the regional languages. Only 9.25% of Pakistanis reported it as their mother tongue in the 2023 census, about 22.3 million people, many of them Muhajirs who came from India after 1947. It is a compulsory school subject, and Article 251(1) of the constitution calls for it to become the sole language of government, although English still dominates the upper levels.
In India the 2011 census counted 50.8 million Urdu speakers. Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Telangana and Delhi give it the status of an additional official language.
Why Urdu newspapers were written by hand
Nastaʿlīq calligraphy has thousands of ligatures and is hard to set in type, so Urdu newspapers were written by calligraphers, the kātib, until the late 1980s. The Musalman, published daily in Chennai, is still handwritten. The desktop publishing program InPage carries more than 20,000 ligatures in its Nastaʿlīq fonts.
Common questions
Questions about Urdu
Are Urdu and Hindi the same language?
In everyday speech they are mutually intelligible, and linguists often count them as one language, Hindustani. They differ in script and in formal vocabulary: Urdu borrows from Persian and Arabic, Hindi from Sanskrit.
How many Pakistanis speak Urdu as a first language?
In the 2023 census 9.25%, about 22.3 million people, reported Urdu as their mother tongue. It is understood across the country as a second or third language.
What script is Urdu written in?
An extension of the Persian alphabet, running right to left and usually written in the Nastaʿlīq style of calligraphy rather than the Naskh used for most Arabic.