What is Urdu - History & Types of Urdu

What is Urdu?

The word Urdú or Urdu is a language that is spoken mainly in Pakistan where it is established as the official language of India, where it is considered one of the 24 main languages ​​of the country. In Pakistani despite being considered the official language, few speak it as their mother tongue, only people who represent a social and economic elite.

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Types of Urdu:

Urdu is commonly divided into four languages :

1. Modern vernacular Urdu, which is used in metropolitan centers such as Delhi, Lahore, and Lucknow.
2. The Dakhini, which is spoken in the Indian state of Maharashtra. 
3. The Pinjari, which is a kind of Urdu but focused within the literary context of poetry.
4. The Rekhta, same it is used as a context of poetry.

Urdu and Hindi are two similar dialects, they can be understood in a basic category, if both languages ​​avoid using specialized terminologies , the difference that may exist between both dialects is that Urdu is used as a dialect written by Muslim speakers, and which is transcribed slightly adapted to the Persian alphabet.

Who Speaks Hindi?

In contrast, Hindi is used by Hindu speakers and is written in the Devanagari alphabet, initially used by Sanskrit . Although colloquially, the language is almost the same, the educated Urdu regulations always use some terms of Persian and Arabic origin , meanwhile, Hindi formally interposes Sanskrit as a source of the cultured dialect.

90% of the Pakistani population has a maternal dialect other than Urdu, so this is learned as a second or third language, however, Urdu was chosen to represent the symbol of unity, so that there is no preference for One dialect over another, therefore, is a language that is spoken and understood in one way or another by the majority of its inhabitants.

History of Urdu:

Urdu (About this soundlisten)) (also known as Lashkari, locally written للشکری)—or, more precisely, Modern Standard Urdu—is a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. It is the official national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. In India, it is one of the 22 official languages recognized in the Constitution of India, having official status in the six states of Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, as well as the national capital territory of Delhi.

Apart from specialized vocabulary, spoken Urdu is mutually intelligible with standard Hindi, another recognized register of Hindustani. The Urdu variant of Hindustani received recognition and patronage under British rule when the British replaced the local official languages with English and Hindustani written in Nastaʿlīq script, as the official language in North and Northwestern India. Religious, social, and political factors pushed for a distinction between Urdu and Hindi in India, leading to the Hindi–Urdu controversy.

According to Nationalencyklopedin's 2010 estimates, Urdu is the 21st most spoken first language in the world, with approximately 66 million speakers. According to Ethnologue's 2017 estimates, Urdu, along with standard Hindi and the languages of the Hindi belt (as Hindustani), is the 3rd most spoken language in the world, with approximately 329.1 million native speakers, and 697.4 million total speakers.