Urdu (;
["Urdu"](_blank)
'' Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ur, , link=no, ) is an
Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in
South Asia.
It is the
national language and ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' of
Pakistan, where it is also an
official language alongside
English.
In
India, Urdu is an
Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the
Constitution of India;
[ Quote: "The Eighth Schedule recognizes India's national languages as including the major regional languages as well as others, such as Sanskrit and Urdu, which contribute to India's cultural heritage. ... The original list of fourteen languages in the Eighth Schedule at the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1949 has now grown to twenty-two."][ Quote: "As Mahapatra says: “It is generally believed that the significance for the Eighth Schedule lies in providing a list of languages from which Hindi is directed to draw the appropriate forms, style and expressions for its enrichment” ... Being recognized in the Constitution, however, has had significant relevance for a language's status and functions.] it also has an official status in several Indian states.
In
Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect.
The Urdu language has been described as a
Persianised
Persianization () or Persification (; fa, پارسیسازی), is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Persian society becomes "Persianate", meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Persian ...
register of the
Hindustani language;
Urdu and
Hindi share a common
Sanskrit- and
Prakrit-derived vocabulary base,
phonology,
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
, and grammar, making them
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
during
colloquial communication.
While formal Urdu draws literary, political, and technical vocabulary from
Persian,
formal Hindi draws these aspects from Sanskrit; consequently, the two languages' mutual intelligibility effectively decreases as the factor of formality increases.
In 1837, the
British East India Company chose Urdu as the language to replace Persian across northern India during
Company rule
Company rule in India (sometimes, Company ''Raj'', from hi, rāj, lit=rule) refers to the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when ...
; Persian had until this point served as the court language of various
Indo-Islamic empires.
Religious, social, and political factors arose during the
European colonial period that advocated a distinction between Urdu and Hindi, leading to the
Hindi–Urdu controversy
The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th century colonial India out of the debate over whether the Hindi or Urdu language should be chosen as a national language.
Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible as spoken languages, to the extent tha ...
.
Urdu became a literary language in the 18th century and two similar standard forms came into existence in
Delhi and
Lucknow. Since the
partition of India
The Partition of British India in 1947 was the Partition (politics), change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: ...
in 1947, a third standard has arisen in the Pakistani city of
Karachi.
Deccani, an older form used in
Deccan, became a court language of the
Deccan sultanates
The Deccan sultanates were five Islamic late-medieval Indian kingdoms—on the Deccan Plateau between the Krishna River and the Vindhya Range—that were ruled by Muslim dynasties: namely Ahmadnagar, Berar, Bidar, Bijapur, and Golconda. Th ...
by the 16th century.
According to 2018 estimates by
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
, Urdu is the
10th-most widely spoken language in the world, with 230 million total speakers, including those who speak it as a
second language.
Etymology
The name ''Urdu'' was first used by the poet
Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi
Ghulam Hamdani (1751–1844), known by the takhallus (nom de plume) of Mas'hafi (مصحفی ''maṣḥafi''), was an Urdu ghazal poet.
Works
Before his time, the language known as Hindi, Hindavi, Dehlavi, Dakhini, Lahori or Rekhta was commo ...
around 1780 for
Hindustani language even though he himself also used Hindavi term in his poetry to define the language. ''Ordu'' means army in the
Turkic languages. In late 18th century, it was known as ''Zaban-e-Urdu ay'' ''Mualla'' ''زبانِ'' ''اردو'' ''اے'' ''معلّی'' means ''language of the exalted camp''.
Earlier it was known as Hindvi,
Hindi and
Hindustani
Hindustani may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India)
* Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu
* Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...
.
History
Urdu, like
Hindi, is a form of
Hindustani
Hindustani may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India)
* Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu
* Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...
.
Some linguists have suggested that the earliest forms of Urdu evolved from the medieval (6th to 13th century)
Apabhraṃśa
Apabhraṃśa ( sa, अपभ्रंश, , Prakrit: , ta, அவப்பிரஞ்சனம், , ) is a term used by '' vaiyākaraṇāḥ'' (native grammarians) since Patañjali to refer to languages spoken in North India before the ris ...
register of the preceding
Shauraseni language, a
Middle Indo-Aryan language that is also the ancestor of other modern Indo-Aryan languages.
Origins
In the Delhi region of India the native language was
Khariboli, whose earliest form is known as
Old Hindi (or Hindavi).
It belongs to the
Western Hindi group of the Central Indo-Aryan languages.
The
contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures during the period of
Islamic conquests in the Indian subcontinent (12th to 16th centuries) led to the development of Hindustani as a product of a composite
Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.
In cities such as Delhi, the Indian language Old Hindi began to acquire many Persian loanwords and continued to be called "Hindi" and later, also "Hindustani".
An early literary tradition of Hindavi was founded by
Amir Khusrau in the late 13th century. After the conquest of the
Deccan, and a subsequent immigration of noble Muslim families into the south, a form of the language flourished in medieval India as a vehicle of poetry, (especially under the
Bahmanids
The Bahmani Sultanate, or Deccan, was a Persianate Sunni Muslim Indian Kingdom located in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan region. It was the first independent Muslim kingdom of the Deccan, ), and is known as
Dakhini, which contains loanwords from
Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
and
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
.
From the 13th century until the end of the 18th century the language now known as Urdu was called ''Hindi'',
''Hindavi'', ''Hindustani'',
''Dehlavi'',
''Lahori'',
and ''Lashkari''. The
Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate was an Islamic empire based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years (1206–1526). established
Persian as its official language in India, a policy continued by the
Mughal Empire, which extended over most of northern
South Asia from the 16th to 18th centuries and cemented Persian influence on Hindustani.

According to the Tashih Gharaib-ul-Lughat by Khan-i Arzu, the "Zaban-e Urdu-e Shahi"
anguage of the Imperial Camphad attained special importance in the time of Alamgir". By the end of the reign of
Aurangzeb
Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...
in the early
1700s 1700s may refer to:
* The century from 1700 to 1799, almost synonymous with the 18th century
The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 ( MDCCI) to December 31, 1800 ( MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking ...
, the common language around Delhi began to be referred to as ''Zaban-e-Urdu'',
a name derived from the