Translation Resources

Urdu is also known as Islami or Undri. It is influenced by Persian, Turkish, and Arabic languages

Facts

• 48.1 million Urdu speakers reside in India.
• It is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan family formed during the time of the Mughal Empire, 1200–1800 AD.
• Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. It is also the official language in the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh, India.
• Urdu is the chief vehicle of Islam in South Asia.

	Some facts on Urdu Primarily spoken in: Pakistan, India Also spoken in: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Afghanistan Official language of: Pakistan, India Total number of speakers: 60–80 million Rank: 19–21

Brief History

The word "Urdu" is of Turkish origin, and means an army or a camp. Gradually, it came to be called "Ordu" and then "Urdu." This just shows that this language came about due to an amalgamation of foreigners with the natives of South Asia. It was formulated by the interaction of foreign armies, merchants, and immigrants to India.

Vocabulary and Grammar

Urdu borrows words from Indian, Persian, and Arabic languages. It also has words of Sanskrit, Turkish, Portuguese and more recently English origin. Many of the words of Arabic origin have different meaning and usage than they do in Arabic.

Similar to Hindi, the nouns in Urdu fall into the masculine and feminine genders. Because there is no neutral gender, there is disagreement over the gender of some words, particularly those introduced from English.

Literature

Urdu has a rich history of written expression. After Arabic and Persian, Urdu holds the largest collection of work on Islamic literature. Under Muslim rule, Urdu drew its inspiration from Persian literature. The Persian poet Amir Khusru wrote the first poems in Urdu. However, Urdu literature became popular with the poets from Bijapur and Golcunda in the 16th and the 17th centuries. The "Ghazal" in is the most popular form of subjective poetry. On the other hand, the "Nazm" represents the objective form, often used for narrative or descriptive purposes.

Writing system

Urdu writing uses the Nastaliq script derived from Arabic. It is written from right to left. The letters are similar in appearance to Arabic, Persian, and Pashto. It is easy to write fast in Urdu because it has built-in shorthand. Each letter is written in a slightly different form depending on whether it comes in the beginning, middle, or end of a word or whether it occurs on its own, i.e., in a detached form.

Fonts

From this link you can download a list of Urdu fonts for free.

http://www.urdulife.com/font/download/

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