Urdu

[fezzy]

Urdū (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. It is an Apabhramsha that developed under Persian and Arabic, to some lesser degree also under Turkic influence in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (1200–1800 AD).
Urdū refers to a standardised register of Hindustani[1] termed khaṛībolī, that emerged as a standard dialect.[2] The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Urdū. In general, the term "Urdū" can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions.
Standard Urdū has approximately the twentieth largest population of native speakers, among all languages. It is the national language of Pakistan as well as one of the 23 official languages of India.
Urdū is often contrasted with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani. The main difference between the two is that Standard Urdū is written in Nastaliq calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic loanwords, while Standard Hindi is written in Devanāgarī and has inherited significant vocabulary from Sanskrit. Linguists therefore consider Urdū and Hindi to be two standardized forms of the same language.[3] Together Hindi-Urdu is the second most widely spoken language in the world.

[fezzy]

There are between 60 and 80 million native speakers of standard Urdū (Khari Boli). Overall, besides the more than 160 million who speak Urdū in Pakistan, there is a considerable Indian population who communicate in Urdū everyday. According to the SIL ethnologue (1999 data), Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world. According to Comerie (1998 data), Hindi-Urdu is the twentieth most spoken language in the world, with 330 million native speakers.
Because of Urdū's extreme similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can usually understand one another, if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. Indeed, linguists sometimes count them as being part of the same language diasystem. However, Urdū and Hindi are socio-politically different, and people who self-describe as being speakers of Hindi would question their being counted as native speakers of Urdū, and vice-versa.

[fezzy]

In Pakistan, Urdū is spoken and understood by a majority of urban dwellers in such cities as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Abbottabad, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Multan, Peshawar, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sukkur and Sargodha. Urdū is used as the official language in all provinces of Pakistan. It is also taught as a compulsory language up to high school in both the English and Urdū medium school systems. This has produced millions of Urdū speakers whose mother tongue is one of the regional languages of Pakistan such as Punjabi, Hindko, Sindhi, Pashto, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Balochi, Siraiki, and Brahui. Urdū is the lingua franca of Pakistan and is absorbing many words from regional languages of Pakistan. The regional languages are also being influenced by Urdū vocabulary. Most of the nearly five million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pakhtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazarvi, and Turkmen) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdū.
In India, Urdū is spoken in places where there are large Muslim majorities or cities which were bases for Muslim Empires in the past. These include parts of Uttar Pradesh (namely Lucknow), Delhi, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mysore. Some Indian schools teach Urdū as a first language and have their own syllabus and exams. Indian madrasahs also teach Arabic as well as Urdū. India has more than 2,900 daily Urdū newspapers. Newspapers such as Daily Salar, Daily Pasban, Siasat Daily, Munsif Daily and Inqilab are published and distributed in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

Nice nice!

[Brown Sugar Baby]

google!! d)

[fezzy]

Countries with large numbers of Urdū speakers:

• India (48.1 million [1997])[4]
• Pakistan (10.7 million [1993])[5]
• Bangladesh (650,000)[6]
• United Arab Emirates (600,000)
• United Kingdom (400,000 [1990])
• Saudi Arabia (382,000)[7]
• United States (350,000)
• Nepal (275,000)
• South Africa (170,000 South Asian Muslims, some of which may speak Urdū)[8]
• Oman (90,000)
• Canada (80,895 [2001])[9]
• Bahrain (80,000)
• Mauritius (74,000)
• Qatar (70,000)
• Germany (40,000)
• Norway (26,950 [2005])[10]
• France (20,000)
• Spain (18,000 [2004])[11]
• Sweden (10,000 [2001])[12]
• Thailand
• Afghanistan
• Japan (8,000)
• Fiji
• Guyana
• Australia
• Denmark
• Italy
• New Zealand
• World Total: 60,503,579 [13]

[Forgived.]

Urdu is beautiful!! And Im not just talking about basic Urdu!

[fezzy]

da coolest language in da world, u gotta sey Italian!

[Iroquois Pliskin]

i wanna learn italian.. it turns a woman on when a italian guy starts spewing in italian.. ..but thats a different issue altogether Boooze

[Guji-Ji]

Urdu is a beautiful language.