Official Language of - Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
Spoken by - 51 million
Urdu LanguageUrdu historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. It developed under Persian and Arabic, to some lesser degree also under Turkic influence in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire.Urdu refers to a standardised register of Hindustani termed khadiboli, that emerged as a standard dialect. In general, the term "Urdu" can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions. Standard Urdu 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 21 official languages of India. There are 60,503,579 people speaking Urdu language on World total basis.
Urdu is often contrasted with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani. The main difference between the Hindi and Urdu is that Standard Urdu is written in Nastaliq calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and some words are taken from Persian and Arabic, while Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and has inherited significant vocabulary from Sanskrit. Linguists therefore consider Urdu and Hindi to be two standardized forms of the same language. According to the 1999 data, Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world. According to Comerie (1998 data), Hindi-Urdu is the second most spoken language in the world, with 330 million native speakers, after Mandarin and possibly English.
Because of Urdu's 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 Genetic languag. However, Urdu 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 Urdu, and vice-versa.
In India, Urdu 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 Urdu as a first language and have their own syllabus and exams. Indian madrasahs also teach Arabic as well as Urdu. India has more than 2,900 daily Urdu newspapers. Outside South Asia, it is spoken by large numbers of migrant South Asian workers in the major urban centers of the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. Urdu is also spoken by large numbers of immigrants and their children in the major urban centers of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia.
Official status
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is spoken and understood throughout the country. It shares official language status with English. It is used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions. It holds in itself a depository of cultural, religious and social heritage of the country. Although English is used in most elite circles, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers, Urdu is the lingua franca (lingua franca is any language widely used beyond the population of its native speakers) and is expected to prevail. Urdu is also one of the officially recognized state languages in India and has official language status in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh, and the national capital, Delhi. While the government school system in most other states emphasizes Standard Hindi, at universities in cities such as Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad, Urdu is spoken, learned, and regarded as a language of prestige.
Classification and related languages
Urdu can be considered to be a part of a dialect continuation which extends across eastern Iran, Afghanistan and modern Pakistan right into north India. These dialects have similar grammatical structures and share a large portion of their vocabulary. Punjabi, for instance, is very similar to Urdu Punjabi written in the Shahmukhi script can be understood by speakers of Urdu with little difficulty, but spoken Punjabi has a very different pronunciation and can be harder to understand for Urdu speakers.
Dialects
Urdu has four recognised dialects Dakhini, Pinjari, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Sociolinguists also consider Urdu as one of the four major variants of the Hindi Urdu dialect continuation. Modern Vernacular Urdu is the form of the language that is least widespread and is spoken around Delhi, Lucknow, Karachi and Lahore, it becomes increasingly different from the original form of Urdu as it loses some of the complicated Persian and Arabic vocabulary used in everyday terms.Dakhini is spoken in Maharashtra state in India and around Hyderabad. It has fewer Persian and Arabic words than standard Urdu. In addition, Rekhta the language of Urdu poetry, is sometimes counted as a separate dialect.
The Origin of The Urdu Language
The word Urdu (court or camp) stems from the Persianized Turkish word (Ordu) which meant 'the camp of a Turkish army'.
North Indian Muslims with their own dialects moved to South and Central India and settled among the Marathas, Kannadigas and Telugus. These dialects formed the basis of a literary speech known as Dakhni or the 'Southern Speech', and was spoken in the Deccan.
Later, north Indian Muslims, who came with Aurangzeb for his conquests down south and some Dakhni writers, saw the possibility of evolving a new language.
This language would be based on the literary traditions of Dakhni and have the Persian script alongwith generous usage of Perso-Arabic words, idioms and theme ideas.
The Great Poets
Shamsuddin Waliullah a famous poet of the Dakhni actually started the North Indian Urdu. Other poets also joined in this new literary upsurge and came to Delhi subsequently. Delhi Urdu as a Muslim language thus took birth. Court circles, Persian and Arabic scholars and especially the Muslims of Delhi adapted this language with much eagerness, and from the end of the 18th century the Mughal house turned only to Urdu.
For the first 60 years or so influence of the Dakhni poets, Sufi thinking and an Indianness of diction prevailed over Urdu.
The term Four Pillars of Urdu is attributed to the four early poets: Mirza Jan-i-Janan Mazhar (1699-1781) of Delhi, Mir Taqi (1720-1808) of Agra, Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) and Mir Dard (1719-1785).
During this time Lucknow became a rival centre for the patronage of Urdu literature, and masters of Urdu poetry received support from the court of the Nawab.
The most illustrious poets of the pre-modern period were Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq (1789-1854) of Delhi and Nazmuddaulah Dabiru-i-Mulk.
However, Urdu literature can never be complete without the mention of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869). A Sufi mystic, Ghalib wrote both in Urdu and Persian and through his letters he brought in literary history and criticism. His humane feelings, Sufi sentiments, simplicity of his lines and the depth of his observations made Ghalib the greatest Urdu and Persian poet.
Modern Urdu Literature
Modern Urdu literature covers the time from the last quarter of the 19th century till the present day and can be divided into two periods: the period of the Aligarh Movement started by Sir Sayyid Ahmad and the period influenced by Sir Muhammad Iqbal. However, Altaf Husain Panipati (1837-1914), known as Hali or 'the Modern One', is the actual innovator of the modern spirit in Urdu poetry.
Hindu writers of Urdu were not far behind, and among the earliest writers was Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar (author of Fisana-e-Azad) and Brij Narain Chakbast (1882-1926).
One of the most famous poets of modern Urdu is Sayyid Akbar Husain Razvi Ilahabadi (1846-1921) who had a flair for extempore composition of satiric and comic verses. After 1936, Urdu picked up a progressive attitude and leaned more towards the problems of life.
Poetry, novels, short stories and essays were the avenues of the liberal expression. The main exponents of this new line of approach were the short story writers Muhammad Husain Askari, Miranji, Faiz Ahmad 'Faiz', Sardar Ali Jafari and Khwajah Ahmad Abbas. Munshi Premchand, the greatest novelist of Hindi, began writing in Urdu and later switched to Hindi.
Inspite of Urdu being considered a little tilted towards Islamic lines, there were some great Hindu writers who made Urdu their very own, like Krishan Chandar, Rajindar Singh Bedi and Kanhaiyalal Kapur. Unfortunately, the lyrical language of Urdu no longer enjoys the same position that it used to in the Mughal courts. However, Urdu is still encouraged in Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Hyderabad. Present day Hindi borrows a lot from Urdu for grammar, diction and idiom.
To learn Urdu is to learn one of the most widely spoken languages of the world. Spoken primarily in Pakistan, it is essentially the same language as Hindi, also called Hindustani, which is spoken in India. Together they are spoken by 600 million people in South Asia and in pockets of South Asian communities in cities around the world.
The Urdu language is written in the Arabic script and in this differs from Hindi which uses the Devanagari script. Urdu is a descendant of the great literary and religious language Sanskrit. It is distantly related to Greek, Latin and most of the European languages. As such, it has some characteristics of European languages which may be familiar to native English speakers, or those who have studied a European language.
This is where the similarities end, however. The pronunciation and sounds of Urdu are very different from European languages, given its thousands of years in close contact with other South Asian languages. Combined with the different writing system, learning Urdu makes for an interesting challenge. And unlike the major European languages, or the other major languages of Asia, there are relatively few resources to learn Urdu.
Learn Urdu
http://www.urducouncil.nic.in/
http://www.languageshome.com/
http://www.learningurdu.com/urdudictionary.asp
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/Urdu/Learn/
http://www.google.com/intl/ur/
Wiki Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu_language