🇵🇰 Urdu #11 Most Spoken Language (246M speakers)

Urdu is the Persian-leaning standard of the Hindustani continuum. It shares core grammar with Hindi but uses the Perso-Arabic script (Nastaliq) and a large Persian/Arabic vocabulary layer. Syntax is SOV with postpositions (not prepositions), and verbs often appear in light-verb compounds like دیکھنا “to see,” دیکھ لینا “to manage to see (completive).”

• Nastaliq flow: letters connect and reshape; the font handles joining forms.
• Extra letters: retroflex series ٹ ڈ ڑ, nasal ں, qaf ق, gaf گ, fe ف, etc.
• Aspirates: written with do-chashmi heh ھ: بھ پھ تھ ٹھ جھ چھ دھ ڈھ کھ گھ.
• Vowels: long vowels usually written (ا، و، ی); short vowels often omitted (diacritics زبر/زیر/پیش are optional).
• Full stop: Urdu uses ۔ (U+06D4) as the period in print.

• Postpositions: کو (acc/dat), میں (in), پر (on/at), سے (from/with), کے/کی/کا (genitive).
• Agreement: adjectives and participles agree with gender/number; genitive کا/کے/کی agrees with the possessed noun.
• Split ergativity: in perfective transitives, subject often marked with نے and verb agrees with object.
• Politeness: تو (intimate), تم (informal), آپ (polite); verbs align accordingly.
• Light verbs: add aspect/nuance: کر لینا (do+take = accomplish), کر دینا (do+give = do for/away).

Standard Urdu is a prestige register with strong Persian/Arabic influence. Everyday speech overlaps with Hindi (“Hindustani” core). Poetic registers (Rekhta) lean heavily on Persianized syntax and idiom; colloquial media mix English freely.

• Emerges from Delhi-area Hindavi/Khariboli under Persianate courts (Mughal era).
• 18–19th c.: literary flowering (Ghalib, Mir); script and lexicon Persianized; modern standardization in 20th c.

آج میں اسکول جا رہا ہوں۔
Āj maĩ iskūl jā rahā hū̃.
today I school-to go PROG.M.SG be.1SG

Postpositions at work: مجھے کتاب کو دو “give me the book,” گھر میں “in the house,” دوست کے ساتھ “with the friend.”

Polite intro: میرا نام … ہے Merā nām … hai — “My name is …”

• Ezāfa: the linker ـِ/e- appears in Persian loans: گلِ گلزار (gul-e gulzār).
• Nasalization: written with ں (noon-ghunna) or ن + diacritic; romanized as ẽ/ĩ/ũ or ñ.
• Poetry: compact metaphors and Persian compounds are a signature aesthetic in ghazal.