Urdu Keyboard Layout

URDU

Urdu ( pronunciation, اردو, trans. Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is the official language of Pakistan and is predominantly spoken in Pakistan as well. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Arabic and Turkic influence on Khariboli. It began to take shape during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (AD 1526–1858) in South Asia.

Scholars independently categorize Urdu as a standardised register of Hindustani termed the standard dialect Khariboli. The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Urdu. In general, the term “Urdu” can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions.The original language of the Mughals had been Turkish, but after their arrival in South Asia, they came to adopt Persian and later Urdu. The word Urdu is believed to be derived from the Turkish, word ‘Ordu’, which means army encampment. It was initially called Zaban-e-Ordu or language of the army and later just Urdu. It obtained its name from Urdu Bazar, i.e. encampment (Urdu in Turkish) market, the market near Red Fort in the walled city of Delhi.

Standard Urdu has approximately the twentieth largest population of native speakers, among all languages. It is the national language of Pakistan as well as being a partly-spoken and one of 23 official languages of India.

The two standardised registers of Hindustani — Hindi and Urdu — have become so entrenched as separate languages that often nationalists, both Muslim and Hindu, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. However, there are unifying forces. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in “Hindi”, but the language used in most of them is Urdu. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally neutral Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India and in Pakistan.