Urdu

Submitted by Vijay (United Kingdom), Mar 9, 2009 at 12:23

Urdu and Hindustani, the language of north India are twins owing their differences due to socio-linguistic attitudes. Apart from the script, both languages are by and large identical. Speakers of the two can understand each other without any problem since the grammers are identical. From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu

Urdu( 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 one of the 23 official languages of India . Its vocabulary developed under Sanksrit, Persian, Arabic and Turkic influence on Khariboli. Urdu was mainly developed in Lucknow, India and began taking shape during the Delhi Sultanate as well as Mughal Empire (1526–1858) in the Indian Subcontinent.[

Scholars independently categorize Urdu as a standardised register of Hindustani termed the standard dialect Khariboli.

India has more than 3,000 Urdu publications including 405 daily Urdu newspapers.

Native Urdu speakers:
India (51,536,111 [2001], 5.1%)[17]
Pakistan (10,800,000 [1993], 7%)[18] (Only refers to Pakistanis with Urdu as native language

Because of their identical grammar and nearly identical core vocabularies, most linguists do not distinguish between Hindi and Urdu as separate languages—at least not in reference to the informal spoken registers. For them, ordinary informal Urdu and Hindi can be seen as variants of the same language (Hindustani) with the difference being that Urdu is supplemented with a Perso-Arabic vocabulary and Hindi a Sanskritic vocabulary.

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