Urdu

Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, and one of the official languages of India. Along with Hindi, it is a standardized version of Hindustani, the traditional language of the Delhi region. Besides the difference in writing system (with standard Urdu using Arabic script and standard Hindi using Devanagari script), literary Urdu derives its higher-register words mainly from Arabic and Persian, while literary Hindi derives its higher-register words mainly from Sanskrit, though the colloquial spoken registers of the languages are for the most part quite similar.

The Urdu alphabet is an extended version of the Arabic alphabet, incorporating both the Persian extended letters as well as its own extended letters. The Arabic script is written from right to left. Not all letters have a one-to-one correspondence with particular sounds, and because some sounds from Arabic are not distinguished in spoken Persian or Urdu, there are some sounds that can be written with more than one letter. As typical of abjad-style scripts, not all vowels are overtly indicated in normal writing.

Letters