Urdu

Urdu (ISO-639-3 code: urd)

Urdu is one of the 22 languages listed in the 8th scheduled of the Indian constitution. It is the mother tongue of 50,772,631 persons according to the 2011 census. Urdu language belongs to Indo-Aryan family closely related to Hindi. It is the 7th largest language of India after Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Gujarati. Being a non-regional language, it is the second important language in U.P., Bihar, M.P., Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and is the third language in Haryana, H.P., Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Delhi, etc. Delhi is also a significant centre of Urdu speakers, as well as Urdu literature.

Urdu language is not only widely spoken in South Asia, but also in the west. There are nearly 170.6 million Urdu speakers world-over (Ethnologue, 2019,). It is the national language of Pakistan which is used as a medium for instruction in most government schools, at the lower levels of administration and in the mass media.