Urdu

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language with about 104 million speakers, including those who speak it as a second language. It is the official state language of Pakistan and is also officially recognized in the constitution of India. Because Persian-speaking sultans ruled the Indian subcontinent for a number of years, Urdu is influenced by Persian and to a lesser extent, Arabic, which have contributed to about 25% of Urdu's vocabulary. Urdu is closely related to Hindi, a language that originated and developed in the Indian subcontinent. They share the same Indic base and are so similar in phonology and grammar that they appear to be one language. Urdu has been written with a version of the Perso-Arabic script since the 12th century and is normally written in Nastaliq style. Speaking Urdu is pretty difficult, because it uses formal and informal verb forms and each noun has either masculine or feminine gender. Also, Urdu pronunciation is not always regular.