Words R Us
- Urdu (urd)

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in Pakistan and India, and also in Nepal, Bangladesh and several other countries. It is also known as Modern Standard Urdu and is described as a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution.

There are approximately 109 million speakers of Urdu in Pakistan, 15 million of whom speak it as a native language. There were about 58 million Urdu speakers in India, mainly in Jammu, Kashmir and Maharashtra states. There were about 738,000 speakers of Urdu in Nepal in 2011, and the language was spoken by about 250,000 in Bangladesh in 2003. There are also Urdu speakers in other countries, such as South Africa, Mauritius and Guyana.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Hindi, though a lot of Urdu vocabulary comes from Persian and Arabic, while Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit. Linguists consider Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. At an informal spoken level there are few significant differences between Urdu and Hindi and they could be considered varieties a single language.

Urdu has a few recognised dialects, including Dakhni, Dhakaiya, Rekhta, and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Dakhni (also known as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, Mirgan) is spoken in Deccan region of southern India. It is distinct by its mixture of vocabulary from Marathi and Konkani, as well as some vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and Chagatai that are not found in the standard dialect of Urdu. Dakhini is widely spoken in all parts of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Urdu is read and written as in other parts of India. A number of daily newspapers and several monthly magazines in Urdu are published in these states. Dhakaiya Urdu is a dialect native to the city of Old Dhaka in Bangladesh, dating back to the Mughal era. However, its popularity, even amongst native speakers, has been gradually declining since the Bengali Language Movement in the 20th century. It is not officially recognised by the Government of Bangladesh. The Urdu spoken by stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh is different from this dialect.

Sources: Wikipedia
https://omniglot.com/writing/urdu.htm