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Glite Dictionary
🇵🇰 Pakistan's main language 📝 A literary language
Urdu

Urdu

8 5.0
A language spoken mainly in Pakistan and parts of India, like Hindi but written with Arabic letters
  • proper noun
  • /ˈʊərduː/
: urdu
  • Even so, the choice was relatively unproblematic in western Pakistan, where Urdu is widely understood and read.
  • Urdu and English
  • Urdu, Hindi
  • the Urdu language

They spoke Arabic, Urdu and Farsi and different languages.

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Examples

  • All were bilingual and literate in Urdu and English.

    Academic text (1996)

  • He decided to learn Urdu to better communicate with his family in Pakistan.

  • -I love the way she says Urdu.

    A Mighty Heart (2007)

  • The guy in the store had looked at her as if she'd spoken in Urdu.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Urdu was initially adopted as the national language in two provinces.

    Academic text (2018)

  • I would let you speak to her, but she doesn't speak Urdu.

    A Mighty Heart (2007)

  • Can you speak Urdu? - I'm not fluent.

    Blinded by the Light (2019)

  • Voyager carries a record album called Sounds of Earth, recorded greetings in every language from English to Urdu.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The analysis draws on a survey of 300 people, personally interviewed in three languages: English, Punjabi, and Urdu.

    Academic text (2002)

  • One of the boldest women writers in Urdu, Ismat Chughtai was born in 1915 and educated at Aligarh Muslim University.

    Fiction book (1993)

Surface Forms

Urdu main

Etymology

Urdu comes from an old Turkish and Persian word ordu meaning 'camp' or 'army', because it began as the 'language of the camp' used by soldiers and people from many regions. That's why Urdu mixed words from different languages and later became a common literary language in Pakistan and parts of India.