Urdu

Anyone here knows how to read, write and speak Urdu?

It's supposed to be my mother tongue but thanks to globalisation, the only language I'm fluent in is English.

I want to go back to my roots and learn Urdu from the basics. But I don't know if it's worth investing my time and efforts.

How do I go about learning Urdu? How do you find Urdu literature? Please recommend authors whose works I should check out once I'm proficient in Urdu.

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I don't know Urdu, but the script looks Arabic. If that is the case, the alphabet should be pretty easy for you. Just remember that the diacritics can mark for vowel sounds.

Same poster again.

I looked into it a little. Urdu is Pakistani, and does use the Arabic script as I thought.

In this case I recommend you learn Fus-ha Arabic as well, as Pakistan is a muslim country and Fus-ha will be a lingua franca for those who are muslims or were raised in madrasa or similar religious schools.

It's essentially Hindi written in the Arabic script, with a lot of Persian loanwords.

Can't tell you anything about the literature, but Urdu is awesome. Language learning isn't as tricky as people make it out to be (though that doesn't mean it's easy). Find a grammar, work your way through it, then jump in the deep end and start reading a book that you've already read in English. Look up all the words you don't know, etc.

One specific tip I have for you is that Arabic script, while beautiful, doesn't do a good job of displaying vowels. You'll want to use a site like Forvo.com to hear words spoken by native speakers so you'll know which vowels belong where. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

Urdu is Hindustani. It originated in Northern regions of India. I'm OP and I'm a south Indian. Urdu was brought here by Quli Qutub Shah when he founded Hyderabad.

You are right when you say that it's a lingua franca of Pakistan but I think it's wrong to completely attribute origins of this language to Pakistan given that pre-partition, Pakistan and north India were collectively called "Hindustan".

But thanks senpaitachi. I know how to read the Arabic script but don't know Urdu grammar and vocabulary.

Just curious, how were you introduced to Urdu?

Sadly I don't actually have any Urdu knowledge, but I do have experience with Persian so I recognize a lot of those loanwords. I'm also in linguistics, so I know a bit about a wide range of languages. I'd love to learn Hindustani but it'll be a while till I can.

I am interested as well. Lately I've been listening a lot of qawwalis by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and it made me wonder about how to approach learning it. Though it seems not many people speak it compared to other languages of the continent (japanese, mandarin). I will be monitoring this thread

Hi OP, I speak, read and write Urdu and am self taught.

How much Urdu do you currently know?

>In this case I recommend you learn Fus-ha Arabic as well, as Pakistan is a muslim country and Fus-ha will be a lingua franca for those who are muslims or were raised in madrasa or similar religious schools

>Fus-ha will be a lingua franca

This is probably the most ignorant thing I've ever read.

Urdu is the lingua franca of Pakistan, as the majority of Pakistanis have a regional language as their first language, i.e. Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi, Pashtu, Potohari, Kashmiri, etc.

Most Pakistani Muslims are able to read Classical Arabic/the Qur'aan; however, the majority can't understand/speak it very well at all.

Hindustani (of which Hindi and Urdu are formal registers) is the lingua franca of the entire sub-continent.

Paki here, you should read Manto, Ghalib, Faiz, Mazhar ul Islam, John Elia.
Also Urdu uses an Iranian script and not the usual Arabic one.