Urdu

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and one of the official languages of India, spoken by tens of millions as a first language and many more as a second.

It is mutually intelligible with Hindi in spoken form—the two are sometimes called Hindustani—but Urdu uses a modified Arabic script and draws more vocabulary from Persian and Arabic, while Hindi uses Devanagari script and Sanskrit-derived words.

The distinction is as much cultural and religious as linguistic, Urdu being associated with Muslim traditions.