Urdu (اردو, trans. Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the two official languages, the other being English, as well as the national language of Pakistan. As it is also spoken in India too, it is one of the 23 official languages of India. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Arabic, Turkic and Sanskrit. In modern times Urdu vocabulary has been significantly influenced by Punjabi and even English. Urdu was mainly developed in Lucknow, India, but began taking shape during the Delhi Sultanate as well as Mughal Empire (1526–1858) in the Indian Subcontinent.
History
The Urdū language developed during the Mughal Empire under the influences of Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages. A modification of the Persian alphabet was developed to suit this language. Despite of the invention of Urdu typewriter in 1911, the Urdū newspapers used to be published from hand-written scripts by masters (called katibs or khush-navees) until the late 1980s. The Pakistani national newspaper Daily Jang was the first Urdū newspaper to use Nasta’liq composition on computer. There are efforts underway to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdū support on computers and the internet. Nowadays, nearly all Urdū newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals are composed on computers via various Urdū software programs.
Nasta'liq
The Nasta'liq calligraphic writing style began as a Persian mixture of scripts Naskh and Ta'liq. After the Mughal conquest, Nasta'liq became the preferred writing style for Urdu. It is the dominant style in Pakistan, and many Urdu elsewhere in the world use it. Nasta'liq is more cursive and flowing than its Naskh counterpart.
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