The Urdu language is from the family of Indo-Aryan languages. The importance of the Urdu-language can well be established by the fact that it is native to 100 million people. It is spoken in the sub-continent, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
Urdu as a Language
The Urdu language evolved from Apabhramsa that originated from the Shauraseni language in the 6th century till the 13th century. The Shauraseni is a middle Indo-Aryan language and the Punjabi dialect also originated from it.
Most of the words and verbs in the Urdu language are borrowed from Sanskrit and Prakrit. The Persian and Arabic language has also played an important role in the evolution of Urdu.
The Urdu word came from the ordu and orda. It is a Turkic word that means the army and in English, it means horde. Urdu has no direct relation with Turkic languages. Words of Arabic that are included in Urdu are taken from the Persian language instead of the Turkic language. Thus, the Turkish and Urdu are taken from Persian and Arabic so many words in Urdu sound like Turkish.
History of Urdu
Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi is the man who used the word Urdu for the first time in 1780. Initially, it was called Hindi from the 13th till the 18th century. Urdu has also been called Hindavi and Dehlavi.
Hindus and Muslims used Persian script to write Urdu. They kept on using it until 1837 when the Hindustani language replaced the Persian language as an official language.
