Urdu is one of the largest South Asian languages, second only to Hindi. It is spoken by nearly 250 million people in India, Pakistan and other neighbouring countries. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, and one of the official languages of India.

There is also a substantial number of Urdu speakers in the UK. Unfortunately, a question on languages spoken was not included in the 2001 Census so accurate statistics are not known, but this is due to change for next Census due to take place in 2011.

The word Urdu comes from Turkish, meaning ‘foreign’ or ‘horde’. It first appeared in northern India about one thousand years ago. Urdu is a mixture of Hindi grammar, basic vocabulary and other local languages and includes Arabic and Turkish words. Urdu adopted the Persian writing system and is written in the opposite direction to English , from right to left. Each sound is represented by a letter. For example the letter K and N as below

Each letter is written in a slightly different form depending on whether it comes in the beginning, middle or end of a word or whether it appears on its own.

Roevin provides high quality translations into Urdu.