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Urdu is a standardized register of
Hindustani termed the standard dialect Khariboli. The grammatical description in
this article concerns this standard Urdu. In general, the term "Urdu" can
encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardized versions. The
original language of the Mughals had been Turkish, but after their arrival in
South Asia, they came to adopt Persian and later Urdu. The word Urdu is believed
to be derived from the Turkish, word 'Ordu', which means army. It was initially
called Zaban-e-Ordu or language of the army and later just Urdu. The word 'Ordu'
was later anglicized as 'Horde'. Urdu, though of South Asian origin, came to be
heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic. Urdu speakers have been speaking this
language as their Mother tongue for several centuries. Urdu has been the medium
of the literature, history and journalism of South Asian
Muslims during the last
200 years. Most of the work was complemented by ancestors of native Urdu
speakers in South Asia. Persian language which was the official language during
the Mughals was then slowly starting to loose ground to Urdu during the reign of
Shah Jahan. It was after the devastating invasion by Nadir Shah of Persia in
1738 that gave death blow to Mughal empire in South Asia, that the Mughals
adopted Urdu instead of Persian as the official language of the empire. Then
Urdu with official patronage developed high literature
Standard Urdu has approximately the twentieth largest population of native
speakers, among all languages. It is the national language of Pakistan as well
as one of the 23 official languages of India.
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