Urdu

How to spell urdu

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce urdu

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does urdu mean?

1. nounAn Indo-Aryan language, closely related to Hindi, that is an official language of Pakistan and is widely spoken in parts of India.

Urdu in a sentence

• The council printed the leaflet in English and urdu for local residents.

• She translated the poem from urdu into French for the anthology.

Where does urdu come from?

Language of origin: Other

Urdu takes its name from the Turkic word ordu, which literally meant 'army', 'camp', or 'royal court'. The language grew up in and around the military camps and bazaars of the Mughal courts in northern India, where soldiers and traders speaking many tongues mingled, so it was originally called zaban-e-urdu, meaning 'the language of the camp', through Persian. Over time that long phrase was clipped down to simply Urdu, the camp standing in for the speech that arose there. The very same Turkic root ordu reached English by a quite different road to give us 'horde', the word for a great roaming crowd, so Urdu and horde are distant cousins. English adopted the name in the early nineteenth century as British contact with the Indian subcontinent deepened, keeping the spelling close to the Persian and Hindustani form. The compact u-r-d-u shape, with no silent letters, is what makes it easy once you know it begins with the same syllable as 'urn'.

How the word is built

• urdu (from Turkic ordu: army camp), the name shortened from zaban-e-urdu 'language of the camp'