Urdu
Lashkari (لشکری) اُردُو‎
Urdu in Nastaliq script
Pronunciation	[ˈʊrduː] ( listen)
Native to	India and Pakistan
Region	South Asia
Native speakers	68.62 million  (2021) Total: 230 million (2021)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Sanskrit Prakrit Hindustani Urdu
Early forms:	Hindustani Rekhta Urdu
Dialects	Deccani Dhakaiya Rekhta
Writing system	Perso-Arabic (Urdu alphabet) Roman Urdu (unofficial) Urdu Braille
Official status
Official language in	Pakistan (national)  India (state-official) Jammu and Kashmir National Capital Territory of Delhi Bihar Uttar Pradesh Jharkhand West Bengal Telangana
Recognised minority language in	South Africa (protected language)
Regulated by	National Language Promotion Department (Pakistan) National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (India)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ur
ISO 639-2	urd
ISO 639-3	urd
Linguasphere	59-AAF-q
Areas in India and Pakistan where Urdu is either official or co-official     Areas where Urdu is neither official nor co-official
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Urdu, also known as Lashkari, or the Lashkari language (لشکری ‍زبان) is the national language of Pakistan and a recognized regional dialect in India. Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, which means that it came from Proto-Indo-Aryan, a language that was spoken northeast of the Caspian Sea in the second millennium BCE.

Most people in Pakistan speak it as a lingua franca. There are parts of India that speak it, such as Delhi, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, for example. Despite a few differences, the words in Hindi are very similar to Urdu. The way it is written, is different from how Hindi is written. People who speak Hindi and Urdu may be able to able to understand or express the meaning of one of these two scripts.