#learning urdu

Hi! My name is Garden ( From main account: @gardenkeeper ), and this is my langblr!

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Some information about me:

. My pronouns are he/him. I'm trans and queer.

. I'm aspiring to become a librarian.

. I'm interested in both languages and linguistics.

. Currently learning: Spanish, Irish and Urdu

. Paused languages: Greek

. Future languages (hopefully): Portuguese, Burmese, Bemba, Czech, Breton, Welsh, Sinhala

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I do not tolerate any form of bigotry. If you see me reblog or say something that shows otherwise, please inform me and I will remove the post and/or correct myself.

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As most South Asian people know, the divide between Hindi and Urdu is a very hotly debated and political thing. But I'm only here to talk about how you can learn Urdu if you already know Hindi. Urdu is, after all, a beautiful langauge. But first, I'd like to get a few things out of the way.

I've had quite a few people who want to learn Hindi ask if they can learn both Hindi and Urdu at the same time and I usually give them a long answer justifying my reasonings about how it can be confusing when you're trying to learn both of them at the same time and the words mean the same thing but there are just subtle pronunciation and spelling differences. But you can get over this hurdle pretty fast if you have a good grasp over either of the langauges.

The biggest hurdle is the writing system. Hindi is written in the Devanagari Script, which is an Abugida, that is it is written in a weird vowel-consonant hybrid where each consonant (generally) has a vowel (one of the reasons I recommend learning that first, as it is read exactly the way it is written). On the other hand, Urdu is written in the Nastaliq Script, which is an Abjad- that is it does not write vowels usually, or short vowels at least, which can be pretty confusing. Plus, the (some) letters have an initial, a middle and a final form depending on their place in the word, in addition to the free form.

Enough scaring now though, onto the self-study tips. I'd recommend going over the alphabet once but then I'd recommend learning them slowly while trying to form words.

Resources:

This YouTube Series to learn the script

A blogpost by a native Urdu speaker about learning Urdu through Hindi

Ukindia Learn to read Urdu

@urdulanguageclub for vocab words

@urdupod101 is helpful as well

r/Urdu on Reddit is a good place to learn as well after you've mastered the script!

P.S.: I'm not an expert at Urdu, I've barely been learning it for a few months. So if you all have a few suggestions then let me know!

P.P.S.:

مجھے ہاتھ کے لکھاوٹ پڑھنے مے پریشانی ہوتی ہے۔***