Urdu

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, which is closely related to Hindi. Urdu is the national and official language of Pakistan as well as of some Indian federal states. Urdu increasingly serves as a lingua franca between regional languages. Approximately 58 million people worldwide speak Urdu as a native language, and together with second-language speakers the total number adds up to 150-200 million. Urdu contains a large number of loanwords from Persian, Arabic and Portuguese. Over time, Urdu has also acquired words from Turkish and English. Urdu is traditionally seen as a sophisticated language and is also called “the language of poetry” or “the language of the court”. Urdu uses a variant of the Persian alphabet, which in turn is a variant of the Arabic alphabet.

Go to top

Language courses Urdu

Exams Language courses Urdu

What is considered polite?

What would we recommend to ensure that you are polite? "Ich kriege diese Brötchen da" ["I'll get those bread rolls there"] would sound absolutely fine in a Hamburg bakery. Here, however, you should at least add a "Bitte" ["Please"], and the word "kriege" [get] might shock a bakery assistant a little bit.

CULTURE + PEOPLE

Select your language course:


QUICKFINDER

Contact

AKAD Language+Culture AG
Neunbrunnenstrasse 50
8050 Zürich

Telephone 044 368 71 11
Fax 044 368 71 12
E-mail language@akad.ch

Office hours
MO - FR: 08:30 – 18:00 Uhr