Hindi and Urdu are two Indo-Aryan languages that both developed from
Sanskrit in Northern India beginning some 2700 years ago.
While both Hindi and Urdu exists in many dialects, there were no distinction between them up until the 19th century. Before then, they were referred to as “Hindustani” which was a language derived from Sanskrit, but with Arabic, Persian, and to some extent, Turkic influences and loan-words.
Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same languages. The main difference is that Urdu is written with the Arabic script whereas Hindi is written in the script originally used for Sanskrit, Devanagari. Urdu has a lot more Persian and Arabic loanwords than Hindi, but these are almost exclusively used in formal speech and the two languages remain completely mutually intelligible. Today, Urdu is the main language of Pakistan and is
perceived as a language spoken by Muslims, while Hindi is spoken mainly in India, and is the language spoken by Hindus and non-Muslims.
Hindi VS Urdu – What’s The Difference Between The Hindustani Languages? – AutoLingual
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