The Urdu language
and how it is written

Where Urdu ranks

Urdu is the 10th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Urdu

The design of Nastaliq

Urdu and Punjabi in Pakistan are written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet, normally in the Nastaliq style^[3,9]. Nastaliq grew out of Naskh in 14th-century Iran and was given its canonical form by Mir Ali Tabrizi^[5,10]. Its words slope down from right to left instead of sitting on a flat line.

Abjad (consonants). Letters write consonants; short vowels are optional marks.

Kind

Abjad (consonants)

Direction

Right to left (numbers left to right)

Took shape

In 14th-century Shiraz and Tabriz, standardised by Mir Ali Tabrizi

Line of descent

Phoenician → Aramaic → Nabataean → Arabic → Naskh → Nastaliq

Traditional surface

Paper

Own digits

۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹

Also writes

پنجابی Western Punjabi

• A hanging, sloping line

  In Nastaliq each word descends diagonally towards its end, so letters stack at an angle and lines need extra height. That slant is why the style is so hard to set in metal or digital type^[5,7].

• Letters for Indian sounds

  Urdu adds ٹ, ڈ and ڑ for retroflex sounds (marked with a small ط), ں for nasal vowels, ھ for aspiration and ے (bari ye) for a final e^[9].

• A newspaper font built from ligatures

  Noori Nastaliq, created by calligrapher Ahmed Mirza Jamil with Monotype and released in 1981, set Urdu from a library of hand-drawn ligatures instead of single letters^[6,7].

• Same codes, different digits

  Urdu stores the same digit characters as Persian, but Urdu typography draws 4, 6 and 7 in different shapes, so a font must know the language to show numbers correctly^[8].

Explore the letters

Numbers in Nastaliq

Urdu's relatives among the 38

Urdu belongs to the Indo-European family (Indo-Aryan). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• हिन्दीHindiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 611M
• বাংলাBengaliSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 274M
• मराठीMarathiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 99M
• پنجابیWestern PunjabiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 90M
• ગુજરાતીGujaratiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 62M
• EnglishEnglishGermanic · 1.5B
• españolSpanishRomance · 561M
• françaisFrenchRomance · 334M
• portuguêsPortugueseRomance · 269M
• русскийRussianBalto-Slavic · 210M
• DeutschGermanGermanic · 133M
• فارسیPersian (Iranian)Iranian · 82M
• italianoItalianRomance · 66M
• भोजपुरीBhojpuriIndo-Aryan (Bihari) · 53M

Urdu across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Urdu.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Urdu language
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hindustani language
5. Wikipedia — Nastaliq (origins in 14th-century Shiraz and Tabriz)
6. Wikipedia — Noori Nastaliq
7. Unicode Conference 28 — Nastaliq through Unicode and OpenType (Monotype)
8. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 9: Middle East-I (Arabic)
9. Omniglot — Urdu alphabet
10. World History Encyclopedia — Nasta'liq
11. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Urdu

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.