Urdu (/ˈʊərduː/; Urdu: اُردُو‎ ALA-LC: Urdū; IPA: [ˈʊrd̪uː] ( listen), or Modern Standard Urdu) is a standardised register of the Hindustani language.[10][11] It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, and an official language of six states of India. It is also one of the 22 official languages recognized in the Constitution of India.

Urdu is historically associated with the Muslims of the northern Indian subcontinent. Apart from specialized vocabulary, Urdu is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi, another recognized register of Hindustani. The Urdu variant received recognition and patronage under British rule when the British replaced the Persian and local official languages with the Urdu and English languages in the North Indian regions of Jammu and Kashmir in 1846 and Punjab in 1849.[12][13]