For this cultural post, I'd like to discuss the differences between Urdu and Hindi, both of which originate from the language Hindustani, which found its roots in Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. Prior to the partition of India, this was the standard language spoken across the subcontinent, but after 1947, when the subcontinent was split into India, Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Hindustani morphed into two languages, Hindi and Urdu. Hindi is the widely spoken language in India and Urdu is the commonly spoken language in Pakistan.
Both languages share very similar spoken dialects, but their written forms are completely different. Hindi's written form uses the Devanagri script (as do most other Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati etc), whereas Urdu uses the Nastaliq (Persian) script. Hindi is read from left to right but Urdu is read from right to left, just like Arabic.
Given that Urdu borrows many of its words from Arabic and Persian, there are certain words that are found in Urdu that are not found in Hindi. Likewise, many words in Hindi align closely with Sanksrit and a few spoken in Hindi are not found in Urdu. I find that when I speak with my friends who are Pakistani, there are slight differences in a few phrases (such as the phrase to wish someone happy birthday), but we speak the same spoken dialect for the most part. This is yet another reminder of how unfortunate the divide between India and Pakistan is -- we were one people and share more similarities than differences.
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