Are Hindi and Urdu the same language?
In everyday speech, close to the same language. In writing, two different scripts that share almost no visual overlap.
Spoken casually, Hindi and Urdu are largely mutually intelligible — a Hindi speaker from Delhi and an Urdu speaker from Lahore can hold a conversation with little difficulty. Linguists often treat them as registers of a single language, Hindustani.
The split shows up in two places. First, the script: Hindi is written in Devanagari, left to right; Urdu in a Perso-Arabic script called Nastaliq, right to left. Someone fluent in spoken Hindi cannot read an Urdu newspaper without learning a new alphabet.
Second, formal vocabulary diverges sharply. Hindi draws its literary and technical words from Sanskrit; Urdu from Persian and Arabic. So the more formal, academic or official the writing gets, the less the two overlap — a legal document or a news broadcast is far harder to follow across the divide than a market conversation.
Side by side
| Hindi | Urdu | |
|---|---|---|
| Writing system | Devanagari | Arabic |
| Reading direction | Left to right | Right to left |
| Language family | Indo-European | Indo-European |
| Word order | subject-object-verb (SOV) | subject-object-verb (SOV) |
| Speakers | Over 550 million native speakers as of the latest data, making it one of the most spoken first languages in the world, and widely learned and understood as a second language in India. | Approximately 230 million people speak Urdu as a first or second language. |
- ✗ Different writing systems — neither can be read without learning the other's script.
- ✓ Same language family — expect shared vocabulary roots.
- ✓ Same word order — sentences keep their shape between them.
The same phrases in both
Nothing shows how close two languages are like seeing identical meaning rendered in each. These are independent translations of the same English source.
Greetings
| Hindi | Urdu |
|---|---|
| नमस्ते | ہیلو |
| सुप्रभात | صبح بخیر |
| शुभ संध्या | شب بخیر |
| अलविदा | الوداع |
| बाद में मिलते हैं | بعد میں ملتے ہیں۔ |
| कल मिलते हैं | کل ملتے ہیں۔ |
| स्वागत है | خوش آمدید |
| आप कैसे हैं? | کیسی ہو؟ |
| मैं ठीक हूं, धन्यवाद | میں ٹھیک ہوں، شکریہ |
| आपका दिन शुभ हो | آپ کا دن اچھا گزرے۔ |
Courtesy
| Hindi | Urdu |
|---|---|
| कृपया | مہربانی فرمائیں |
| धन्यवाद | شکریہ |
| बहुत बहुत धन्यवाद | آپ کا بہت بہت شکریہ |
| आपका स्वागत है | آپ کا استقبال ہے۔ |
| हाँ | جی ہاں |
| नहीं | نہیں |
| क्षमा करें | معاف کیجئے گا۔ |
| मुझे खेद है | مجھے افسوس ہے |
| कोई समस्या नहीं | کوئی مسئلہ نہیں۔ |
| अवश्य | یقینا |
Introductions
| Hindi | Urdu |
|---|---|
| आपका नाम क्या है? | آپ کا نام کیا ہے؟ |
| आपसे मिलकर अच्छा लगा | آپ سے مل کر خوشی ہوئی۔ |
| आप कहाँ से हैं? | آپ کہاں سے ہیں؟ |
| आपकी आयु कितनी है? | آپ کی عمر کتنی ہے؟ |
| मैं एक विद्यार्थी हूँ | میں ایک طالب علم ہوں۔ |
| मैं यहां छुट्टी पर हूं | میں یہاں چھٹی پر ہوں۔ |
| मैं यहां काम के लिए हूं | میں یہاں کام کے لیے ہوں۔ |
| यह मेरा दोस्त है | یہ میرا دوست ہے۔ |
Numbers
| Hindi | Urdu |
|---|---|
| एक | ایک |
| दो | دو |
| तीन | تین |
| चार | چار |
| पांच | پانچ |
| छह | چھ |
| सात | سات |
| आठ | آٹھ |
| नौ | نو |
| दस | دس |
In practice
If you are translating conversational text, output for one is often intelligible to speakers of the other. For formal, legal or technical content, treat them as genuinely separate targets.
Other comparisons
Method and limitations
The structural rows — writing system, family, word order, speaker numbers — are taken from each language's own entry in our language data. The assessment of mutual intelligibility is editorial: it reflects the general consensus, and intelligibility always varies by speaker, dialect and exposure.
The phrase comparison uses the same 116 seed phrases translated into every language we support, so the two columns are independent translations of identical English source text rather than one translated through the other. Those translations are machine generated; the sample skips any row where one side repeats an earlier row, since a collapsed translation shows nothing useful.