Urdu is the faster of the two for an English speaker. The US Foreign Service Institute puts Urdu in Category III, about 44 weeks of full-time study, and Arabic in Category IV, about 88 weeks. Pick Arabic anyway if your goal is the Quran or the Arab world. They are different languages that share one script.
Transliteration on this page: ʿ for ع, a dot under ṭ ḍ ṣ ẓ for the Arabic emphatic letters, and long vowels written ā ī ū. Urdu forms follow Wiktionary where it gives one.
| Arabic | Urdu | |
|---|---|---|
| Language family | Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) | Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) |
| Speakers | About 411 million native speakers of all varieties (Wikipedia) | About 78 million first-language and 246 million total speakers (Wikipedia) |
| Letters | 28 | 39 or 40 |
| Usual writing style | Naskh, on a flat baseline | Nastaliq, sloping down to the left |
| Word order | Verb often first in formal writing | Verb last |
| Where the words come from | Three-letter Semitic roots | An Indic core shared with Hindi, plus Arabic and Persian nouns |
| Spoken vs written | Modern Standard Arabic for writing, a dialect at home | One standard, close to spoken Hindi |
| FSI estimate for English speakers | Category IV: 88 weeks, 2,200 class hours | Category III: 44 weeks, 1,012 class hours |
The time estimates come from the FSI language difficulty categories. The letter counts and writing styles come from Wikipedia's Urdu alphabet article.
How far do Quran reading and Urdu get you toward Arabic?
Reading the Quran and speaking Urdu give you the script and a stock of nouns. They give you no Arabic grammar and no ear for spoken Arabic, and those two take up most of the 88 weeks. Skill by skill:
- Script: done. If you read the Quran, you already decode Arabic letters and vowel marks. Most beginners spend their first weeks on this.
- Vocabulary: partly. Urdu's Arabic words are mostly nouns. A Dawn article quoted on Wikipedia's Urdu page says 99 per cent of Urdu verbs have Sanskrit or Prakrit roots. Many of the nouns also changed meaning on the way (see the table below).
- Pronunciation: partly. Urdu says s for three Arabic letters and z for four. Tajweed teaches the Arabic sounds letter by letter, so a trained reciter has a head start.
- Grammar and listening: nothing. Arabic verb forms, case endings and the spoken dialects are all new.
Reading speed and understanding are different skills. When I learned to read the Quran, a page took me 20 minutes at first and 2 minutes in the end. Reading the words aloud is not the same as knowing what they mean; that takes vocabulary and grammar on top. Our comparison of ways to learn Quranic Arabic is the next step from there, and the 100 most common Quran words make up 55.4 percent of the words in the text.
The script: same letters, extra Urdu letters
Urdu uses all 28 Arabic letters and adds more for sounds Arabic does not have. Its alphabet came to it through Persian, which had already added four letters of its own. These are the additions:
| Letter | Urdu name | Sound |
|---|---|---|
| ٹ | ṭe | retroflex t, tongue curled back |
| ڈ | ḍāl | retroflex d |
| ڑ | ṛe | retroflex flap |
| ں | nūn ghunna | nasalises the vowel before it |
| ے | baṛī ye | long e at the end of a word |
| ھ | do-chashmī he | breathy h after a consonant: bh, ph, th |
| ہ | gol he | plain h; Urdu's form of Arabic ه |
| پ چ ژ گ | pe, che, zhe, gāf | p, ch, zh, g (taken from Persian) |
The trap for an Urdu reader goes the other way: Urdu reads several Arabic letters as one sound, where Arabic keeps them apart.
| Letters | In Arabic | In Urdu |
|---|---|---|
| ث س ص | th, s, emphatic ṣ | all s |
| ذ ز ض ظ | dh, z, emphatic ḍ, emphatic ẓ | all z |
| ت ط | t, emphatic ṭ | both t |
| ح ه | ḥ from the throat, plain h | both h |
| ع | ʿayn, a throat consonant | a vowel, or silent |
The two languages also look different on the page. Urdu is usually printed in Nastaliq, where each word slopes down to the left. Arabic is usually printed in Naskh, which sits on a flat line. Our Arabic alphabet chart with all four letter forms shows the 28 letters in Naskh.
Which shared words mean something different?
Many Arabic words mean something else in Urdu. Gharīb is poor in Urdu but strange or foreign in Arabic, makān is a house in Urdu but any place in Arabic, and akhbār is a newspaper in Urdu but simply news in Arabic. Most of these words reached Urdu through Persian and drifted on the way. The first 15 below changed meaning; the last 5 did not. Every meaning is from Wiktionary, and each word links to its entry.
| Urdu | Urdu meaning | Arabic | Arabic meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| غریب gharīb | poor | غَرِيب gharīb | strange, foreign; a stranger |
| اخبار akhbār | newspaper | أَخْبَار akhbār | news (plural of khabar) |
| عورت ʿaurat | woman; wife | عَوْرَة ʿawra | nakedness; the private parts |
| مطلب matlab | meaning; purpose | مَطْلَب maṭlab | something sought, a demand |
| فکر fikr | concern, worry | فِكْر fikr | thought, thinking |
| خیال khayāl | thought, opinion; care | خَيَال khayāl | imagination; fiction |
| مکان makān | house | مَكَان makān | place, location |
| ملک mulk | country | مُلْك mulk | sovereignty, rule; property |
| خط khat | a letter (post) | خَطّ khaṭṭ | line; handwriting, script |
| تکلیف taklīf | trouble, pain | تَكْلِيف taklīf | a commission; an obligation |
| عیش ʿaish | luxury, pleasure | عَيْش ʿaysh | living, life |
| غصہ ghussā | anger | غُصَّة ghuṣṣa | a lump in the throat; anguish |
| قسمت qismat | fate, destiny | قِسْمَة qisma | division, sharing out (fate is a secondary sense) |
| مضمون mazmūn | essay, article; topic | مَضْمُون maḍmūn | content; guaranteed |
| اجازت ijāzat | permission | إِجَازَة ijāza | permission, licence; also a holiday from work |
| وقت waqt | time | وَقْت waqt | time (same) |
| جواب javāb | answer, reply | جَوَاب jawāb | answer, reply (same) |
| کتاب kitāb | book | كِتَاب kitāb | book (same) |
| علم ʿilm | knowledge | عِلْم ʿilm | knowledge (same) |
| دنیا dunyā | world | دُنْيَا dunyā | world; this life (same) |
Two things to take from the table. Treat a familiar-looking word as a suspect until a dictionary confirms it, because gharīb will make you call a stranger poor. And notice the spelling clues: mazmūn and maḍmūn are the same letters, but Urdu says ض as z. For the words Arabic speakers actually use day to day, start from our list of everyday Arabic word frequencies.
Grammar: where Urdu stops helping
Almost nothing in Arabic grammar carries over from Urdu. Urdu shares its grammar with Hindi: the verb goes at the end, and small words such as se (from) come after the noun where English puts a preposition before it (Hindustani grammar). Arabic builds words from three-letter roots, marks the verb for person, gender and number, and in formal writing often puts the verb first.
Urdu often turns an Arabic noun into a verb by adding its own verb karnā (to do): انتظار کرنا intizār karnā, to wait. Arabic uses a real verb from the root instead, اِنْتَظَرَ intaẓara (he waited), and every form of it is new grammar for an Urdu speaker. So an Urdu speaker can know plenty of Arabic nouns and still be unable to build an Arabic sentence.
Who should learn which
Pick Urdu if you are an English speaker who wants to talk with people in Pakistan or northern India, because it takes about half as long and also gets you conversational Hindi. Pick Arabic if your goal is the Quran, Islamic texts or the Arab world, since no amount of Urdu replaces it.
- English speaker with no fixed goal: Urdu, the faster of the two.
- Urdu speaker who reads the Quran: learn Arabic from the text you already read aloud. The Quran vocabulary flashcards with English translation turn that reading into meaning.
- Working in the Gulf: learn the local dialect. Gulf Arabic dialects borrowed words from Urdu and Hindi, so you will hear a few you know.
- Starting Arabic from zero: our guide to how to learn Arabic in stages names the books and tutors we used.
Most Arabic words in Urdu came through Persian, so our Arabic vs Persian comparison shows where many of these meaning shifts began. For a Semitic language closer to Arabic, see Arabic vs Hebrew.
Frequently asked questions
Can Urdu and Arabic understand each other?
No. Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language and Arabic is Semitic, so their grammar, verbs and everyday words are different. An Urdu speaker will recognise some Arabic nouns, such as kitab (book) and waqt (time), but cannot follow a conversation or a news broadcast in Arabic without studying it.
Is Urdu the same as Arabic?
No. Urdu borrowed many words from Arabic, mostly through Persian, and writes them in a version of the Arabic script, but it is a different language from a different family. Its grammar and almost all of its verbs come from the same Indic base as Hindi, and colloquial Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible.
Is the Quran in Urdu or Arabic?
The Quran is in Arabic. Urdu translations and commentaries are often printed next to the Arabic, but the text they translate is Arabic. Reading the Arabic aloud and understanding it are separate skills, and plenty of readers have the first without the second.
Is Urdu more difficult than Arabic?
For an English speaker, no. The US Foreign Service Institute puts Urdu in Category III, about 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours of full-time study, and Arabic in Category IV, about 88 weeks or 2,200 class hours. Arabic takes roughly twice as long.