Urdu /ˈʊərduː/, or more precisely Standard Urdu, is a South Asian language in the Indo-Aryan branch in the Indo-European family of languages. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also an official language of five Indian states and one of the 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India. Based on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, Urdu developed under the influence of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages over the course of almost 900 years.
