Learn Urdu

Note that the medial form of a has a closed loop on top.Note L initial or medial can be confused with alif and the L final with the undotted N. If we look at the letters above we can form some new words with these and the previous letters. Try and read the words below . Each line is a mxture of English and urdu words. The answers come afterwards. There are examples of the inital , medial and final forms of each letter as far as possible.

Lets make some words using the above . Have a go at reading them.

Here are the answers.

Chapter 15

2009-08-25T03:07:00.000-07:00

points to note are that the intial B or P has a short vertical rather than horizontal line when it has a vowel with it as in the word NO above and that the letter S often has an elongated shape as in the word Pakistan . Note also that the mark over the t in potato converts it into a hard T as in Turkey.
It seems that the first soldiers who got to the subcontinent did not speak the Queen's English . So that the word CALL ( to call ) somebody is ususally written and pronounced as CAAL rather than CAUL by Urdu speakers. Also there is a tendency to add an I at the beginning whenever an English word is written with Urdu script , so the word SPIRIT for eg. is written and pronounced as ISPIRIT , school is written as ischool etc. Here however we will try and stick close to the English pronounciation.

Lets look at another three vowels in the figure below from R to L which complete the vowels used in Urdu They are another form of A which we shall from now mark as little a to distinguish from Aliph.Long EE also used as Y as we shall see.Long Ae Then is the letter H and finally L.

a is pronounce as AEN ( as in mAn) . The next is the letter Y . Because it has two dots at the bottom it can easily be confused with the vowel mark ae .Third is the long Ae . Next on the left are the two useful consonants H and L

Chapter 14

2009-08-25T03:01:00.000-07:00

Can you by looking at the figure above identify the following words in the next figure ? They consist of Urdu words in the first line and English in the next one.

The answers are Pakistan ( this is a different form of S - a new letter will be introduced in the figures sometimes before without prewarning and you have to make a best guess what it might sound like - its a good practice to get into as often some of vowel marks are not written and one has to occasionally guess in reading normal Urdu ) . The words are Mama and Neem on the first line. The second line has mint , no , potato and the final line has name and then mine. Note the hamza - a little one put over a vowel when one vowel follows another as here in the word MINE the vowel AA is followed by EE.

Chapter 13

2009-08-25T03:00:00.001-07:00

Lets look at the vowels and the words learnt so far and introduce a new letter M

Chapter 12

2009-08-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

Vowel at the beginning of a sentence .
If a word begins with a vowel eg arm , apple , easter etc. an aliph sign is always put before the vowel mark.
Examples below. Note that the first word is a or ugh as in 'U'nder.
Note there are two ae letters. The bottom is used when ae is on its eg Ae cat sat while the one above it is used when AE joins the next letter eg in AEK (one). If the vowel is not at the start of a word we dont use the vertical aliph and just use the vowel marks as below

Make sure you can tell the difference between ae and big eee ( there is an extra zer at the bottom for eee). Between u and big ooo and between ooo and au ( au has a zabar on top ). It is important to get up and cram these vowel marks as they make the language very easy to read once you have done that.
*As in Hindi the nasal n as in the word song is marked with a dot over the letter.*

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After Aliph the next letters in the alphabet are B , P , Te (soft as in tota-parrot) , T , and S.-written from your R to Left. These letters are pronounced as Be (bay) , Pe , Te , Te and Se.
The S above can be confused with SH which we will see later , so look at it closely.
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guess the four forms of each letter depending on whether it is detached ( to your right ) . comes at the beginning ( second right on your screen) , middle - 3rd from the Right or final (leftmost )

Looking at the above figure and keeping the sign of the aa vowel ( just a vertical line ) , and keeping in mind where the letter comes in the word ,can you read your first sentence in Urdu ? It has a final form of the i which you have not met before ( in the word KI below). Also note the little omega sign -called TASHDID-at the top of B in ABBA. It is a doubler ie it means you have to say B twice , the first B is half pronounced . Read R to L.
Do you know what the above - Aap ke Abba ki Kitab - means ? It says this book belongs to your father . Abba is urdu for father . Aap means you and kitab is book. Note also that the two dots for the soft te in Kitab are placed well above the line.
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The next figure below has three urdu words and one English word. Can you read them ? Answers are in the next figure after the one below

The answers are

The unlabelled figure is of course the English word TENT

Lesson 11

2009-07-01T23:04:00.001-07:00

Vowel at the beginning of a sentence .

If a word begins with a vowel eg arm , apple , easter etc. an aliph sign is always put before the vowel mark.
Examples below. Note that the first word is a or ugh as in 'U'nder

Note there are two ae letters. The bottom is used when ae is on its eg Ae cat sat while the one above it is used when AE joins the next letter eg in AEK (one).
If the vowel is not at the start of a word we dont use the vertical aliph and just use the vowel marks as below.

difference between ae and big eee ( there is an extra zer at the bottom for eee). Between u and big ooo and between ooo and au ( au has a zabar on top ). It is important to get up and cram these vowel marks as they make the language very easy to read once you have done that.

*As in Hindi the nasal n as in the word song is marked with a dot over the letter.*

After Aliph the next letters in the alphabet are B , P , Te (soft as in tota-parrot) , T , and S.-written from your R to Left. These letters are pronounced as Be (bay) , Pe , Te , Te and Se.

The S above can be confused with SH which we will see later , so look at it closely.

Its quite easy to guess the four forms of each letter depending on whether it is detached ( to your right ) . comes at the beginning ( second right on your screen) , middle - 3rd from the Right or final (leftmost )

Do you know what the above - Aap ke Abba ki Kitab - means ? It says this book belongs to your father . Abba is urdu for father . Aap means you and kitab is book. Note also that the two dots for the soft te in Kitab are placed well above the line.
The next figure below has three urdu words and one English word. Can you read them ? Answers are in the next figure after the one below

The answers are

Lesson 10

2009-07-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the letter N when it is the final letter is written without the dot in the middle and is not sounded except from the back of the throat as example in the word maa'n for mother.We shall look at this later.

We will end the first lesson here . It is very important to go over this lesson again and again to make sure you have the vowels right. As a test see if you get them all in the next figure.

Here are the answers

One important point to note is that the zabar mark and i mark called a zer are similar but the zabar is on top of a letter while zer which signifies i is below.

You can make similar lessons yourself by using a Urdu font. Open windows character map program - its in the windows directory- and copy some letters . Paste them into a windows paintbrush program using the text tool and save as a monochrome bitmap file. Open this file in thumbs or paint shop pro and save as a gif file. For really large letters you need Universal word program.

Lesson 9

2009-07-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

Just go over the vowel marks again. Spend a lot of time sudying the figure below and get up and get it imprinted on your mind. It is extremely improtant to get the vowel marks right . After finishing these introductory lessons red some children's study books. The reason is that newspapers tend to leave out the small vowel marks of little i and little u and tend to put one word on top of another and you will get very confused unless you are confident of your vowels.

The following are the vowel marks which modify the letters.

The madd , hamza and tashdid signs are special characters we will look at in the next lesson

Lesson 8

2009-07-01T22:39:00.001-07:00

The vowel mark AA as we noted above is written as a straight vertical line. The next word to it on your left is kin . The vowel mark little i is a small slant line called in urdu ZER is placed BELOW the letter , in this case K. The next word on the second line is KEEN . Two dots are added to the little i - ZER- mark to make a big EE mark below the letter.

Then little u - KUN as in the word crook - the u mark -called PESH- is always above the letter ; next is big U -KOON as in sOOn - note you get a big fat worm like figure added to the little u-pesh- mark , but this worm is on level with the letter.

Next in the figure here

is O as in cone (icecream cone)- the worm on its own makes an O sound ; but when a zabar is added above the letter it makes an Au -KAUN (who in Urdu ) as in AUtumn . Note the difference between the words KOON and KAUN in the bigger figure above. . kOOn has a pesh on top of the worm while kAUn has a zabar on top of the worm.

Next below is ae as in cane (sugar) with two dots below. See if you can spot the difference between the word Cane below and the word KEEN above. Thats right ! , the only difference between an AE vowel mark and an EE one is that EE has an extra zabar in addition to the two dots.This is important to remember.
Last of all in this figure

look again at CANE with the two dots marking the AE sound and the next figure to it CAN . We get the AAE sound in cAAEnada (Canada) by just adding a zabar at the top of the letter

Lesson 7

2009-07-01T22:36:00.001-07:00

This is a very important area so make sure you get them all right. There is revision of the vowel marks in the figure below. Note however there is a new accent mark called a zabar above the kn word second from your right. It signifies that the accent should be on k so making and not on n in this word here - so it should sound kughn and not knugh. This will become clearer later. Continuing , the third word from R to L on the top line is the word kaan (ear) . The vowel mark AA is a straight vertical line put after K .Note the K changing shape slightly in the figure for KAAN . A vowel mark like AA is not attached to the letter which follows after it , so N here is written on its own.