Urdu, like Hindi, is a form of Hindustani.

[14] It evolved from the medieval (6th to

13th century) Apabhraa register of the preceding Shauraseni language, a Middle
Indo-Aryan language that is also the ancestor of other modern languages, including
the Punjabi dialects. Urdu developed under the influence of the Persian and Arabic
languages, both of which have contributed a significant amount of vocabulary to
formal speech.[15][16][17][18][19][20] Around 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots
in Sanskrit and Prakrit.[21]

Although the word Urdu itself is derived from the Turkic word ordu (army) or orda,
from which English horde is also derived,[22] Turkic borrowings in Urdu are
minimal[23] and Urdu is not genetically related to the Turkic languages. Urdu words
originating from Chagatai and Arabic were borrowed through Persian and hence are
Persianized versions of the original words. For instance, the Arabic ta' marbuta ( )
changes to he ( ) or te ( ) .[24] [note 1] Nevertheless, contrary to popular belief,
Urdu did not borrow from the Turkish language, but from Chagatai. Urdu and Turkish
borrowed from Arabic and Persian, hence the similarity in pronunciation of many
Urdu and Turkish words.[25]

Arabic influence in the region began with the late first millennium Muslim conquests
of the Indian subcontinent. The Persian language was introduced into the
subcontinent a few centuries later by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and
Afghan dynasties including that of Mahmud of Ghazni.[26][27] The Turko-Afghan
Delhi Sultanate established Persian as its official language, a policy continued by
the Mughal Empire, which extended over most of northern South Asia from the 16th
to 18th centuries and cemented Persian influence on the developing Hindustani.
[citation needed]

With the advent of the British Raj, Persian was no longer the language of
administration but Hindustani, still written in the Persian script, continued to be
used by both Hindus and Muslims.[citation needed] The name Urdu was first used
by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780.[28][29](p18) From the 13th
century until the end of the 18th century Urdu was commonly known as Hindi.[29]
(p1) The language was also known by various other names such as Hindavi and
Dehlavi.[29](pp2122) The communal nature of the language lasted until it replaced
Persian as the official language in 1837 and was made co-official, along with
English. Urdu was promoted in British India by British policies to counter the
previous emphasis on Persian.[30] This triggered a Brahman backlash in
northwestern India, which argued that the language should be written in the native
Devanagari script. Thus a new literary register, called "Hindi", replaced traditional
Hindustani as the official language of Bihar in 1881, establishing a sectarian divide
of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide that was formalized with the
division of India and Pakistan after independence (though there are Hindu poets
who continue to write in Urdu to this day, with post-independence examples

including Gopi Chand Narang and Gulzar). At independence, Pakistan established a

highly Persianized literary form of Urdu as its national language.[citation needed]

There have been attempts to "purify" Urdu and Hindi, by purging Urdu of Sanskrit
loanwords, and Hindi of Persian loan words, and new vocabulary draws primarily
from Persian and Arabic for Urdu and from Sanskrit for Hindi. English has exerted a
heavy influence on both as a co-official language.