How to Learn the Urdu Alphabet

By Mark Keller, eHow Contributor

Urdu is a language widely spoken in southeast Asia, and is an official language of both Pakistan and India. It has an alphabet descended from Arabic and Turkish script, and is read from right to left. Though the Urdu alphabet may look difficult to learn at first, you can teach it to yourself in only a few weeks using free resources found online.

Instructions

1. Familiarize yourself with the shapes and sounds of the Urdu alphabet. Read through Hugo's Urdu Alphabet Pages and watch the Urdu Alphabet Jingle on YouTube.
   
2. Print out the graphical chart on the Wikipedia page about the Urdu alphabet. It contains both the Urdu characters and their names in the Roman alphabet. Study the chart and hang it someplace where you'll see it often.
   
3. Read the detailed notes about the Urdu alphabet on the Columbia.edu website. The articles there explain how to recognize and pronounce each character of the alphabet.
   
4. Practice writing the characters of the alphabet, saying their names and sounds as you do so. This will greatly aid you in your memorization. You can use the free online tool U-TRANS to help you.
   
5. Find some text written in Urdu and try to read it. Even if you do not understand the Urdu language, you can decipher the sound of each word by saying the sound made by the characters in it. This will be a slow process at first, but over time you will become more skilled at reading the Urdu alphabet.

Read more: How to Learn the Urdu Alphabet | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5242186_learn-urdu-alphabet.html#ixzz18vKb1mRx