Naskh is what I call the less scary looking version of the Arabic font and actually when I write Urdu (very rarely at the moment) I admit I do sometimes prefer writing Naskh. Interesting how you say the Urdu speakers seem more attached to their nastaliq. I wonder if it has to do with identity? During the British colonial era Urdu and Hindi became more separately defined. The script was an important part of distinguishing Urdu from the Hindi speaking Hindus - from what I understand. I do wonder if there had never been any nastaliq from Persian rule in South Asia if the Hindustani language would ever have splitā¦
I also have Russian ancestors - mine were from St Petersburg as far as I know. It is the reason I want to learn Russian too. Duolingo.com has a Swahili course launching any day now which might be a good introduction to the language. I love how Swahili sounds - it has so much rhythm!
Naskh, thatās the name, yeah! Funny enough, that font also stems originally from Persia
Yes, it makes sense to think that the script was a major factor in the Urdu/Hindi split. Who knows? It seems that Urdu speakers are turning to the Latin alphabet now, partly as a way to avoid naskh. Maybe a latin version of written HIndi/Urdu could contribute to make both languages re-converge? Just as the popularity of urdu/hindu-agnostic language in Bollywood movies?
Interesting article on this topic:
Thanks for the great article! When I go to read a bollywood song online it is always roman urdu I am reading. Iām surprised that devanagari and nastaliq support in South Asia remained so strong throughout British rule and a roman hindustani didnāt just pop out there and then making both scripts redundant. Perhaps nationalist feelings were stronger than the English Christian hegemony. Perhapsā¦ It also reminds me of something I read not too long ago about Chinese and PinYin and how people are forgetting the Chinese characters.The impact of technology increasing the use of the roman script globally - a very interesting topic. Bad characters
A nice article. However, the author canāt help him/herself and s/he restates one of the old myths about Chinese writing: that the abundance of homophones precludes the use of an alphabet to render the language.
This has been debunked time and again. One of the interesting facts about the issue is the existence of the Dungan language: a dialect of Chinese (in fact, it can be considered a variety of the Mandarin languages) that is routinely written in the cyrillic script.
This is an article from a site defending the romanization of the Chinese writing system that delves into the Dungan case and tries to draw conclusions from it for the romanization of standard Chinese:
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/dungan.html
Do you have any beginnersā lessons that are simple like the āEating Outā and āWho is She?ā lessons from LingQ?
What dāyou think about this beginners Urdu book for German university students?
https://buske.de/reading/web/?isbn=9783875487763
For those with a good level in German, the offerings from Buske Verlag are generally very good resources - especially for more exotic and lesser studied languages - like Icelandic, Armenian, etc. Given the even greater paucity of decent materials published in English, itās often the best option out there(!) Most of them come with a decent amount of audio too.
BTW Iāve got a lot of their stuff for Persian waiting for deploymentā¦
I agree. There are little resources for Gaelic, but I think itās something that could be built up as long as someone was willing to put the time in. Youād really just āneed itā for a little reading and pronunciation anyway. Iād be up for helping to build something, but have other languages ahead of it right now.
Since you are about where I am in Spanish, how would you rate your present abilities in Italian?
Latvian? As in Latvian Orthodox? Thatās not that group that goes around mutilating squirrels, is it?!! 
Question for you, since Iām interested in taking up Russian as either my next language or one after thatā¦
Are you studying Russian mostly outside of LingQ? With 260 hours of listening, and especially with 560K in reading, your word count is 5,224. I havenāt studied Russian, but I know itās a very inflected language so I would expect it to be 5 or 6 times that, no?
Right now:
Spanish
Level: B2. Fluent speaker. Good reading. Need more listening time to be able to understand speech in movies and telenovelas. With Spanish subtitles there is not problem. Itās strictly a speed issue).
Target/Goals/Wish List For the Future****
French
Russian
Mandarin
Lower Priority/Someday*******
Irish ā will be a definite if it comes to LingQ. Want to know it for reading and pronunciation only.
Latin ā just for reading, if my other priorities allow it.
Italian or German if my interest in history or traveling there moves it up the chain.
Arabic --if it comes to LingQ, Google does a good job translating.