PHONEMIC COMPARISON OF URDU AND ENGLISH

Abstract

While English and Urdu are spoken globally, they hail from distinct language families. English belongs to the West Germanic group, while Urdu stems from the Indo-Aryan lineage. Both languages boast diverse dialects due to geographical spread. Notably, 379 million use English as their primary tongue and another 753 million employ it secondarily, across 104 nations, totaling roughly 1.13 billion speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Ranked 11th most widely spoken globally, Urdu's significance is undeniable (Ghai & Singh, 2013). With 163 million speakers, it also forms the majority language in Pakistan's most populous province and serves as the nation's official language, sharing this status with 21 others. Despite its prevalence, phonological research on Urdu remains scarce. This study aims to bridge that gap by exploring phonemic differences between English and Urdu, utilizing the Levenshtein algorithm framework. Analyzing the languages' inventories (serving as our research data), the algorithm helps calculate the similarity and difference ratio. Findings reveal a 43.47% phonemic similarity between the two languages, with a 56.52% difference.