Dars

What this is

Dars is a first book of Urdu, written for someone starting at zero. Forty-eight A5 pages, printed and posted by hand. It begins with the script, gives you a small vocabulary worth actually knowing, and ends with the one rule that makes Urdu sentences work.

The script

The first five chapters teach reading.

• Five things that explain most of what looks strange at first: right to left, letters that join, no capitals, short vowels left unwritten, and letters told apart only by their dots
• All 38 letters, met in small groups, each with its name and its nearest English sound
• The three long vowels you always see, and the three marks for short vowels that everyday writing leaves out
• How to read a word with those marks missing, which is how Urdu is really written
• The four shapes a letter takes as it joins its neighbours, and the ten letters that never join forward

The words

Nine chapters of vocabulary. Every word is given four ways: in Urdu, in Devanagari, in Roman letters you can say aloud, and in English.

• Fifty starter words: yes and no, questions, courtesy, people, things, time
• Greetings and the phrases a first conversation needs
• Numbers one to twenty, in Urdu numerals
• The three ways to say "you", and when each is the polite one
• Family and the body, ten words each
• Food and drink, time and days
• Ten colours and twelve adjectives
• Eleven everyday verbs

Putting it together

• Why the verb comes last, with whole sentences taken apart word by word
• The helper words that close a sentence: hoon, hai, hain
• What to say when you get stuck: say it again, speak slowly, what is this called in Urdu
• Three pages of practice, with an answer key
• A four-week plan for the month after you finish

How it is meant to be read

In order. Each chapter assumes only what came before it. Read every Urdu word out loud; the practice is built to be done that way, with no pen needed.