Learn Urdu
Urdu is written in nastaliq, a sloping joined script in which letters change shape according to where they sit and words cascade down towards the left. That is the front-loaded part; the language underneath shares a great deal of vocabulary with Hindi and no small amount with English. iLexiBox starts at the letters and the shapes they take, because the script is where beginners stop.
Start at the alphabet
The Urdu on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 203 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Urdu voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.
- 39letters
- 10digits
- 14pronunciation rules
- 100core words
- 20everyday phrases
- 20sentences
Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the course teaches them:
- ھ — do-chashmi he adds a puff of air to the letter before it — ک/کھ, پ/پھ, ت/تھ are different words, not accentsکھانا — food
- ٹ ڈ ڑ — the retroflex series — tongue curled back to the roof of the mouth. These are the T and D an English speaker already makesٹماٹر — tomato
- ت د — the dental pair — tongue flat against the BACK OF THE TEETH, softer than English t and dدروازہ — door
Then material that does not run out
Once you are reading, the level is the point. The Text Generator writes Urdu at the CEFR level, length, topic and format you ask for, so the step up is a setting rather than a new book. Speaking scores you word by word as you read aloud. The Conversation Partner talks back. The Translator explains a sentence instead of replacing it, and the Corrector marks what you wrote and says why.
Above the on-ramp sits the Path — a station map from A1 to C2 with grammar, vocabulary and checkpoint stations — and Words & Notes, where everything you save comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule in seven quiz styles.
2,373 photographs, 2,337 of them captioned in Urdu
The album is a photograph for every word, shelved by category, each caption written in Urdu and spoken in a real recorded voice rather than synthesised on the fly. It doubles as a game: see the picture, spell the word. Free to replay.
What Urdu actually costs a beginner
Two sound systems have to be built rather than mapped across. Aspiration is written with the do-chashmi he ھ, and کھ is a different word from ک rather than the same one said harder. And the consonants split three ways where English has one: the retroflex ٹ ڈ ڑ, tongue curled back to the roof of the mouth, are the T and D an English speaker already makes, while the dental ت د are softer, with the tongue flat against the back of the teeth. Neither distinction survives on the page, so each is a card with a recorded Urdu voice.
54 languages in the app, CEFR A1–C2.