Urdu classes · Los Angeles · Since 2006
Urdu Classes in Los Angeles. Adaab.
Private lessons with native-speaking instructors. Matched to your goals, your schedule, and your life. Start any time.
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Why Urdu?
Four reasons to take Urdu classes
Speak the Language of Mughal Poetry
Urdu is one of the world's great literary languages, with a poetic tradition (ghazal, nazm) spanning centuries. Ghalib, Faiz, and Iqbal are best experienced in the original.
Communicate Across South Asia
Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible in everyday speech. Learning Urdu effectively gives you access to over a billion speakers across Pakistan, India, and the diaspora.
Read One of the World's Most Beautiful Scripts
Urdu's Nastaliq script is considered calligraphic art in its own right. Learning to read and write it is as much an aesthetic experience as a linguistic one.
Understand Pakistan and Its Diaspora
Pakistan is the world's fifth most-populous country, and Urdu-speaking communities thrive in the UK, US, and Gulf states. Urdu bridges cultural gaps that English alone cannot.
Since 2006
Urdu in Los Angeles
Urdu is spoken natively by about 70 million people, primarily in Pakistan (where it’s the national language) and in parts of northern India. It’s mutually intelligible with Hindi at the conversational level — the two share grammar and most everyday vocabulary — but they diverge in formal registers, script, and cultural associations. Urdu uses a modified Perso-Arabic script, reads right to left, and draws its literary and formal vocabulary from Persian and Arabic. It has a long poetic tradition: Urdu ghazals and nazms are considered some of the finest lyric poetry in any language. Ghalib, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Iqbal — these are names that carry weight across South Asia and beyond. If you learn Urdu, you’re also gaining access to Hindi-speaking contexts, which together cover well over half a billion people.
The South Asian community in Los Angeles is substantial and growing. Artesia’s “Little India” corridor along Pioneer Boulevard is the most visible hub — blocks of restaurants, sweet shops, grocery stores, jewelry stores, and clothing boutiques serving Indian and Pakistani families from across the Southland. Pakistanis and Urdu speakers are concentrated in areas like Anaheim, Garden Grove, Cerritos, and parts of the San Fernando Valley. Mosques and community centers in these neighborhoods hold events in Urdu, and Pakistani restaurants from Koroush Kabab in Westwood to spots in Artesia serve as informal gathering places. Many people in LA learn Urdu to communicate with in-laws or extended family in Pakistan, to engage with their heritage after growing up in an English-dominant household, or for professional reasons — aid work, journalism, diplomacy, or business in South Asia.
Strommen has been connecting students with native Urdu-speaking tutors since 2014. Our tutors come from diverse backgrounds across Pakistan and India, and they teach the language as it’s actually used — not just textbook Modern Standard Urdu but the real conversational Urdu you’ll hear in homes, shops, and daily life. We cover the Nastaliq script for students who want to read and write, and we adjust for students who already understand Hindi and want to build Urdu-specific literacy. Whether you’re preparing for a family visit to Lahore, studying South Asian politics, or reconnecting with a language you heard growing up but never formally learned, we’ll design lessons around your specific situation. One-on-one instruction, flexible scheduling, no rigid syllabus.
No public Urdu group classes right now — but we can set up a semi-private class for your family, friends, or company with as few as two people. Get in touch.
Urdu class FAQ
What is the best way to learn Urdu?
Regular conversation with a native speaker is the foundation. Urdu has a lot of nuance in politeness levels and formality — the difference between tum, aap, and tu matters socially, and a tutor can guide you through those distinctions in ways a textbook can't. Watching Pakistani dramas (which are popular worldwide and easy to find with subtitles) is excellent for listening practice and picking up natural phrasing. If you already understand spoken Hindi, you have a huge head start — focus on learning the Nastaliq script and building your Persian-Arabic-origin vocabulary. For complete beginners, starting with the spoken language before tackling the script often works best.
How long does it take to learn Urdu?
The FSI classifies Urdu as a Category IV language, with an estimated 1,100 hours to professional proficiency. That estimate is largely driven by the Nastaliq script, which takes time to learn because letters change form depending on their position in a word. Conversationally, though, Urdu grammar is more accessible than many European languages — no grammatical gender for inanimate objects in casual speech, relatively regular verb conjugation patterns, and a word order (subject-object-verb) that becomes intuitive quickly. Many students reach comfortable conversational ability within 6 to 12 months. If you already know Hindi, you can focus on script and formal vocabulary and progress much faster.
Is Urdu hard for English speakers?
It depends on what you mean by hard. The Nastaliq script is a real learning curve — it's cursive, right-to-left, and letters look different depending on where they fall in a word. Some sounds, like the retroflex consonants (where you curl your tongue back) and the aspirated stops (like "kh" and "ph"), don't exist in English and take practice. But Urdu grammar is fairly regular, the verb system is less complicated than French or German, and there are more English loanwords in everyday Urdu than you'd expect — especially for modern concepts. The biggest advantage? Urdu and Hindi share a spoken base, so learning Urdu effectively gives you access to two major languages at once.
Can I take Urdu classes online?
Yes, and most of our Urdu students do. Online lessons via video call work very well for Urdu, including script instruction — our tutors use screen sharing and digital whiteboards to teach Nastaliq writing in real time. We have tutors available across multiple time zones, which is helpful for students with nonstandard schedules. If you're in the LA area and prefer face-to-face sessions, that's an option too. Either way, the lesson content and quality are the same.
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Since 2006 · Los Angeles
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