I can't say better but I learned Urdu for 10 years in school as opposed to Hindi which was taught for just a year or so. As a result I find the Urdu (Persian) script easier to read but I don't think one is better than the other. Probably a linguist expert could compare the Arabic/Persian script to the Devanagri one and try to explain pros and cons of both. That would be an interesting read.
The Hindi script is easier for a foreign learner to deal with, because it more accurately maps to the phonemes of the language. So it's possible to "sound out" an unknown Hindi word from the written form, and get it fairly close to correct. With the Urdu script, this is more difficult, as many of the vowels are left unwritten or under-differentiated.
(For a trivial example, is اس the word /ɪs/ "this" or /ʊs/ "that"? In Devanagari, they're clearly different, इस vs उस. Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted, leaving the reader to infer the intended word from context. For a native speaker, that's not usually a problem, but for a learner it can be an added challenge.)
On the other hand, I suspect the Urdu script might be faster for an experienced writer to use, as there's a beautiful simplicity and smoothness to its cursive forms, compared to the relatively complex shapes of many Devanagari letters.
Devanagiri script has one drawback for non-native speakers though, which is identifying the schwa syncope rule. All Devnagiri consonants always carry an implicit schwa unless otherwise modified by a diacritic. However, in Hindustani, this schwa is sometimes dropped, and it is not always obvious where or when it should be dropped to a non-native speaker.
Another issue is the allophony of the schwas surrounding ह (/h/) in words like कहना which is actually pronounced [kɛɦɛnaː] and not [kəɦ(ə)naː]. (note that this is also an instance of the schwa deletion)
> Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted
Not in my experience and certainly not as a student. I'm not an expert but at my school اس for something that sounds exactly as /ɪs/ would be considered completely invalid. Only اِس would be considered correct. Actually, I think اِز (more like iz) might be more correct phonetically.
In school, perhaps so. But looking at something like https://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/اردو, there's scarcely more than a handful of short vowel marks (zabar, zer, pesh, or fatha, kasra, damma as an Arabic speaker would call them) anywhere on the page; the vast majority are left unwritten.
While I'm not 100% sure, I think it _might_ be the case of writing Urdu online vs on paper. I'll try to grab an Urdu book or newspaper tomorrow and see how it is written. Thanks for the insight, this was very interesting.
