Reddit reviews Urdu: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Essential Grammars)

I have been having a lot of luck with Urdu: An Essential Grammar, which is very broad in its treatment.

I know nothing about Greek, but for Urdu I have Teach Yourself Urdu by David Matthews and Mohamed Kasim Dalvi. I think it's a pretty good book. However, I would not try to learn the script from it. Get Teach Yourself Read and Write Urdu Script for that. A friend of mine also had good things to say about Let's Study Urdu by Ali Asani. She also really liked Urdu: An Essential Grammar. I haven't used that, but I have use the Essential Grammar book for Hindi and thought it was pretty well-written. There is also Darvazah: A Door into Urdu, but unfortunately certain parts of the site don't seem to work.

If you're into it, you could also learn Devanagari (Hindi script) and then you'd have access to Hindi learning materials as well (Hindi and Urdu are VERY similar- most deviation is in vocab and grammar is mostly the same). I could give you some recommendations for Hindi too if you're interested.

I would also advise anyone to check out Urdu: An Essential Grammar's Farsi (and Arabic) grammar of Urdu section.

I found this reference grammar book very helpful understanding the grammar while I was learning Urdu.
It has Roman alphabet transliterations throughout the book so it's good for you if you are unfamiliar with Urdu alphabet.
Also what I like about this book is that it has short sections dedicated to Persian and Arabic elements used in Urdu. As you probably already know, Urdu has a lot of loanwords from Arabic and Persian and basically that makes it a lot different from Hindi. From my experience it would give you a head start if you have any knowledge on these two languages. So if your target language is Urdu and not Hindi, I recommend you to take a brief look at the languages that influenced Urdu.

Why Urdu and not Hindi? I'm not saying it's a bad idea to learn Urdu, but there are so, so many questions that are raised. Do you want to learn to write it as well? With whom will you speak? After all, learning a language is usually a means, not an end. Does anyone in your family know Urdu? Do you watch lots of Bollywood movies, or do you like the music of someone like Atif Aslam? Do you already speak Panjabi or Pashto? Maybe, Baloch or Sindhi?

It's totally fine if you answer "no" to all these questions. In fact, if you DO answer no to them all, then your desire to learn Urdu is all the more intriguing.

Do you speak any other languages?

Last question:

Do you already have an ear for it? You can't learn Urdu on Duolingo. You CAN go to Amazon and buy Ruth Laila Schmitt's Essential Urdu Grammar. If you pair that with 1) passion, 2) lots of Bollywood (it's Hindi, I know, but it's ear training), 3) some music, and 4) friends who will indulge your nascent attempts to communicate, then you just might succeed.