Hindi (
Devanāgarī
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an
Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the
Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of
northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
,
central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...
,
eastern, and
western India. Hindi has been described as a
standardised and
Sanskritised
Sanskritisation (or Sanskritization) is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek 'upward' mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upp ...
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts entertainment, and media Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), th ...
of the
Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the
Khariboli dialect of
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
and neighbouring areas of North India.
Hindi, written in the
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
script, is one of the two official languages of the
Government of India, along with
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
.
It is an
official language in nine states and three
union territories and an additional official language in three other states.
Hindi is also one of the 22
scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Hindi is the ''
lingua franca'' of the
Hindi Belt. It is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or
Haflong Hindi).
Outside India, several other languages are recognised officially as "Hindi" but do not refer to the Standard Hindi language described here and instead descend from other dialects, such as
Awadhi and
Bhojpuri. Such languages include
Fiji Hindi, which has an official status in
Fiji, and
Caribbean Hindustani, which is spoken in
Trinidad and Tobago,
Guyana, and
Suriname
Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the nor ...
.
Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, standard Hindi is
mutually intelligible with standard
, another recognised register of Hindustani as both share a common colloquial base.
Hindi is the
fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English.
[Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in '' Nationalencyklopedin''. Asterisks mark th]
2010 estimates
for the top dozen languages. If counted together with Urdu, it is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English.
Etymology
The term ''Hindī'' originally was used to refer to inhabitants of the
Indo-Gangetic Plain. It was borrowed from
Classical Persian ''Hindī'' (
Iranian Persian
Iranian Persian, Western Persian or Western Farsi, natively simply known as Persian (, ), refers to the varieties of the modern Persian language spoken in Iran and by minorities in neighboring countries, as well as by Iranian communities th ...
pronunciation: ''Hendi''), meaning "of or belonging to ''
Hind'' (India)" (hence, "Indian").
Another name ''Hindavī'' () or ''Hinduī'' () (from fa, هندوی "of or belonging to the Hindu/Indian people") was often used in the past, for example by
Amir Khusrow in his poetry.
The terms ''"Hindi"'' and ''"Hindu"'' trace back to Old Persian which derived these names from the
Sanskrit name ''Sindhu'' (), referring to the
river Indus
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmi ...
. The Greek cognates of the same terms are "''Indus''" (for the river) and "''India''" (for the land of the river).
History
Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi
Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi is a direct descendant of an early form of
Vedic Sanskrit, through
Sauraseni Prakrit and
Śauraseni Apabhraṃśa (from Sanskrit ''apabhraṃśa'' "corrupt"), which emerged in the 7th century CE.
The sound changes that characterised the transition from Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi are:
*
Compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...
of vowels preceding
geminate consonants, sometimes with spontaneous nasalisation: Skt. ''hasta'' "hand" > Pkt. ''hattha'' > ''hāth''
* Loss of all word-final vowels: ''rātri'' "night" > ''rattī'' > ''rāt''
* Formation of nasalised long vowels from nasal consonants (-VNC- > -V̄̃C-): ''bandha'' "bond" > ''bā̃dh''
* Loss of unaccented or unstressed short vowels (reflected in
schwa deletion
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it r ...
): ''susthira'' "firm" > ''sutthira'' > ''suthrā''
* Collapsing of adjacent vowels (including separated by a hiatus: ''apara'' "other" > ''avara'' > ''aur''
* Final ''-m'' to ''-ṽ'': ''grāma'' "village" > ''gāma'' > ''gāṽ''
* Intervocalic ''-ḍ-'' to ''-ṛ-'' or ''-l-'': ''taḍāga'' "pond" > ''talāv'', ''naḍa'' "reed" > ''nal''.
* ''v'' > ''b'': ''vivāha'' "marriage" > ''byāh''
Hindustani
During the period of
Delhi Sultanate, which covered most of today's north India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh and which resulted in the
contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the
Sanskrit and
Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from
Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani.
The Hindustani vernacular became an expression of Indian national unity during the
Indian Independence movement,
and continues to be spoken as the common language of the people of the northern Indian subcontinent,
which is reflected in the
Hindustani vocabulary of
Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" ...
films and songs.
Dialects
Before the standardisation of Hindi on the Delhi dialect, various dialects and languages of the Hindi belt attained prominence through literary standardisation, such as
Avadhi and
Braj Bhasha. Early Hindi literature came about in the 12th and 13th centuries CE. This body of work included the early epics such as renditions of the ''
Dhola Maru'' in the
Marwari of
Marwar, the ''
Prithviraj Raso'' in the
Braj Bhasha of
Braj
Braj, also known as Vraj, Vraja, Brij or Brijbhoomi, is a region in India on both sides of the Yamuna river with its centre at Mathura-Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh state encompassing the area which also includes Palwal and Ballabhgarh in Hary ...
, and the works of
Amir Khusrow in the dialect of Delhi.
Modern Standard Hindi is based on the
Delhi dialect,
the vernacular of
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
and the surrounding region, which came to replace earlier prestige dialects such as
Awadhi and
Braj
Braj, also known as Vraj, Vraja, Brij or Brijbhoomi, is a region in India on both sides of the Yamuna river with its centre at Mathura-Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh state encompassing the area which also includes Palwal and Ballabhgarh in Hary ...
. ''
'' – considered another form of Hindustani – acquired
linguistic prestige in the latter part of the
Mughal period
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
(1800s), and underwent significant
Persian influence. Modern Hindi and its literary tradition evolved towards the end of the 18th century.
John Gilchrist was principally known for his study of the
Hindustani language, which was adopted as the
lingua franca of northern India (including what is now present-day
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
) by British colonists and indigenous people. He compiled and authored ''An English-Hindustani Dictionary'', ''A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language'', ''The Oriental Linguist'', and many more. His
lexicon of Hindustani was published in the
Perso-Arabic script,
Nāgarī script
The Nāgarī script or Northern Nagari of Kashi is the ancestor of Devanagari, Nandinagari and other variants, and was first used to write Prakrit and Sanskrit. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for Devanagari script.Kathleen Kuiper (2 ...
, and in
Roman transliteration. He is also known for his role in the foundation of
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
and for endowing the
Gilchrist Educational Trust The Gilchrist Educational Trust is a British charity supporting education, perhaps best known for its support of the Gilchrist Lecturers from 1867 to 1939.
The trust was established in 1841 by the will of British Indologist, John Borthwick Gilchri ...
.
In the late 19th century, a movement to further develop Hindi as a standardised form of Hindustani separate from Urdu took form. In 1881,
Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi. However, in 2014, Urdu was accorded second official language status in the state.
Independent India
After independence, the government of India instituted the following conventions:
* standardisation of grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as ''A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi''.
* standardisation of the orthography, using the
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
script, by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing, to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters, and introducing diacritics to express sounds from other languages.
On 14 September 1949, the
Constituent Assembly of India adopted Hindi written in the Devanagari script as the
official language of the Republic of India replacing Urdu's previous usage in
British India. To this end, several stalwarts rallied and lobbied pan-India in favour of Hindi, most notably
Beohar Rajendra Simha along with
Hazari Prasad Dwivedi
Hazari Prasad Dwivedi (19 August 190719 May 1979) was a Hindi novelist, literary historian, essayist, critic and scholar. He penned numerous novels, collections of essays, historical research on medieval religious movements of India especially K ...
,
Kaka Kalelkar,
Maithili Sharan Gupt and
Seth Govind Das
Seth Govind Das (16 October 1896 – 18 June 1974) was an Indian independence activist and parliamentarian. He belonged to the Maheshwari merchant family of Raja Gokuldas of Jabalpur. The family began as the banking firm of Sevaram Khushal ...
who even debated in Parliament on this issue. As such, on the 50th birthday of Beohar Rajendra Simha on 14 September 1949, the efforts came to fruition following the adoption of Hindi as the official language. Now, it is celebrated as
Hindi Day.
Official status
India
Part XVII of the Indian Constitution deals with the official language of the Indian Commonwealth. Under Article 343, the official languages of the Union have been prescribed, which includes Hindi in Devanagari script and English:
(1) The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
(2) Notwithstanding anything in clause (1), for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement: Provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise the use of the Hindi language in addition to the English language and of the Devanagari form of numerals in addition to the international form of Indian numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union.
Article 351 of the
Indian constitution states:
It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.
It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the Union Government by 1965 (per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351),
with state governments being free to function in the language of their own choice. However, widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in
South India (such as
those in Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English indefinitely for all official purposes, although the constitutional directive for the Union Government to encourage the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced its policies.
Article 344 (2b) stipulates that the official language commission shall be constituted every ten years to recommend steps for progressive use of Hindi language and imposing restrictions on the use of the English language by the union government. In practice, the official language commissions are constantly endeavouring to promote Hindi but not imposing restrictions on English in official use by the union government.
At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following Indian states:
Bihar,
Chhattisgarh,
Haryana
Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ...
,
Himachal Pradesh,
Jharkhand,
Madhya Pradesh,
Mizoram,
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern ...
,
Uttar Pradesh and
Uttarakhand.
Hindi is an official language of
Gujarat
Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...
, along with
Gujarati
Gujarati may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India
* Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat
* Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them
* Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...
.
It acts as an additional official language of
West Bengal in blocks and sub-divisions with more than 10% of the population speaking Hindi.
Each may also designate a "co-official language"; in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, depending on the political formation in power, this language is generally
. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of official language in the following
Union Territories:
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
,
Andaman and Nicobar Islands and
Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Although there is no specification of a national language in the constitution, it is a widely held belief that Hindi is the national language of India. This is often a source of friction and contentious debate. In 2010, the
Gujarat High Court
The Gujarat High Court is the High Court of the state of Gujarat. It was established on 1 May 1960 under the ''Bombay Re-organisation Act, 1960'' after the state of Gujarat split from Bombay State.
The seat of the court is Ahmedabad. The pr ...
clarified that Hindi is not the national language of India because the constitution does not mention it as such.
In 2021, in a
Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act case involving Gangam Sudhir Kumar Reddy, the
Bombay High Court claimed Hindi is the national language while refusing Reddy bail, after he argued against his statutory rights being read in Hindi, despite being a native Telugu speaker. Reddy has filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court, challenging the Bombay High Court’s observation, and contended that it failed to appreciate that Hindi is not the national language in India. In 2021, Indian food delivery company
Zomato landed in controversy when a customer care executive told an app user from Tamil Nadu, “For your kind information Hindi is our national language.” Zomato responded by firing the employee, after which she was reprimanded and shortly reinstated.
In 2018, The Supreme Court has stayed a judgment of Madhya Pradesh High Court that held that the Hindi version of enactment will prevail if there is a variation in its Hindi version and English version. The prominence thus attached to English over Hindi in the judgement underlines the social significance of English over Hindi.
Fiji
Outside
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
, the
Awadhi language (an Eastern Hindi dialect) with influence from
Bhojpuri,
Bihari languages,
Fijian and
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
is spoken in Fiji.
It is an official language in
Fiji as per the 1997 Constitution of Fiji, where it referred to it as "Hindustani", however in the
2013 Constitution of Fiji
Fiji's fourth constitution was signed into law by President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau on September 6, 2013, coming into effect immediately. It is the first to eliminate race-based electoral rolls, race-based seat quotas, district-based representation ...
, it is simply called "
Fiji Hindi" as the official language. It is spoken by 380,000 people in Fiji.
Nepal
Hindi is spoken as a first language by about 77,569 people in
Nepal according to the
2011 Nepal census, and further by 1,225,950 people as a second language. A Hindi proponent, Indian-born
Paramananda Jha
Parmanand Jha ( ne, परमानन्द झा; born 1946) is a Nepali politician who served as the first vice president of Nepal from 23 July 2008 to 31 October 2015. Previously he served as a Supreme Court judge. He was born and brought ...
, was elected vice-president of Nepal. He took his oath of office in Hindi in July 2008. This created protests in the streets for 5 days; students burnt his effigies; there was general strike in 22 districts. Nepal Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that his oath in Hindi was invalid and he was kept "inactive" as vice-president. An "angry" Jha said, “I cannot be compelled to take the oath now in Nepali. I might rather take it in English.”
South Africa
Hindi is a protected language in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
. According to the
Constitution of South Africa, the
Pan South African Language Board must promote and ensure respect for Hindi along with other languages.
According to a doctoral dissertation by Rajend Mesthrie in 1985, although Hindi and other Indian languages have existed in South Africa for the last 125 years, there are no academic studies of any of them - of their use in South Africa, their evolution and current decline.
United Arab Emirates
Hindi is adopted as the third official court language in the
Emirate of Abu Dhabi. As a result of this status, the Indian workforce in UAE can file their complaints to the labour courts in the country in their own mother-tongue.
Geographical distribution
Hindi is the
lingua franca of
northern India (which contains the
Hindi Belt), as well as an official language of the Government of India, along with English.
In
Northeast India a pidgin known as
Haflong Hindi has developed as a ''lingua franca'' for the people living in
Haflong
Haflong is a town and headquarters of Dima Hasao district (formerly North Cachar Hills district) in the state of Assam in India. It is the only hill station in Assam.
Etymology
Haflong is a Dimasa word meaning '' ant hill''.
Climate
Haflo ...
,
Assam who speak other languages natively. In
Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...
, Hindi emerged as a lingua franca among locals who speak over 50 dialects natively.
Hindi is quite easy to understand for many
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
is, who speak Urdu, which, like Hindi, is a standard register of the Hindustani language; additionally, Indian media are widely viewed in Pakistan.
A sizeable population in
Afghanistan, especially in
Kabul, can also speak and understand Hindi-Urdu due to the popularity and influence of
Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" ...
films, songs and actors in the region.
Hindi is also spoken by a large population of
Madheshi
Madheshi people ( ne, मधेशी) is a term used for several groups of people living in the Terai region of Nepal, literally meaning the people of ''Madhesh''. It has also been used as a political pejorative term by the Pahari people of Nep ...
s (people having roots in north-India but having migrated to Nepal over hundreds of years) of
Nepal. Apart from this, Hindi is spoken by the large
Indian diaspora which hails from, or has its origin from the "Hindi Belt" of India. A substantially large North Indian diaspora lives in countries like the
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
, the United Kingdom, the
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (Middle East, The Middle East). It is ...
, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, South Africa, Fiji and
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
, where it is natively spoken at home and among their own Hindustani-speaking communities. Outside India, Hindi speakers are 8 million in
Nepal; 863,077 in
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
; 450,170 in Mauritius; 380,000 in Fiji;
250,292 in South Africa; 150,000 in Suriname;
[Frawley, p. 481] 100,000 in
Uganda; 45,800 in United Kingdom; 20,000 in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
; 20,000 in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
; 26,000 in Trinidad and Tobago;
3,000 in
Singapore.
Comparison with Modern Standard Urdu
Linguistically
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, Hindi and Urdu are two registers of the same language and are mutually intelligible.
Both Hindi & Urdu share a core vocabulary of native Prakrit and Sanskrit-derived words.
However, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and contains more
Sanskrit-derived words than Urdu, whereas Urdu is written in the
Perso-Arabic
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran (Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th ce ...
script and uses more Arabic and Persian loanwords compared to Hindi.
Because of this, as well as the fact that the two registers share an identical grammar,
a consensus of linguists consider them to be two standardised forms of the same language,
Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu.
Hindi is the most commonly used official language in India. Urdu is the
national language and ''lingua franca'' of
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
and is one of 22 official languages of India, also having official status in
Uttar Pradesh,
Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to:
* Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent
* Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory
* Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...
,
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
,
Telangana and
Bihar.
Script
Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, an
abugida. Devanagari consists of 11
vowels and 33
consonants and is written from left to right. Unlike Sanskrit, Devanagari is not entirely phonetic for Hindi, especially failing to mark
schwa deletion
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it r ...
in spoken Standard Hindi.
Romanization
The
Government of India uses
Hunterian transliteration
The Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India. Hunterian transliteration was sometimes also called the ''Jonesian transliteration system'' because ...
as its official system of writing Hindi in the Latin script. Various other systems also exist, such as
IAST,
ITRANS and
ISO 15919.
Romanized Hindi
Hinglish, a portmanteau of Hindi and English, is the macaronic hybrid use of English and languages of the Indian subcontinent, and especially Hindi. It involves code-switching or translanguaging between these languages whereby they are freely i ...
, also called Hinglish, is the dominant form of Hindi online. In an analysis of
YouTube comments, Palakodety et al., identified that 52% of comments were in Romanized Hindi, 46% in English, and 1% in
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
Hindi.
Phonology
Vocabulary
Traditionally, Hindi words are divided into five principal categories according to their etymology:
*
Tatsam ( "same as that") words: These are words which are spelled the same in Hindi as in Sanskrit (except for the absence of final case inflections).
[Masica, p. 65] They include words inherited from Sanskrit via
Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g. Hindi ''nām'' / Sanskrit ''nāma'', "name"; Hindi ''karm'' / Sanskrit ''karma'', "deed, action;
karma"), as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. ''prārthanā'', "prayer"). Pronunciation, however, conforms to Hindi norms and may differ from that of classical Sanskrit. Amongst nouns, the ''tatsam'' word could be the Sanskrit non-inflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
* Ardhatatsam ( "semi-tatsama") words: Such words are typically earlier loanwords from Sanskrit which have undergone sound changes subsequent to being borrowed. (e.g. Hindi ''sūraj'' from Sanskrit ''sūrya'')
*
Tadbhav ( "born of that") words: These are native Hindi words derived from Sanskrit after undergoing phonological rules (e.g. Sanskrit ''karma'', "deed" becomes
Sauraseni Prakrit ''kamma'', and eventually Hindi ''kām'', "work") and are spelled differently from Sanskrit.
* Deshaj () words: These are words that were not borrowings but do not derive from attested Indo-Aryan words either. Belonging to this category are
onomatopoetic words or ones borrowed from local non-
Indo-Aryan languages.
* Videshī ( "foreign") words: These include all
loanwords from non-indigenous languages. The most frequent source languages in this category are
Persian,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
,
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
and
Portuguese. Examples are ''qila'' "fort" from Persian, ''kameṭī'' from English ''committee'' and ''sābun'' "soap" from Arabic.
Hindi also makes extensive use of
loan translation (
calqueing
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language w ...
) and occasionally
phono-semantic matching of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
.
Prakrit
Hindi has naturally inherited a large portion of its vocabulary from
Śaurasenī Prākṛt, in the form of ''tadbhava'' words. This process usually involves
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...
of vowels preceding consonant clusters in Prakrit, e.g. Sanskrit ''tīkṣṇa'' > Prakrit ''tikkha'' > Hindi ''tīkhā''.
Sanskrit
Much of Modern Standard Hindi's vocabulary is borrowed from Sanskrit as ''tatsam'' borrowings, especially in technical and academic fields. The formal Hindi standard, from which much of the Persian, Arabic and English vocabulary has been replaced by
neologism
A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...
s compounding ''tatsam'' words, is called ''Śuddh Hindi'' (pure Hindi), and is viewed as a more prestigious dialect over other more colloquial forms of Hindi.
Excessive use of ''tatsam'' words sometimes creates problems for native speakers. They may have Sanskrit consonant clusters which do not exist in native Hindi, causing difficulties in pronunciation.
As a part of the process of
Sanskritization, new words are coined using Sanskrit components to be used as replacements for supposedly foreign vocabulary. Usually these neologisms are
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
s of English words already adopted into spoken Hindi. Some terms such as ''dūrbhāṣ'' "telephone", literally "far-speech" and ''dūrdarśan'' "television", literally "far-sight" have even gained some currency in formal Hindi in the place of the English borrowings ''(ṭeli)fon'' and ''ṭīvī''.
Persian
Hindi also features significant
Persian influence, standardised from spoken
Hindustani.
Early borrowings, beginning in the mid-12th century, were specific to
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
(e.g. ''Muhammad'', ''islām'') and so Persian was simply an intermediary for Arabic. Later, under the
Delhi Sultanate and
Mughal Empire, Persian became the primary administrative language in the Hindi heartland. Persian borrowings reached a heyday in the 17th century, pervading all aspects of life. Even grammatical constructs, namely the
izafat, were assimilated into Hindi.
Post-
Partition the Indian government advocated for a policy of Sanskritization leading to a marginalisation of the Persian element in Hindi. However, many Persian words (e.g. ''muśkil'' "difficult", ''bas'' "enough", ''havā'' "air", ''x(a)yāl'' "thought", ''kitab'' "Book", ''khud'' "Self") have remained entrenched in Modern Standard Hindi, and a larger amount are still used in
Urdu poetry written in the Devanagari script.
Arabic
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
also shows influence in Hindi, often via Persian but sometimes directly.
Media
Literature
Hindi literature is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being ''
Bhakti'' (devotional –
Kabir
Kabir Das (1398–1518) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. His writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib, the Satguru Granth Sahib of Saint Garib Das ...
,
Raskhan
Syed Ibrahim Khan (1548-1628) was an Indian Sufism, Sufi Muslim poet who became a devotee of the Hindu deity Krishna. He was either born in Pihani (Hardoi) or Amroha, in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, India. His original name was Saiyad Ibrahim and R ...
); ''Śṛṇgār'' (beauty –
Keshav Keshav is an South asian male given name which is a modern form of name Keshava, one of the many names of Lord Krishna and Lord Vishnu. Notable people with the name include:
* Keshav Bansal (born 1991), Indian entrepreneur
* Keshav Vaman Bhole (1 ...
,
Bihari); ''Vīgāthā'' (epic); and ''Ādhunik'' (modern).
Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of
Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems. It was primarily written in other
varieties of Hindi, particularly
Avadhi and
Braj Bhasha, but to a degree also in Delhavi, the basis for Modern Standard Hindi. During the
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
, Hindustani became the prestige dialect.
''Chandrakanta'', written by
Devaki Nandan Khatri in 1888, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in Hindi prose literature was
Munshi Premchand, who is considered as the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement. Literary, or ''Sāhityik'', Hindi was popularised by the writings of
Swami Dayananda Saraswati,
Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Hindustani popular with educated people.
The ''Dvivedī Yug'' ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing Modern Standard Hindi in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love.
In the 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as ''
Chāyāvād'' (''shadow-ism'') and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as ''Chāyāvādī''.
Jaishankar Prasad,
Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala',
Mahadevi Varma and
Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major ''Chāyāvādī'' poets.
''Uttar Ādhunik'' is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the ''Chāyāvādī'' movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.
Internet
Hindi literature,
music, and
film have all been disseminated via the internet. In 2015, Google reported a 94% increase in Hindi-content consumption year-on-year, adding that 21% of users in India prefer content in Hindi.
Many Hindi
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...
s also offer digital editions.
Sample text
The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):
;Hindi in Devanagari Script
:
:
;;Transliteration (
ISO):
:
;Transcription (
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners A ...
):
:
;Gloss (word-to-word):
:Article 1 (one) ''–'' All humans birth from dignity and rights in independent and equal are. They logic and conscience from endowed are and they fraternity in the spirit of each other towards work should.
;Translation (grammatical):
:Article 1 ''–'' All humans are born independent and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with logic and conscience and they should work towards each other in the spirit of fraternity.
See also
*
Hindi Belt
*
Bengali Language Movement (Manbhum)
The Language Movement in Manbhum was a movement in Manbhum district, present day Purulia district of West Bengal state, during the late 1940s to mid-1950s, to fight for the mother tongue which is a variation of Bengali language and to protest the ...
*
Hindi Divas – the official day to celebrate Hindi as a language.
*
Languages of India
Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians, both families together are sometimes know ...
*
Languages with official status in India
*
Indian States by most popular languages
The following table contains the Indian states and union territories along with the most spoken scheduled languages used in the region. These are based on the 2011 census of India figures. (Note: Telangana and Andhra Pradesh statistics are based ...
*
List of English words of Hindi or Urdu origin
This is a list of English-language words of Hindi and Urdu origin, two distinguished registers of the Hindustani language. Many of the Hindi and Urdu equivalents have originated from Sanskrit; see List of English words of Sanskrit origin. Many oth ...
*
List of Hindi channels in Europe
{{Unreferenced, date=April 2018
This is a list of Hindi channels in Europe. (Updates In April 2020)
General entertainment
*Colors
* Colors Rishtey
*Sony SAB
*Sony TV
*STAR Bharat
*STAR Plus
*Zee TV
Movies
*B4U Movies
*Colors Cineplex
*Sony Max
* ...
(by type)
*
List of languages by number of native speakers in India
India is home to several hundred languages. Most Indians speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European (c. 77%), the Dravidian (c. 20.61%), the Austroasiatic ( Munda) (c. 1.2%), or the Sino-Tibetan (c. 0.8% ...
*
List of Sanskrit and Persian roots in Hindi
*
World Hindi Secretariat
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
Grierson, G. A. ''Linguistic Survey of India'' Vol I-XI, Calcutta, 1928,
(searchable database)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Taj, Afroz (2002)
A door into Hindi'. Retrieved 8 November 2005.
* Tiwari, Bholanath (
966
Year 966 ( CMLXVI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Byzantine Empire
* 23 June - Byzantine-Arab War: A prisoner exchange occurs at the border betwee ...
2004) ''हिन्दी भाषा (Hindī Bhasha)'', Kitab Pustika, Allahabad, .
Dictionaries
* .
*
*
* Academic Room Hindi Dictionary Mobile App developed in the Harvard Innovation Lab (iOS, Android and Blackberry)
*
Further reading
*
* Bhatia, Tej K. ''A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition''. Leiden, Netherlands & New York, NY: E.J. Brill, 1987.
External links
*
The Union: Official LanguageOfficial Unicode Chart for Devanagari (PDF)
{{Authority control
Hindustani language
Fusional languages
Indo-Aryan languages
Official languages of India
Standard languages
Languages of Uttar Pradesh
Languages of Rajasthan
Languages of Himachal Pradesh
Languages of Madhya Pradesh
Languages of Bihar
Languages of Jharkhand
Languages of Jammu and Kashmir
Languages of Maharashtra
Languages of Arunachal Pradesh
Languages of West Bengal
Languages of Assam
Languages of Gujarat
Languages of Mizoram
Languages of Pakistan
Languages officially written in Indic scripts
Lingua francas
Subject–object–verb languages
Sahitya Akademi recognised languages
Articles containing video clips
Languages written in Devanagari