Hindi–Urdu (Devanagari: , Nastaliq: ) (also known as

Hindustani Hindustani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India) * Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu * Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...

) is the ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'' of modern-day Northern India and Pakistan (together classically known as Hindustan).

Modern Standard Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been des ...

is officially registered in

Indian Republic India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

as a standard written using Devanagari script, and Urdu is officially registered in Pakistan as a standard written using extended Perso-Arabic script. Hindi–Urdu transliteration (or Hindustani transliteration) is essential for Hindustani speakers to understand each other's text, and especially important since the underlying language of both the Hindi & Urdu registers are almost the same. Transliteration is theoretically possible because of the common

Hindustani phonology Hindustani is the ''lingua franca'' of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differe ...

underlying Hindi-Urdu. In present day, the Hindustani language is seen as a unifying language, as initially proposed by Mahatma Gandhi to resolve the

Hindi–Urdu controversy The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th century colonial India out of the debate over whether the Hindi or Urdu language should be chosen as a national language. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible as spoken languages, to the extent tha ...

. ("Hindustani" is not to be confused with followers of Hinduism, as 'Hindu' in Persian means ' Indo') Technically, a direct one-to-one script mapping or rule-based lossless transliteration of Hindi-Urdu is not possible, majorly since Hindi is written in an abugida script and Urdu is written in an abjad script, and also other constraints like multiple similar characters from Perso-Arabic which map onto a single character in Devanagari. However, there have been dictionary-based mapping attempts which have yielded very high accuracy, providing near-to-perfect transliterations. For literary domains, a mere transliteration between Hindi-Urdu will not suffice as formal Hindi is more inclined towards Sanskrit vocabulary whereas formal Urdu is more inclined towards Persian and Arabic vocabulary; hence a system combining transliteration and translation would be necessary for such cases. In addition to Hindi-Urdu, there have been attempts to design Indo-Pakistani transliteration systems for

digraphic In sociolinguistics, digraphia refers to the use of more than one writing system for the same language. Synchronic digraphia is the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language, while diachronic digraphia (or sequential digra ...

languages like Sindhi (written in extended Perso-Arabic in

Sindh of Pakistan Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

and in Devanagari by Sindhis in partitioned India),

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

(written in Gurmukhi in East Punjab and Shahmukhi in

West Punjab West Punjab ( pnb, ; ur, ) was a province in the Dominion of Pakistan from 1947 to 1955. The province covered an area of 159,344 km2 (61523 sq mi), including much of the current Punjab (Pakistan), Punjab province and the Islamabad Capital Te ...

), Saraiki (written in extended-Shahmukhi script in Saraikistan and unofficially in Sindhi-Devanagari script in India) and

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

(written in extended Perso-Arabic by Kashmiri Muslims and extended-Devanagari by

Kashmiri Hindus Kashmiri Hindus are ethnic Kashmiris who practice Hinduism and are native to the Kashmir Valley of India. With respect to their contributions to Indian philosophy, Kashmiri Hindus developed the tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism. After their exodus ...

Vowels

Consonants

has a rich set of consonants in its full-alphabet, since it has a mixed-vocabulary ( rekhta) derived from Old Hindi (from

Dehlavi Language * Kauravi dialect, also known as Dehlavi, spoken around Delhi and the basis of Hindostani language Personal names Dehlavi is a toponymic surname (Nisba (onomastics), nisba) for people from Delhi (formerly Dehli). Notable people with t ...

), with loanwords from Parsi (from

Pahlavi Pahlavi may refer to: Iranian royalty *Seven Parthian clans, ruling Parthian families during the Sasanian Empire *Pahlavi dynasty, the ruling house of Imperial State of Persia/Iran from 1925 until 1979 **Reza Shah, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878–1944 ...

) and Arabic languages, all of which itself are from 3 different language-families respectively: Indo-Aryan, Iranian and

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

. The following table provides an approximate one-to-one mapping for Hindi-Urdu consonants, especially for computational purposes (lossless script conversion). Note that this direct script conversion will not yield correct spellings, but rather a readable text for both the readers. Note that Hindi–Urdu transliteration schemes can be used for Punjabi language as well, for Gurmukhi (East Punjabi) to Shahmukhi (West Punjabi) conversion, since Shahmukhi is a superset of Urdu alphabets (with 2 extra consonants) and Gurmukhi font can be easily converted to Devanagari font.

Sanskrit consonants

The following consonants are mostly used in words that are directly borrowed or adapted from Sanskrit.

Implosive consonants

These consonants are mostly found only in languages like Saraiki.

Numerals

Punctuations & Symbols

Sample text

The following is an excerpt from the Hindustani poem Tarānah-e-Hindi written by Muhammad Iqbal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hindi-Urdu transliteration Hindustani language Hindustani orthography Transliteration Urdu Hindi