Hindi–Urdu (Devanagari: , Nastaliq: ) (also known as Hindustani) is the ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

'' of modern-day

Northern India North India is a geographical region, loosely defined as a cultural region comprising the northern part of India (or historically, the Indian subcontinent) wherein Indo-Aryans (speaking Indo-Aryan languages) form the prominent majority populati ...

and

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

(together classically known as

Hindustan ''Hindūstān'' ( English: /ˈhɪndustæn/ or /ˈhɪndustɑn/, ; ) was a historical region, polity, and a name for India, historically used simultaneously for northern Indian subcontinent and the entire subcontinent, used in the modern day ...

Modern Standard Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and is the ' ...

is officially registered in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

as a standard written using the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

script, and Standard Urdu is officially registered in

as a standard written using an extended

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

. Hindi–Urdu transliteration (or Hindustani transliteration) is the process of converting text written in

Devanagari script Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ancient '' Brāhmī'' script. It is one of the official scripts of India an ...

(used for

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

) into

(used for

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

), or vice versa. It focuses on representing the shared

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

between those writing systems or using other writing systems, primarily

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, in their stead.

Transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

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 differ ...

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

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...

to resolve the

Hindi–Urdu controversy The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th-century British Raj out of the debate over whether Modern Standard Hindi or Standard Urdu should be chosen as a national language. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible standard registers of the ...

. Technically, a direct one-to-one script mapping or rule-based lossless transliteration of Hindi-Urdu is not possible, primarily because Hindi is written in an

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

script and Urdu is written in an

abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

script, and also because of other constraints like multiple similar characters from Perso-Arabic mapping 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 Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

vocabulary whereas formal Urdu is more inclined towards

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

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 languages like Sindhi (written in extended Perso-Arabic in Sindh of Pakistan and in Devanagari by Sindhis in partitioned India), Punjabi (written in

Gurmukhi Gurmukhī ( , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official scrip ...

East Punjab East Punjab was a state of Dominion of India from 1947 until 1950. It consisted parts of the Punjab Province of British India that remained in India following the partition of the state between the new dominions of Pakistan and India by the ...

and

Shahmukhi Shahmukhi (, , , ) is the right-to-left abjad-based script developed from the Perso-Arabic alphabet used for the Punjabi language varieties, predominantly in Punjab, Pakistan. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, whic ...

in West Punjab), Saraiki (written in extended-Shahmukhi script in Saraikistan and unofficially in Sindhi-Devanagari script in India) and Kashmiri (written in extended Perso-Arabic by

Kashmiri Muslims Kashmiri Muslims are ethnic Kashmiris who practice Islam and are native to the Kashmir Valley of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Quote: "Jammu and Kashmir: Territory in northwestern India, subject to a dispute between India and Pakistan ...

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 exodu ...

Vowels

Consonants

Hindustani has a rich set of consonants in its full-alphabet, since it has a mixed-vocabulary (

rekhta ''Rekhta'' ( ; ''Rekhtā'') was an early form of the Hindustani language. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Nagari scripts and is considered an early form of Standard Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi. According to the Pakistan ...

) derived from

Old Hindi Old Hindi, also known as Khariboli, was the earliest stage of the Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of today's Hindi and Urdu. It developed from Shauraseni, and was spoken by the peoples of the region around Delhi, in roughly the 10th–1 ...

(from Dehlavi), with loanwords from

Parsi The Parsis or Parsees () are a Zoroastrian ethnic group in the Indian subcontinent. They are descended from Persian refugees who migrated to the Indian subcontinent during and after the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, w ...

(from Pahlavi) and

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

Iranian Iranian () may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Iran ** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran ** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia ** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...

and Semitic. The following table provides an approximate one-to-one mapping for

Hindi-Urdu Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in North India and Pakistan as the lingua franca of the region. It is also spoken by the Deccani-speaking community in the Deccan plateau. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standa ...

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 as well, for

(Eastern Punjabi) to

(Western Punjabi) conversion, since Shahmukhi is a superset of the Urdu alphabet (with 2 extra consonants) and the Gurmukhi script can be easily converted to the Devanagari script. Moreover a

Fort William College Fort William College (also known as the College of Fort William) was an academy of Orientalism, oriental studies and a centre of learning, founded on 18 August 1800 by Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, Lord Wellesley, then Governor-Gener ...

document has shown the equivalent of the 'ع' sound of Hindustani.

Sanskrit consonants

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

Implosive consonants

These consonants are mostly found only in languages like Sindhi and Saraiki.

Numerals

Punctuations & Symbols

Sample text

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

Muhammad Iqbal Muhammad Iqbal (9 November 187721 April 1938) was a South Asian Islamic philosopher, poet and politician. Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...

References

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