Other meanings of Hindi
Language
Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in India, where it serves as one of the country's official languages. It is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, with over 600 million speakers including second-language users. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and is closely related to Urdu, with which it shares a common grammatical base and a large portion of its vocabulary. The term "Hindi" also refers to the standardized register of the Hindustani language, which emerged as a literary and administrative language in northern India.
Hindi evolved from the Apabhramsha dialects of northern India, which in turn descended from Prakrit and ultimately Sanskrit. The earliest forms of Hindi literature date to the 12th century, with the Prithviraj Raso attributed to Chand Bardai, though its authenticity is debated. During the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire, the Hindustani language (a precursor to both Hindi and Urdu) developed in the bazaars of Delhi, blending local Khariboli with Persian and Arabic vocabulary. The modern standardized form of Hindi emerged in the 19th century, promoted by the British colonial administration and later by Indian nationalists as a unifying language. In 1950, the Constitution of India designated Hindi in Devanagari script as the official language of the Union, with English continuing as an associate official language.1
Hindi is spoken natively in the Hindi Belt, a region covering much of northern and central India, including states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. Beyond India, Hindi-speaking communities exist in Nepal, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, often as a heritage language. The dialect continuum includes Khariboli (the basis of standard Hindi), Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, and Haryanvi, among others. These dialects vary significantly in phonology and vocabulary, and some, like Bhojpuri, are sometimes classified as separate languages. The 2011 Census of India recorded over 528 million Hindi speakers, making it the most widely spoken language in the country.
Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language with a subject–object–verb word order, postpositions, and a system of grammatical gender (masculine and feminine). It has a relatively simple phoneme inventory, with 10 vowels and 30 consonants, including aspirated and retroflex stops. The language uses Devanagari script, which is an abugida where each consonant carries an inherent vowel. Hindi grammar is characterized by the use of ergative constructions in perfective tenses, where the subject takes an oblique case marker. The vocabulary is largely derived from Sanskrit, with significant borrowings from Persian, Arabic, English, and Portuguese. In formal registers, Hindi tends to use more Sanskrit-derived words, while colloquial speech often incorporates English loanwords, a phenomenon known as Hinglish.2
Beyond its mainstream role, Hindi has several lesser-known dimensions. The Hindi–Urdu controversy of the 19th century led to the partition of Hindustani into two standardized registers, with Hindi adopting Devanagari and Sanskrit vocabulary, while Urdu used Persian script and Arabic-Persian vocabulary. The Bombay Hindi dialect, spoken in Mumbai, blends Hindi with Marathi and English and is widely used in Bollywood films. Hindi is also one of the official languages of Fiji (as Fiji Hindi) and is recognized in Trinidad and Tobago as a heritage language. In 2019, the Government of India proposed making Hindi a compulsory subject in schools across the country, sparking protests in non-Hindi-speaking states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Additionally, Hindi has a significant presence in cyberspace, with a large number of websites and social media content in the language, and it is one of the most widely used languages on the internet after English and Chinese.3
Hindi is a dynamic language with a rich literary tradition and a growing global presence.
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