Hindi

This article is about Modern Standard Hindi. For other uses, see Hindi (disambiguation). It is not to be confused with Hindu or Sindhi.

Modern Standard Hindi (Hindi: आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, romanised: Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), often called Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family. It is written in the Devanagari script. Hindi is an official language of India. Along with English, it is used as a lingua franca, a shared language that helps people from different groups talk to each other. This is true across much of North, Central, East, Western, and Northeast India. The main exception is South India.

Hindi is an official language in ten states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. It is also official in six union territories: Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir. In the state of West Bengal, it is an additional official language. Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.

Apart from its script and formal vocabulary, Modern Standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu. This means speakers of one can understand the other. The shared base of the two forms is called Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani. Hindi is considered the more Sanskritised register. Hindustani also appears in simpler forms, sometimes called Bazaar Hindustani. Outside India, several languages are officially recognised as "Hindi," but they are not Standard Hindi. Instead, they come from other nearby languages, such as Awadhi and Bhojpuri.

Hindi is the fourth-most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English. When it is grouped with the closely related Urdu, it becomes the third-most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. According to reports from Ethnologue (2025), Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when first and second language speakers are counted together. Hindi is also the fastest-growing language of India, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei, Gujarati, and Bengali, according to the 2011 census of India.

Terminology

The word Hindī was first used for people who lived on the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It came from Classical Persian هندی Hindī (Iranian Persian pronunciation: Hendi). It means 'of or belonging to Hind (India)', or 'Indian'. Another name, Hindavī (ہندوی/हिन्दवी), means 'of or belonging to the Indian people' in Persian. People often used it in the past. For example, Amir Khusrau used it in his poetry.

The words Hindi and Hindu come from Old Persian. Old Persian took them from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु), which referred to the Indus River. The Greek words Indus (for the river) and India (for the land of the river) are related to these words. Today, the term Modern Standard Hindi is often used for the modern written form of the Hindi language. Other, everyday and regional forms are also called Hindi in a wider sense.

History

Further information: History of Hindustani

Hindi grew from an early form of Vedic Sanskrit. This is not the same as the later Classical Sanskrit. In medieval India, this early language changed into Shauraseni Prakrit and Śauraseni Apabhraṃśa, which appeared in the 7th century CE. During the Delhi Sultanate, which covered most of today's north India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh, the Old Hindi language took in many Persian words as contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures grew. This formed the present form of Hindustani.

Hindi became important after it was used as the official language of the imperial court under Shah Jahan. Emperor Aurangzeb is recorded as speaking Hindvi. During the Indian Independence movement, Hindustani became a sign of national unity. It is still the common language of many people in northern India, as shown in the Hindustani vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.

Standard Hindi is based on the Khariboli dialect, which is spoken in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab area, including Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur. Its Sanskrit words were chosen to replace many foreign loanwords, though it still keeps some Persian ones. Hindi became a literary language in the 19th century. Early works include Prēm Sāgar by Lallu Lal, Batiyāl Pachīsī by Sadal Misra, and Rānī Kētakī Kī Kahānī by Insha Allah Khan.

John Gilchrist studied the Hindustani language. It was used as a lingua franca in northern India, including what is now Pakistan. In 1881, Bihar became the first Indian state to adopt Hindi as its official language. On 14 September 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Republic of India. This replaced Hindustani written in the Perso-Arabic script. Beohar Rajendra Simha, along with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt, and Seth Govind Das, worked hard for this change. Today, the day is celebrated as Hindi Day.

Official status

Hindi is one of the official languages of India. It is written in Devanagari script. English is also used for official purposes. The Indian Constitution made Hindi an official language of the Union, and it let English keep being used for official purposes. Many people in South India, especially in those in Tamil Nadu, strongly disagreed with the imposition of Hindi on people who did not speak it at home. This led to the Official Languages Act of 1963, which let English keep being used for all official purposes. Hindi is an official language in many Indian states, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and in Delhi. The Constitution does not name a national language, but many people think Hindi is India's national language. In 2010, the Gujarat High Court said that Hindi is not the national language, because the Constitution does not name it as one.

Hindi is an official language in Fiji under the country's 1997 and 2013 constitutions. In Fiji, Standard Hindi is used for official purposes. Fiji Hindi is also spoken there. It comes from Awadhi, an Eastern Hindi dialect. In Nepal, about 77,569 people speak Hindi as a first language, according to the 2011 Nepal census. When Paramananda Jha, an Indian-born supporter of Hindi, was elected vice-president of Nepal, he took his oath in Hindi. This caused protests. The Nepal Supreme Court later ruled that his oath was invalid. In South Africa, Hindi is a protected language. The Pan South African Language Board must promote and respect it, as set out in the Constitution of South Africa. Hindi was also made the third official court language in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. This means Indian workers there can file complaints in their own mother tongue.

Geographical distribution

Main article: Hindustani-speaking world

Hindi is the lingua franca of northern India, which is known as the Hindi Belt. It is also one of the official languages of the Government of India, along with English. In Northeast India, people in Haflong, Assam, who speak other languages at home, developed a simple mixed language called Haflong Hindi to talk with each other. In Arunachal Pradesh, local people who speak over 50 different dialects use Hindi to communicate. Many Pakistanis can easily understand Hindi because they speak Urdu, which is a standard form of the same Hindustani language. Indian films and music are also popular in Pakistan. Many people in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, can speak and understand Hindi-Urdu because they enjoy Bollywood films, songs, and actors.

Hindi is also spoken by many Madheshis, people with roots in north India who moved to Nepal hundreds of years ago. Hindi is also spoken by the large Indian diaspora, especially people whose families come from the "Hindi Belt." Many North Indians live in countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and Mauritius. In these places, Hindi is spoken at home and in their own Hindustani-speaking communities. Hindi is spoken by many people in Nepal, Mauritius, Uganda, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, and other countries outside India.

Comparison with Standard Urdu

Linguistically, Hindi and Urdu are two forms of the same language, and speakers of both can understand each other. They share many basic words that come from Prakrit and Sanskrit. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and uses more words taken directly from Sanskrit. Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script and uses more Arabic and Persian words. Because the two share the same grammar, most linguists see them as two standard forms of one language, called Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu.

Hindi is the most widely used scheduled language in India. It is one of the two official languages of the union, along with English. Urdu is the national language and main common language of Pakistan. It is also one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Urdu has official status in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Bihar.

Script

Main article: Devanagari

Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which is an abugida. Devanagari has 11 vowels and 33 consonants. It is written from left to right. Devanagari is not fully phonetic for Hindi, meaning the letters do not always show exactly how a word is said. For example, it does not show schwa deletion in spoken Standard Hindi.

Romanisation

Main article: Devanagari transliteration

The Government of India uses Hunterian transliteration as its official way of writing Hindi in the Latin script. Other systems also exist, such as IAST, ITRANS and ISO 15919. Romanised Hindi, also called Hinglish, is the most common form of Hindi online. In one study of YouTube comments, about half were in Romanised Hindi, almost half were in English, and only a very small number were in Devanagari Hindi.

Phonology

Main article: Hindustani phonology

Vocabulary

Further information: Hindustani etymology and List of Sanskrit and Persian roots in Hindi

Hindi words are traditionally sorted into five groups based on where they come from. Tatsam words are spelled the same in Hindi as in Sanskrit, such as नाम nām ("name") and प्रार्थना prārthanā ("prayer"). Ardhatatsam words are older Sanskrit borrowings whose sounds changed after they entered Hindi, such as सूरज sūraj from Sanskrit सूर्य sūrya. Tadbhav words are native Hindi words that grew out of Sanskrit, such as काम kām ("work"), which came from Sanskrit कर्म karma ("deed"). Deshaj words were not borrowed from other languages. They include onomatopoetic words and words taken from local non-Indo-Aryan languages. Vidēshī words are loanwords from other languages, mostly Persian, Arabic, Chagatai, English, French and Portuguese. Hindi inherited much of its vocabulary from Shauraseni Prakrit. Often, vowels became longer, a change called compensatory lengthening. For example, Sanskrit tīkṣṇa became Hindi tīkhā.

Much of the modern standard vocabulary comes from Sanskrit, especially in technical and academic fields. The formal standard, called Śuddh Hindi (pure Hindi), removed many Persian, Arabic and English words. It replaced them with neologisms made from Sanskrit parts. This process is part of Sanskritisation, and many new words are calques of English words. Persian and Arabic words were also common, and many of them are still used today.

See also: Englishisation § South Asia

Hindi also uses loan translation (calqueing) a lot, and sometimes phono-semantic matching, with English.

Many Hindustani words came from Portuguese, through contact with colonists and missionaries.

Media

Hindi literature is often grouped into four styles: devotional (Bhakti), with poets like Kabir and Raskhan; beauty (Śṛṇgār), with poets like Keshav and Bihari; epic (Vīgāthā); and modern (Ādhunik). Medieval Hindi literature was shaped by the Bhakti movement and long epic poems. It was mainly written in varieties of Hindi, especially Avadhi and Braj Bhasha. It was also written, to some extent, in Kaurai/Dehlavi, which is the basis for Standard Hindi. During the British Raj, Hindustani became the most respected dialect. Later, Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri in 1888, is considered the first true modern Hindi prose work. Munshi Premchand brought realism to Hindi prose. Writers such as Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Bhartendu Harishchandra made literary Hindi popular. Newspapers and magazines also made Hindustani popular with educated people.

The Dvivedī Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who helped establish Standard Hindi in poetry. In the 20th century, a romantic movement called Chāyāvād arose. Its four major poets were Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant.

Hindi literature, music, and film are now widely shared online. In 2015, Google reported that Hindi content use grew by 94% compared to the year before. It also said that 21% of users in India prefer content in Hindi. Many Hindi newspapers also offer digital editions.

Sample text

See also: Urdu § Sample text

This section shows a sample text in High Hindi. The sample is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written by the United Nations.

The sample is written in Devanagari script. It also has a version written with ISO letters and a version showing sounds using IPA. It includes a word-by-word breakdown and a translation that explains the grammar. The translation says that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that they have reason and conscience.