| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Hindi ( हिन्दी ) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken | India |
| Region | South Asia |
| Total speakers | 480 million |
| Ranking | 2 |
| Genetic classification | Indo-European Indo-Iranian |
| Official status | |
| Official language | India |
| Regulated by | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | hi |
| ISO 639-2 | hin |
| SIL | HND |
Hindi (हिन्दी) is a language spoken in most states in northern and central India. It is an Indo-European language, of the Indo-Iranian subfamily. It evolved from the Middle Indo-Aryan prakrit languages of the middle ages, and indirectly, from Sanskrit. Hindi derives a lot of its higher vocabulary from Sanskrit. Due to MuslimA Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. The word Muslim means one who submits and implies complete submission to the will of God ( Allah). Muslims believe that nature is itself Islamic, since it follows natural laws placed by God. Thus, a Muslim s influence in Northern India, there are also a large number of PersianPersian , also known as Farsi (local name), Parsi Tajiki or Dari is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. It has official-language status in the first three countries. There are over 75 million native speakers. It belongs to t, ArabicArabic is a Semitic language, fairly closely related to, for instance, the Hebrew language and the Aramaic language, spoken throughout the Arab world and widely known outside it. It has been a literary language for over 1500 years, and is the liturgical l and TurkishTurkish is a Turkic language, spoken by about 70 million speakers in Turkey and over 85 million speakers world-wide. The Turkish name for the language is Turkce''. Classification Turkish is a member of the Turkish family of languages, which includes Balka loanwords.
Hindi is officially the national language of India.
Linguists think of Hindi and Urdu as the same language, the difference being that Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Arabic script and draws on Persian and Arabic. The separation is largely a political one; before the partition of India into India and Pakistan, spoken Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language, Hindustani. Since partition, Standard Hindi has developed by replacing many words of Arabic and Persian origin with Sanskrit words. Hindi and Urdu presently have four standard literary forms: Standard Hindi, Urdu, Dakkhini (Dakhini), and Rehkta . Dakhini is a dialect of Urdu from the Deccan region of south-central India, chiefly from Hyderabad, that uses fewer Persian or Arabic words. Rehkta is a form of Urdu used chiefly for poetry.
Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, after Chinese. About 500 million people speak Hindi, in India and abroad, and the total number of people who can understand the language may be 800 million. A 1997 survey found that 66% of all Indians can speak Hindi, and 77% of the Indians regard Hindi as "one language across the nation". More than 180 million people in India regard Hindi as their mother tongue. Another 300 million use it as second language. Outside of India, Hindi speakers are 100,000 in USA; 685,170 in Mauritius; 890,292 in South Africa; 232,760 in Yemen; 147,000 in Uganda; 5,000 in Singapore; 20,000 in New Zealand; 30,000 in Germany. Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, is spoken by about 41 million in Pakistan and other countries. Hindi became one of the official languages of India on January 26, 1965 and it is a minority language in a number of countries, including Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and United Arab Emirates.
Hindi is generally classified in the Central Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages. Hindi is the predominant language in the states and territories of Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, as well as the cities of Bombay and Hyderabad. It is not easy to delimit the borders of the Hindi speaking region.