Hindi

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See Khariboli for "Hindi" as defined by SIL International.
Hindī
हिन्दी, हिंदी
Spoken in: India, Nepal, Fiji, with significant minorities in the Philippines, Thailand, UK, USA, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Mauritius
Total speakers: First language: 370 million
Second language: 580 million
Overall: 950 million (Source:[1] (1991)) 
Ranking: 3 to 5 (native speakers)
Total: 3
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Indo-Aryan
   Hindī 
Writing system: Devanagari script 
Official status
Official language in: Flag of India India
Flag of Fiji Fiji (as Hindustani)
Regulated by: Central Hindi Directorate (only in India)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-1: hi
ISO 639-2: hin
ISO 639-3: hin
Indic script
 This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [hɪnd̪iː] (help·info)), an Indo-European language spoken all over India in varying degrees and extensively in northern and central India,[2] is one of the 22 official languages of India and is used, along with English, for central government administrative purposes.[3][4] It is part of a language continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, and Gujarati; on the south by Marathi and Konkani; on the southeast by Oriya; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by Nepali.

More precisely, Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani language termed khariboli, that emerged as the standard dialect.

Contents

The word Hindī is of Persian origin and literally means "Indian", comprising Hind "India", and the adjectival suffix ī. The word was originally used by Muslims in north India to refer to any Indian language: for example the eleventh-century writer Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī used it to refer to Sanskrit. [5] By the thirteenth century "Hindi", along with its variant forms "Hindavi" and "Hindui", had acquired a more specific meaning: the "linguistically mixed speech of Delhi, which came into wide use across north India and incorporated a component of Persian vocabulary".[5] It was later used by members of the Mughal court to distinguish the local vernacular of the Delhi region where the court was located from Persian, which was the official language of the court.[6]

Evidence from the seventeenth century indicates that the language then called "Hindi" existed in two differing styles: among Muslims it was liable to contain a larger component of Persian-derived words and would be written down in a script derived from Persian, while among Hindus it used a vocabulary more influenced by Sanskrit and was written in Devanagari script. These styles eventually developed into modern Urdu and modern Hindi respectively.[5] However the word "Urdu" was not used until around 1780: before then the word "Hindi" could be used for both purposes.[7] The use of "Hindi" to designate what would now be called "Urdu" continued as late as the early twentieth century.[7]

Nowadays Hindī as taken to mean "Indian" is chiefly obsolete; it has come to specifically refer to the language(s) bearing that name.[8]

Stotra text in Devanagari script
Stotra text in Devanagari script

Hindi is the predominant language in the Indian states and union territories of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.[9] Linguistic scholars refer to this area as the Hindi belt.

Distinctive non-standard varieties of Hindi are spoken in large, urban areas outside of the Hindi belt. Most notable of these are those spoken in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Hyderabad. Overseas forms of Hindi are found in Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Recent immigration to the west, e.g. Europe, UK, USA etc. has resulted in the establishment of Hindi-speaking communities there as well.[9]

According to the 1991 census of India (which encompasses all the dialects of Hindi, including those that might be considered separate languages by some linguists—e.g., Bhojpuri), Hindi is the mother tongue of about 487 million Indians, or about 40% of India's population that year. According to SIL International's Ethnologue,[10] about 180 million people in India regard standard (Khari Boli) Hindi as their mother tongue, and another 300 million use it as a second language. Outside India, Hindi speakers number around 8 million in Nepal, 890,000 in South Africa, 685,000 in Mauritius, 317,000 in the U.S.,[11] 233,000 in Yemen, 147,000 in Uganda, 30,000 in Germany, 20,000 in New Zealand and 5,000 in Singapore, while the UK and UAE also have notable populations of Hindi speakers. Hence, according to the SIL ethnologue (1999 data), a combination of Hindi and Urdu languages makes it the fifth most spoken language in the world.

According to Comrie (1998 data),[12] Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, with 333 million native speakers.

The 337 million number of the 1991 census includes the following:

From 1991 to 2006, the population of India has grown by about 30% (from 838 to 1,095 million), so that the number of current speakers may be expected to be roughly a third higher than those given above.

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The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language(rājabhāṣā) of the Union (Article 343(1)).[13] Hindi is also enumerated as one of the twenty-two languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which entitles it to representation on the Official Language Commission.[14] The Constitution of India has stipulated the usage of Hindi and English to be the two languages of communication for the Central Government.

It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government by 1965, with state governments being free to function in languages of their own choice. This has not, however, happened and English is also used along with Hindi for official purposes. There was widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, in some states, especially the Anti-Hindi agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu, which resulted in the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963). This act provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes, by the Union government. However, the constitutional directive to the central government to champion the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced the policies of the Union government.

At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following states in India: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi. Each of these states may also designate a "co-official language"; in Uttar Pradesh for instance, depending on the political formation in power, sometimes this language is Urdu. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language in several states.

Main article: History of the Hindi language

Like many other modern Indian languages, it is believed that Hindi had been evolved from Sanskrit, by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages. Though there is no consensus for a specific time, Hindi originated as local dialects such as Braj, Awadhi and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century.[15] In the span of nearly a thousand years of Muslim influence, such as when Muslim rulers controlled much of northern India during the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, many Persian and Arabic words were absorbed into khari boli and was called Urdu or Hindustani. Since almost all Arabic words came via Persian, they do not preserve the original phonology of Arabic.

Hindi is only contrasted with Urdu in the way both were written. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are the way Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws its "vocabulary" with words from (Indo-Aryan) Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Nastaliq script, a variant of the (Semitic) Perso-Arabic script, and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic "vocabulary." Vocabulary is in quotes here since it is mostly the literary vocabulary that shows this visible distinction with the everyday vocabulary being essentially common between the two. To a common unbiased person, both Hindi and Urdu are same (Hindustani) though politics of religion and ethnicity portrays them as two separate languages since they are written in two entirely different scripts Hindi-Urdu controversy. Interestingly, if Urdu is written in Devanagiri script, it will be assumed as Hindi and vice versa. The popular examples are Bollywood songs and gazals.

Main article: Standard Hindi

After independence, the Government of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes:

  • standardization of Hindi grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"
  • standardization of Hindi spelling
  • standardization of the Devanagari script by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing and to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters.
  • scientific mode of transcribing the Devanagari alphabet
  • incorporation of diacritics to express sounds from other languages.

Further information: Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) word etymology

Standard Hindi derives much of its formal and technical vocabulary from Sanskrit. Standard or shuddh ("pure") Hindi is used only in public addresses and radio or TV news, while the everyday spoken language in most areas is one of several varieties of Hindustani, whose vocabulary contains words drawn from Persian and Arabic. In addition, spoken Hindi includes words from English and other languages as well.

Vernacular Urdu and Hindi share the same grammar and core vocabulary and so are practically indistinguishable. However, the literary registers differ substantially in borrowed vocabulary; in highly formal situations, the languages are barely intelligible to speakers of the other. Hindi has looked to Sanskrit for borrowings from at least the 19th century, and Urdu has looked to Persian and Arabic for borrowings from the eighteenth century. On another dimension, Hindi has been associated with the Hindu community and Urdu with the Muslim community.

There are five principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

  • Tatsam (तत्सम् / تتسم / same as that) words: These are words which are spelled the same in Hindi as in Sanskrit (except for the absence of final case inflections).[16] They include words inherited from Sanskrit via Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g. Hindustani nām/Sanskrit nāma, "name"),[17] as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. prārthanā, "prayer").[18] Pronunciation, however, conforms to Hindi norms and may differ from that of classical Sanskrit. Among nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit uninflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
  • Ardhatatsam words: These are words that were borrowed from Sanskrit in the middle Indo-Aryan or early New Indo-Aryan stages.[citation needed] Such words typically have undergone sound changes subsequent to being borrowed.
  • tadbʱav (तद्भव / تدبھو / born of that) words: These are words which are spelled differently from Sanskrit but are derivable from a Sanskrit prototype by phonological rules (e.g. Sanskrit karma, "deed" becomes Pali kamma, and eventually Hindi kām, "work").[19]
  • Deshaj (देशज) words: These are words that were not borrowings but do not derive from attested Indo-Aryan words either. Belonging to this category are onamatopoetic words.
  • videshi words: these include all words borrowed from sources other than Indo-Aryan. The most frequent sources of borrowing in this category have been Persian, Arabic, Portuguese and English.

Similarly, Urdu treats its own vocabulary, borrowed directly from Persian and Arabic, as a separate category for morphological purposes.

Hindi from which most of the Persian, Arabic and English words have been ousted and replaced by tatsam words is called Shuddha Hindi (pure Hindi). Chiefly, the proponents of the so-called Hindutva ("Hindu-ness") are vociferous supporters of Shuddha Hindi.

Excessive use of tatsam words sometimes creates problems for most native speakers. Strictly speaking, the tatsam words are words of Sanskrit and not of Hindi—thus they have complicated consonantal clusters which are not linguistically valid in Hindi. The educated middle class population of India can pronounce these words with ease, but people of rural backgrounds have much difficulty in pronouncing them. Similarly, vocabulary borrowed from Persian and Arabic also brings in its own consonantal clusters and "foreign" sounds, which may again cause difficulty in speaking them.

Main article: Hindi languages

If there can be considered a census within the dialectology of Hindi proper, it is that it can be split into two sets of dialects: Western and Eastern Hindi.[9] This analysis excludes varieties sometimes claimed for Hindi, such as Bihari, Rajasthani, and Pahari.[20] Thus Hindi proper includes[21] —

  1. Western Hindi (the speech varieties developed from Sauraseni[22]):
  2. Eastern Hindi (the speech varieties developed from Ardhamagadhi[22])
    • Awadhi, spoken in north and north-central Uttar Pradesh.
    • Bagheli, spoken in north-central Madhya Pradesh and central Uttar Pradesh.
    • Chattisgarhi, spoken in southeast Madhya Pradesh and northern and central Chattisgarh.

  • Bambaiya Hindi, the dialect of the city of Bombay (Mumbai); it is based on Khariboli dialect, but heavily influenced by Marathi and Gujarati. Technically it is a pidgin, i.e., neither is it a mother language of any people nor is it used in formal settings by the educated and upper social strata. However, it is often used in the movies of Hindi cinema (Bollywood), where it often gives a comical effect on the movie characters.
  • Dakhini, as discussed above.
  • Kalkatiya Hindi, another Khariboli-based pidgin spoken in the city of Calcutta (Kolkata), Shillong, etc., heavily influenced by Bhojpuri and Bengali.
  • Arunachal Hindi is a regional dialect of Hindi popularly spoken in Hindi. This is an amalmagation of Hindi and the various tribal dialects of the state. Words such as 'Yamtar', meaning "pickle" are spoken instead of 'achaar' and so on. Arunachal Hindi is the most popular language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh even in the most remote parts of the state.

  • Mauritian Hindi, spoken in Mauritius, based on Bhojpuri and influenced by French.
  • Sarnami, a form of Bhojpuri with Awadhi influence spoken by Surinamers of Indian descent.
  • Fiji Hindi, derived form of Awadhi, Bhojpuri and including many English and native Fijian words, is spoken by Fijians of Indian descent.
  • Trinidad Hindi, based on Bhojpuri, and spoken in Trinidad and Tobago by people of Indian descent.
  • South African Hindi, based on Bhojpuri, and spoken in South Africa by people of Indian descent.

The World Hindi Secretariat was setup in 1996 with the object to promote Hindi as an International language and further the cause of Hindi towards its recognition at the United Nations as an official language. The functions of the Secretariat are to organize international conferences, seminars, group discussions in the medium of Hindi language, as well as organizing cultural programmes, “Kavi Sammelan” and other similar activities.

The idea of setting up a World Hindi Secretariat was proposed by Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of Mauritius, at the first World Hindi Conference that was held in Nagpur, India, in 1975. Sir Seewoosagur was leading the Mauritian delegation to the Conference. It was felt that the World Hindi Secretariat would promote Hindi worldwide and also boost the language as a vehicle for the spread and understanding of a civilization and culture that has held a prominent place in the history of humanity. It would further go a long way towards making Hindi one of the working languages of the United Nations Organization. Sir Seewoosagur also proposed that the Secretariat be located in Mauritius, and a resolution to that effect was subsequently passed at the five World Hindi Conferences.

The current Secretary General of the Secretariat is Dr (Mrs) V. B. Arun who was appointed in September 2006 following a public advertisement and assumed duty in January 2007.


The term Urdu arose in 1645. Until then, and even after 1645, the term Hindi or Hindawi was used in a general sense for the dialects of central and northern India.

There are two fundamental distinctions between standard Urdu and standard Hindi that lead to their being recognised as distinct languages:

  • the source of borrowed vocabulary (Persian/Arabic for Urdu and Sanskrit for Hindi); and
  • the script used to write them (for Urdu, an adaptation of the Perso-Arabic alphabet written in Nasta'liq style; for Hindi, an adaptation of the Devanagari script).

Colloquially and linguistically, the distinction between the Urdu and Hindi is insignificant. This is true for the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, wherever neither learned vocabulary nor writing is used. Outside the Delhi dialect area, the term "Hindi" is used in reference to the local dialect, which may be different from both Hindi and Urdu.

The word Hindi has many different uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu. These uses include:

  1. standardized Hindi as taught in schools throughout India,
  2. formal or official Hindi advocated by Purushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,
  3. the vernacular nonstandard dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu as spoken throughout much of India and Pakistan, as discussed above,
  4. the neutralized form of the language used in popular television and films, or
  5. the more formal neutralized form of the language used in broadcast and print news reports.

The rubric "Hindi" is often used as a catch-all for those idioms in the North Indian dialect continuum that are not recognized as languages separate from the language of the Delhi region. Panjabi, Bihari, and Chhatisgarhi, while sometimes recognised as being distinct languages, are often considered dialects of Hindi. Many other local idioms, such as the Bhili languages, which do not have a distinct identity defined by an established literary tradition, are almost always considered dialects of Hindi. In other words, the boundaries of "Hindi" have little to do with mutual intelligibility, and instead depend on social perceptions of what constitutes a language.

The other use of the word "Hindi" is in reference to Standard Hindi, the Khari boli register of the Delhi dialect of Hindi (generally called Hindustani) with its direct loanwords from Sanskrit. Standard Urdu is also a standardized form of Hindustani. Such a state of affairs, with two standardized forms of what is essentially one language, is known as a diasystem.

Urdu was earlier called Zabān-e-Urdū-e-Mu’allah (زبانِ اردوِ معلہ, ज़बान-ऐ उर्दू), lit., the "Exalted Language of the Camp". Earlier, terms Hindi and Urdu were used interchangeably even by Urdu poets like Mir and Mirza Ghalib of the early 19th century (rather, the terms Hindvi/Hindi was used more often). By 1850, Hindi and Urdu were no longer used for the same language. Other linguists such as Sir G. A. Grierson (1903) have also claimed that Urdu is simply a dialect or style of Western Hindi. Before the Partition of India, Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad used to be the four literary centers of Urdu — none of which lie in present Pakistan.

The colloquial language spoken by the people of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The only important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Perso-Arabic script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi. However, since independence the formal registers used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, Standard Urdu uses Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while Standard Hindi uses Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official languages being heavily Sanskritized or Persianized, and nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the other standard (as far as the formal vocabulary is concerned).

These two standardized registers of Hindustani have become so entrenched as separate languages that many extreme-nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. The tensions reached a peak in the Hindi-Urdu controversy in 1867 in the then United Provinces during the British Raj. However, there were and are unifying forces as well. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi", but the language used in most of them is the same as that of Urdu speakers in Pakistan.

Main article: Hindi-Urdu phonology
Consonants
Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Dental Alveolar Retroflex Post-alveolar/
Palatal		 Velar Glottal
Stop p
pʰ		 b
bʱ		 t̪
t̪ʰ		 d̪
d̪ʱ		 ʈ
ʈʰ		 ɖ
ɖʱ		 k
kʰ		 g
gʱ
Affricate tʃ
tʃʰ		 dʒ
dʒʱ
Nasal m n (ɳ)
Fricative f s z ʃ ɦ
Tap or Flap ɾ (ɽ)
(ɽʱ)
Approximant ʋ j
Lateral
approximant		 l
Vowels

Main article: Hindustani orthography

Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, an abugida which is written from left to right.

The standard transliteration of Hindi into the Roman alphabet is usually the IAST scheme, whereby the retroflex consonants (retroflex t, d, their aspirates, n, vowel-like r) and the breath h are shown with a dot beneath; the long vowels are shown with a macron or a bar (as ā above); aspiration of a plosive is shown with a following h; and elided a's are removed for a truer correspondence to speech. Other alphabet characters are pronounced as in normal English. Another transliteration (ITRANS) uses capital letters of English to transcribe the long vowels and retroflex consonants. However, since English is a lingua franca of the educated Indians, and since computer keyboards do not have features for typing the IAST characters, Indians today use a casual transliteration into English for Hindi words; in such a casual transliteration, used especially in online chatting, the retroflex and dental consonants are not differentiated, and neither the short and the long vowels (except that sometimes people double the alphabet to indicate a long vowel).

Main article: Hindi-Urdu grammar

Despite Hindi and English both being Indo-European languages, Hindi grammar is different in many ways from what English speakers are used to. Most notably, Hindi is a subject-object-verb language, meaning that verbs usually fall at the end of the sentence rather than before the object (as in English). Hindi also shows mixed ergativity so that, in some cases, verbs agree with the object of a sentence rather than the subject. Unlike English, Hindi has no definite article (the). The numeral ek might be used as the indefinite singular article (a/an) if this needs to be stressed.

In addition, Hindi uses postpositions (so called because they are placed after nouns) where English uses prepositions. Other differences include gender, honorifics, interrogatives, use of cases, and different tenses. While being complicated, Hindi grammar is fairly regular, with irregularities being relatively limited. Despite differences in vocabulary and writing, Hindi grammar is nearly identical with Urdū. The concept of punctuation having been entirely unknown before the advent of the Europeans, Hindi punctuation uses western conventions for commas, exclamation points, and question marks. Periods are sometimes used to end a sentence, though the traditional "full stop" (a vertical line) is also used.

In Hindi, there are only two genders for nouns. All male human beings and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "masculine") are masculine. All female human beings and female animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to convention, which must be memorised by non-Hindi speakers if they wish to learn correct Hindi. While this is the same as Urdū and similar to many other Indo-European languages such as Italian, French and Spanish, it is a challenge for those who are used to only the English language, which although an Indo-European language, has dropped nearly all of its gender inflection.

The ending of a word, if a vowel, usually helps in this gender classification. Among tatsam words, the masculine words of Sanskrit remain masculine in Hindi, and same is the case for the feminine. Sanskrit neuter nouns usually become masculine in Hindi. Among the tadbhav words, if a word end in long /αː/, it is normally masculine. If a word ends in /iː/ or /in/, it is normally feminine. The gender of words borrowed from Arabic and Persian is determined either by phonology (usually the last vowel in the word) or by the gender of the nearest Hindi equivalent. The gender assignment of Hindi words directly borrowed from English (which are numerous) is also usually determined by the gender of the nearest Hindi "synonym" or by the ending. Most adjectives ending in a vowel are inflected to agree with the gender of the noun: /meriː beʈiː/ 'my daughter' vs. /merαː beʈαː/ 'my son'.

Besides the standard interrogative terms of who (कौन kaun), what (क्या kyaa), why (कयों kyõ), when (कब kab), where (कहाँ kahã), how and what type (कैसा kaisaa), how many (कितना kitnaa), etc, the Hindi word kyaa (क्या) can be used as a generic interrogative often placed at the beginning of a sentence to turn a statement into a Yes/No question. This makes it clear when a question is being asked. Questions can also be formed simply by modifying intonation, exactly as some questions are in English.

Hindi has pronouns in the first, second and third person for one gender only. Thus, unlike English, there is no difference between he or she. More strictly speaking, the third person of the pronoun is actually the same as the demonstrative pronoun (this / that). The verb, upon conjugation, usually indicates the difference in the gender. The pronouns have additional cases of accusative and genitive, but no vocative. There may also be binary ways of inflecting the pronoun in the accusative case. Note that for the second person of the pronoun (you), Hindi has three levels of honorifics:

  • आप (/ɑːp/): Formal and respectable form for you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all formal settings and speaking to persons who are senior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying आप लोग (/ɑːp log/ you people) or आप सब (/ɑːp səb/ you all).
  • तुम (/t̪um/): Informal form of you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all informal settings and speaking to persons who are junior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying तुम लोग (/t̪um log/ you people) or तुम सब (/t̪um səb/ you all).
  • तू (/t̪uː/): Extremely informal form of you, as thou. Strictly singular, its plural form being /t̪um/. Except for very close friends or poetic language involving God, it could be perceived as offensive in India.

Imperatives (requests and commands) correspond in form to the level of honorific being used, and the verb inflects to show the level of respect and politeness desired. Because imperatives can already include politeness, the word "kripayā", which can be translated as "please", is much less common than in spoken English; it is generally only used in writing or announcements, and its use in common speech may even reflect mockery.

The standard word order in Hindi is, in general, Subject Object Verb, but where different emphasis or more complex structure is needed, this rule is very easily set aside (provided that the nouns/pronouns are always followed by their postpositions or case markers). More specifically, the standard order is 1. Subject 2. Adverbs (in their standard order) 3. Indirect object and any of its adjectives 4. Direct object and any of its adjectives 5. Negation term or interrogative, if any, and finally the 6. Verb and any auxiliary verbs. (Snell, p93) The standard order can be modified in various ways to impart emphasis on particular parts of the sentence. Negation is formed by adding the word नहीं (nahī̃, "no"), in the appropriate place in the sentence, or by utilizing न (na) or मत (mat) in some cases. Note that in Hindi, the adjectives precede the nouns they qualify. The auxiliaries always follow the main verb. Also, Hindi speakers or writers enjoy considerable freedom in placing words to achieve stylistic and other socio-psychological effects, though not as much freedom as in heavily inflected languages.[23]

Hindi verbal structure is focused on aspect with distinctions based on tense usually shown through use of the verb honā (to be) as an auxiliary. There are three aspects: habitual (imperfect), progressive (also known as continuous) and perfective. Verbs in each aspect are marked for tense in almost all cases with the proper inflected form of honā. Hindi has four simple tenses, present, past, future (presumptive), and subjunctive (referred to as a mood by many linguists).[24] Verbs are conjugated not only to show the number and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) of their subject, but also its gender. Additionally, Hindi has imperative and conditional moods. The verbs must agree with the person, number and gender of the subject if and only if the subject is not followed by any postposition. If this condition is not met, the verb must agree with the number and gender of the object (provided the object does not have any postposition). If this condition is also not met, the verb agrees with neither. It is this kind of phenomenon that is called mixed ergativity.

Hindi is a weakly inflected language for case; the relationship of a noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions (i.e., prepositions that follow the noun). Hindi has three cases for nouns. The Direct case is used for nouns not followed by any postpositions, typically for the subject case. The Oblique case is used for any nouns that is followed by a postposition. Adjectives modifying nouns in the oblique case will inflect that same way. Some nouns have a separate Vocative case. Hindi has two numbers: singular and plural—but they may not be shown distinctly in all declinations.

See also: Urdu#Examples

The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):

अनुच्छेद 1 — सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अधिकारों के मामले में जन्मजात स्वतन्त्रता प्राप्त है। उन्हें बुद्धि और अन्तरात्मा की देन प्राप्त है और परस्पर उन्हें भाईचारे के भाव से बर्ताव करना चाहिये।

Transliteration (IAST):

anucched 1 — sabhī manuṣyoṃ ko gaurav aur adhikāroṃ ke māmle meṃ janmajāt svatantratā prāpt hai. Unheṃ buddhi aur antarātmā kī den prāpt hai aur paraspar unheṃ bhāīcāre ke bhāv se bartāv karnā cāhiye.

Gloss (word-to-word):

Article 1 — All human-beings to dignity and rights' matter in from-birth freedom acquired is. Them to reason and conscience's endowment acquired is and always them to brotherhood's spirit with behaviour to do should.

Translation (grammatical):

Article 1 — All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Main article: Hindi literature

Main article: Bollywood
Further information: Bollywood songs

Hindi films play an important role in popular culture. The dialogues and songs of Hindi films use Khariboli and Hindi-Urdu in general, but the intermittent use of various dialects such as Awadhi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Punjabi and quite often Bambaiya Hindi, as also of many English words, is common.

Alam Ara (1931), which ushered in the era of "talkie" films in India, was a Hindustani film. This film had seven songs in it. Music soon became an integral part of Hindustani/ Hindi cinema. It is a very important part of popular culture and now comprises an entire genre of popular music. So popular is film music that songs filmed even 50-60 years ago are a staple of radio/TV and are generally very familiar to an Indian.

Hindi movies and songs are popular in many parts of India, such as Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, that do not speak Hindi as a native language. Indeed, the Hindi film industry is largely based at Mumbai (Bombay), in the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra. Hindi films are also popular abroad, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Iran and UK.

The role of radio and television in propagating Hindi beyond its native audience cannot be overstated. Television in India was controlled by the central government until the proliferation of satellite TV rendered regulation redundant. During the era of control, Hindi predominated on both radio and TV, enjoying more air-time than local languages. After the advent of satellite TV, several private channels emerged to compete with the government's official TV channel. Today, a large number of satellite channels provide viewers with much variety in entertainment. These include soap operas, detective serials, horror shows, dramas, cartoons, comedies, host shows for Hindi songs, Hindu mythology and documentaries.

English Hindi (Transliteration) Hindi (Devanagari)
Hindi hindī हिन्दी
English aṃgrezī अंग्रेज़ी
Yes hāṃ हाँ
You1 āp (Formal) आप
You² tum (Informal) तुम
You³ tū (used intimately, often derogatory) तू
No nahīṃ नहीं
Hi/Hello namaste नमस्ते
Goodbye namaste, alvidā, khudā hāfiz नमस्ते, अलविदा
How are you? āp kaise haiṃ आप कैसे हैं?
See you phir mileṃge फिर मिलेंगे
Thank you dhanyavād, shukriyā धन्यवाद, शुक्रिया
I'm Sorry kshamā kījiye, (also māf kījiye) क्षमा कीजिये (माफ कीजिये)
Why? kyoṃ? क्यों?
Who? kaun? कौन?
What? kyā? क्या?
When? kab? कब?
Where? kahāṃ? कहाँ?
How? kaise? कैसे?
How much? kitne? कितने?
I did not understand maiṃ samjhā nahīṃ मैं समझा नहीं
Help me (please)
Help me!		 meri madad kījiye / sahāyatā kījie! मेरी मदद कीजिये / सहायता कीजिये
Do you speak English? kyā āp aṃgrezī bolte haiṃ? क्या आप अंग्रेज़ी बोलते हैं?
Time please?
Time please?		 samay kyā huā? / kitne baje haiṃ? समय क्या हुआ? / कितने बजे हैं?
I do not know mujhe nahīṃ patā मुझे नहीं पता

Main article: Hinglish

"Hinglish" is the use of Hindi and English, combining both, in one sentence. This is more commonly seen in urban and semi-urban centers of population, but is slowly spreading its root into rural and remote areas via television and word of mouth, slowly achieving vernacular status. Many speakers do not realize that they are incorporating English words into Hindi sentences or Hindi words into English sentences.

This highly popular mixing of both the languages in most parts of northern and central India has grown from the fact that English is a popular language of choice amongst the urban youth who find themselves comfortable in its lexicon. It is already the medium for imparting education in many schools across the nation. The advent of cable television and its pervasive growth has seen the masses exposed to a wide variety of programming from across the world.

Another factor contributing to the spread of Hinglish is the popularity of Bollywood films.

  • "Dad, time kyā huā hai?" (Dad, what is the time right now?).
  • "Mama, mujhe mall se jeans lenī hai." (Mama, I want to buy jeans from the mall).

  1. ^ Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
  2. ^ Shapiro (2003), p. 251
  3. ^ The Union: Official Languages
  4. ^ PDF from india.gov.in containing Articles 343 which states so
  5. ^ a b c McGregor, Stuart, "The Progress of Hindi, Part 1", p. 912, <http://books.google.com/books?id=xowUxYhv0QgC&pg=RA1-PA912&vq=%22the+progress+of+hindi%22&dq=0520228219&sig=cxoU04ikzkQAgcCaye1dMooeEns> in Pollock (2003)
  6. ^ Dalby, Andrew (2004). Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages, Revised edition, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 248. ISBN 0231115695. 
  7. ^ a b Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman, "A Long History of Urdu Literarature, Part 1", p. 806, <http://books.google.com/books?id=xowUxYhv0QgC&pg=PA806&vq=%22Urdu%22+as+a+name+for+the+language&dq=0520228219&sig=dCsukF44BlAtQomOWT3v3ZZRJpk> in Pollock (2003).
  8. ^ (McGregor 1993, p. 1071)
  9. ^ a b c (Shapiro 2003, p. 251)
  10. ^ SIL International's report on Hindi in its Ethnologue
  11. ^ Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000 - Census 2000 Brief Issued October 2003. Retrieved 24 August 2006.
  12. ^ http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
  13. ^ PDF (in Hindi & English) from india.gov.in to confirm the claims on rajbhasha
  14. ^ Article 344(1) of the Constitution of India
  15. ^ Shapiro, M: Hindi.
  16. ^ Masica, p. 65
  17. ^ Masica, p. 66
  18. ^ Masica, p. 67
  19. ^ Masica, p. 65
  20. ^ (Shapiro 2003, p. 251-252)
  21. ^ (Shapiro 2003, p. 252)
  22. ^ a b (Shapiro 2003, p. 277)
  23. ^ Bhatia 1996: 32-33.
  24. ^ Shapiro, M: "Hindi"

  • McGregor, R.S. (1993), Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (2004 ed.), Oxford University Press, USA.

  • Bhatia, Tej K A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition. Leiden, Netherlands & New York, NY : E.J. Brill, 1987. ISBN 90-04-07924-6

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