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Modern Standard Hindi (, ),Singh, Rajendra, and Rama Kant Agnihotri. Hindi morphology: A word-based description. Vol. 9. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1997. 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 language, and is the lingua franca of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of Hindustani. Hindustani itself developed from Old Hindi and was spoken in Delhi and neighbouring areas. It incorporated a significant number of Persian language loanwords.
Hindi is an official language in ten states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six Union territory (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir) and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, Modern Standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu, which is another recognised register of Hindustani, as both Hindi and Urdu share a core vocabulary base derived from Shauraseni Prakrit. (1997). 9788126003532, Sahitya Akademi. ISBN 9788126003532 Hindi is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several other languages are recognised officially as "Hindi" but do not refer to the Standard Hindi language described here and instead descend from other nearby languages, such as Awadhi language and Bhojpuri. Examples of this are the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji Hindi, spoken in Fiji, and Caribbean Hindustani, which is spoken in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.
Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese, Spanish language, and English language.Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates for the top dozen languages. When counted together with the mutually intelligible Urdu, it is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. According to reports of Ethnologue (2025), Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when including first language and second language speakers.
Hindi is the fastest-growing language of India, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei language, Gujarati and Bengali language, according to the 2011 census of India.—
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Another name Hindavī (ہندوی/हिन्दवी) () was often used in the past, for example, by Amir Khusrau in his poetry.
The terms Hindi and Hindu trace back to Old Persian, which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु), referring to the Indus River. The Greek cognates of the same terms are Indus (for the river) and India (for the land of the river).
The term Modern Standard Hindi is commonly used to specifically refer to the modern literary Hindi language, as opposed to colloquial and regional varieties that are also referred to as Hindi belt.
The sound changes that characterised the transition from Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi are:Masica, pp. 187–211
Standard Hindi is based on the Kauravi dialect dialect, spoken in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab (Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur); the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding region gradually replaced earlier prestige languages such as Awadhi language and Braj. Standard Hindi was developed by supplanting foreign loanwords from the Hindustani language and replacing them with Sanskrit words, though Standard Hindi does continue to possess several Persian loanwords. Modern Hindi became a literary language in the 19th century. Earliest examples could be found as Prēm Sāgar by Lallu Lal, Batiyāl Pachīsī of Sadal Misra, and Rānī Kētakī Kī Kahānī of Insha Allah Khan which were published in Devanagari during the early 19th century.
John Gilchrist was principally known for his study of the Hindustani language, which was adopted as the lingua franca of northern India (including what is now present-day Pakistan) by Britons and Indians alike. He compiled and authored An English-Hindustani Dictionary, A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language, The Oriental Linguist, and many more. His lexicon of Hindustani was published in the Perso-Arabic script, Nāgarī script, and in Romanisation. In the late 19th century, a movement to further develop Hindi as a standardised form of Hindustani separate from Urdu took form. In 1881, Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.Parthasarathy, Kumar, p.120 However, in 2014, Urdu was accorded second official language status in the state.
(1) The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
(2) Notwithstanding anything in clause (1), for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement: Provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise the use of the Hindi language in addition to the English language and of the Devanagari form of numerals in addition to the international form of Indian numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union.
of the Indian constitution states:
It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.
It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the Union Government by 1965 (per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351), with state governments being free to function in the language of their own choice. However, widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in South India (such as those in Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English indefinitely for all official purposes, although the constitutional directive for the Union Government to encourage the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced its policies.
stipulates that the official language commission shall be constituted every ten years to recommend steps for the progressive use of Hindi language and impose restrictions on the use of the English language by the union government. In practice, the official language commissions are constantly endeavouring to promote Hindi but not imposing restrictions on English in official use by the union government.
At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following Indian states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Hindi is an official language of Gujarat, along with Gujarati. It acts as an additional official language of West Bengal in blocks and sub-divisions with more than 10% of the population speaking Hindi. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of official language in the following Union Territories: Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Although there is no specification of a national language in the constitution, it is a widely held belief that Hindi is the national language of India. This is often a source of friction and contentious debate. In 2010, the Gujarat High Court clarified that Hindi is not the national language of India because the constitution does not mention it as such.
In Northeast India a pidgin known as Haflong Hindi has developed as a lingua franca for the people living in Haflong, Assam who speak other languages natively. (2025). 9780143416395, Penguin Books India. ISBN 9780143416395 In Arunachal Pradesh, Hindi emerged as a lingua franca among locals who speak over 50 dialects natively.
Hindi is quite easy to understand for many , who speak Urdu, which, like Hindi, is a standard register of the Hindustani language; additionally, Indian media are widely viewed in Pakistan.
A sizeable population in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, can also speak and understand Hindi-Urdu due to the popularity and influence of Bollywood films, songs and actors in the region.
Hindi is also spoken by a large population of (people having roots in north-India but having migrated to Nepal over hundreds of years) of Nepal. Apart from this, Hindi is spoken by the large Indian diaspora which hails from, or has its origin from the "Hindi Belt" of India. A substantially large North Indian diaspora lives in countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, South Africa, Fiji and Mauritius, where it is natively spoken at home and among their own Hindustani-speaking communities.
Outside India, Hindi speakers are 8 million in Nepal; 863,077 in the United States; 450,170 in Mauritius; 380,000 in Fiji; 250,292 in South Africa; 150,000 in Suriname;Frawley, p. 481 100,000 in Uganda; 45,800 in the United Kingdom; 20,000 in New Zealand; 20,000 in Germany; 26,000 in Trinidad and Tobago; 3,000 in Singapore.
Romanised Hindi, also called Hinglish, is the dominant form of Hindi online. In an analysis of YouTube comments, Palakodety et al., identified that 52% of comments were in Romanised Hindi, 46% in English, and 1% in Devanagari Hindi. (2025). 9789811656248, Springer. ISBN 9789811656248
| कल | अ | about | |||
| occurs as an allophone of near an that is surrounded on both sides by schwas. Usually, the second schwa becomes silent, which results in an preceding an . | रहना | p en | |||
| काम | आ or ा | f ather | |||
| जितना | इ or ि | s it | |||
| जीतना | ई or ी | s eat | |||
| उन | उ or ु | b ook | |||
| ऊन | ऊ or ू | m oon | |||
| जेब | ए or े | m ail | |||
| कैसा | ऐ or ै | f airy | |||
| बोलो | ओ or ो | gr ow | |||
| कौन | औ or ौ | j ob | |||
| हँस | ँ | nasal vowel fa un (, etc.) | |||
| मैं |
| stress (placed before stressed syllable) | ||
| doubled consonant (placed after doubled consonant) |
Excessive use of tatsam words sometimes creates problems for native speakers. They may have Sanskrit consonant clusters which do not exist in Hindustani, causing difficulties in pronunciation. (1983). 9780895816702, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. ISBN 9780895816702
As a part of the process of Sanskritisation, new words are coined using Sanskrit components to be used as replacements for supposedly foreign vocabulary. Usually these neologisms are of English words already adopted into spoken Hindi. Some terms such as dūrbhāṣ "telephone", literally "far-speech" and dūrdarśan "television", literally "far-sight" have even gained some currency in formal Hindi in the place of the English borrowings (ṭeli)fon and ṭīvī. (2025). 9781136102349, Routledge. ISBN 9781136102349
The status of Persian language then and thus its influence, is also visible in Hindi :
The emergence of Modern Standard Hindi in the 19th century went along with the Sanskritisation of its vocabulary,King, Christopher R. (1994). One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. leading to a marginalisation of Persian vocabulary in Hindi, which continued after Partition when the Indian government co-opted the policy of Sanskritisation. However, many Persian words (e.g. bas "enough", khud "self") have remained entrenched in Standard Hindi, and a larger amount are still used in Urdu poetry written in the Devanagari script. Many words borrowed from Persian in turn were loanwords from Arabic (e.g. muśkil "difficult", havā "air", x(a)yāl "thought", kitāb "book").
| + Loanwords from Persian derived from Arabic |
| time |
| shirt |
| book |
| destiny |
| chair |
| calculation |
| law |
| news |
| world |
| ananás |
| padre |
| balde |
| chave |
| igreja |
| armário |
| botelha |
| hospital |
| holandês |
Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems. It was primarily written in other Hindi languages, particularly Avadhi and Braj Bhasha, but to a degree also in Delhavi, the basis for Standard Hindi. During the British Raj, Hindustani became the prestige dialect.
Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri in 1888, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in Hindi prose literature was Munshi Premchand, who is considered the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement. Literary, or Sāhityik, Hindi was popularised by the writings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Hindustani popular with educated people.
The Dvivedī Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing Standard Hindi in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love.
In the 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as Chhayavaad ( shadow-ism) and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as Chāyāvādī. Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chāyāvādī poets.
Uttar Ādhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chāyāvādī movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.
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