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[Hindi Hindī, from Hind, India, from Persian, from Old Persian Hinduš, Sind, from Sanskrit sindhuḥ, river.]
Hindi Hin'di adj.Bibliography
See E. Bender, Hindi Grammar and Reader (1967); V. R. Jagannathan, Handbook of Modern Hindi Usage (1981); M. C. Shapiro, A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi (1989).
| Hindī हिन्दी, हिंदी |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | India, Pakistan,
Nepal, Fiji, with significant minorities in the Philippines, Thailand, UK,
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| Total speakers: | — | |||
| Ranking: | 3 to 5 (native speakers) | |||
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Hindī |
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| Writing system: | Devanagari script | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language of: |  India Fiji
(as Hindustani) |
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| Regulated by: | Central Hindi Directorate (only in India)[1] | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1: | hi | |||
| ISO 639-2: | hin | |||
| ISO 639-3: | variously: hin — Khariboli anp — Angika awa — Awadhi bho — Bhojpuri gbm — Garhwali hne — Chhattisgarhi kfy — Kumaoni mag — Magadhi mai — Maithili raj — Rajasthani |
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Hindi (
pronunciation?, Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [hɪnd̪iː]), an Indo-European language
spoken all over India in varying degrees and extensively in northern and central India, is one of the two central official languages of India, the other being English.[2][3] 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. It is
also bordered to the south by the non-Indo-Aryan Kannada.
More precisely, Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani termed khariboli, that emerged as the standard dialect.
The origin of the word Hindi can be traced back to Sanskrit word Sindhu (Sanskrit: सिन्धु). Zoroastrians who were India's immediate neighbors pronounced "Sindhu" as "Hindu" in their Avestan language. Using the word "Hindu" for "Sindhu", they referred to the people who lived near or across the Sindhu River as "Hindu" and their home as "Hindustan". The Sanskrit word Sindhu in its Avestan form Hindu (for believers of Hindu faith), Hind (for Indian country) and Hindi (for Indian language) passed on to later Iranian languages like Pahlavi and Persian.[citation needed]
In modern contexts, the word Hindī comprises Hind "India", and the adjectival suffix ī. Hence Hindī translates to "Indian". In modern times, Hindī as taken to mean "Indian" is chiefly obsolete; it now specifically refers to the language bearing that name.[4]
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. Linguistic scholars refer to this area as the Hindi belt.
[citation needed] Outside these areas, Hindi is widely
spoken and understood in cities like Mumbai, Kolkata,
Bangalore,
Local variations of Hindi are counted as minority languages in several countries, including Australia, Canada, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, Suriname,
Trinidad and Tobago, UK and
Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. According to the 1991 census of India[5] (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,[6] 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.,[7] 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.
Note that because of extreme similarity between Hindi and Urdu, speakers of the two languages can usually understand one another, if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. Indeed, linguists sometimes count them as being part of the same language diasystem. However, Hindi and Urdu are socio-politically different, and people who self-describe as being speakers of Urdu would not identify themselves as native speakers of Hindi, and vice-versa.[citation needed]
According to Comrie (1998 data),[8] 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.
The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language(rājabhāṣā) of the Union (Article 343(1)).[9] 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.[10] 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: 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.
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 dilects such as
Braj, Awadhi and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century.[11] In the span of nearly a thousand years of Muslim influence, such as when Muslim rulers controlled
much of northern India during the
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.
After independence, the Government of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes:
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:
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.
Sociolinguists have traditionally classified Hindi into four major variants or styles, viz.,[12]
Hindustani is generally coined for a hybrid of High Hindi and Urdu, which is used in common speech in India.
Hindi in the broad sense (formerly referred to as "Hindustani"; now often referred to as "Hindi-Urdu") is a dialect continuum without clear boundaries. For example, both Nepali and Punjabi are sometimes considered to be Hindi (based on the high level of mutual intelligibility for Punjabi and Hindi especially), though they are more often considered to be separate languages. Hindi is often divided into Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, and these are further divided. Following is a list of principal Hindi dialects; many linguists regard only the dialects under Western and Eastern Hindi as proper Hindi dialects, and the rest as separate languages or sub-languages. The following listing is taken from Tiwari ([1966] 2004); even he notes that the classification of the dialects under various branches and their classification as a dialect of Hindi or as an independent language depends upon the perception of the linguist.
This region includes the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthani, Malwi, Pahari languages and Bihari languages are considered as dialects of Hindi by the Indian census of 1991. In 2003, Maithili (Bihari) gained the status of an independent official language.
These are usually classified as separate languages by the linguists, belonging to the Western, Northern and Eastern zones of Indo-Aryan.
Depending upon perceptions, people also include various other dialects under Hindi, such as Nimari, Baiswari, Vajjika, Angika, etc.[citation needed]
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:
Colloquially and linguistically, the distinction between the Urdu and Hindi is nearly meaningless. This is true over much of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, wherever neither learned vocabulary nor writing is used. Outside the Delhi dialect area, the term "Hindi" may be used in reference to the local dialect, which may be very 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:
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.
There are approximately 11 vowels and 35 consonants in Standard Hindī. They are shown below:
The vowels of Hindi with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प (p), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and the vowel following /p/) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and (approximate) equivalents in British English are listed below:[13]
| Alphabet | Diacritical mark with प | Pronunciation | Pronunciation with /p/ | IAST equiv. | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| अ | प | /ə/ | /pə/ | a | short or long Schwa: as the a in above or ago |
| आ | पा | /ɑː/ | /pɑː/ | ā | long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father |
| इ | पि | /ɪ/ | /pɪ/ | i | short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit |
| ई | पी | /iː/ | /piː/ | ī | long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine |
| उ | पु | /ʊ/ | /pʊ/ | u | short close back rounded vowel: as u in put |
| ऊ | पू | /uː/ | /puː/ | ū | long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school |
| ए | पे | /eː/ | /peː/ | e | long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong) |
| ऐ | पै | /ɛː/ | /pɛː/ | ai | long open-mid front unrounded vowel: as e in bed, but longer |
| ओ | पो | /οː/ | /pοː/ | o | long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong) |
| औ | पौ | /ɔː/ | /pɔː/ | au | long open-mid back rounded vowel: as au in caught |
Hindi has a large consonant system, with about 38 distinct consonant phonemes. An exact number cannot be given, since the regional varieties of Hindi differ in the details of their consonant repertoire. To what extent certain sounds that appear only in foreign words should be considered part of Standard Hindi is also a matter of debate. The traditional core of the consonant system, inherited from Sanskrit, consists of a matrix of 20 plosives, 5 nasals, and 8 sonorants and fricatives. The system is filled out by 5 sounds that originated in Persian, but are now considered Hindi sounds. The table below shows the phonology of the Hindi consonants.[14] Note that all nasals, trills, flaps, approximants and lateral approximants in Hindi are regarded as voiced consonants, and that many linguists also call the aspirated voiced plosives as breathy voice or murmur stops.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Post-alveolar/ Palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives (unaspirated) Plosives (aspirated) |
p pʰ |
b bʱ |
t̪ t̪ʰ |
d̪ d̪ʱ |
ʈ ʈʰ |
ɖ ɖʱ |
k kʰ |
g gʱ |
q |
|||||||||
| Affricates | ʧ or cɕ ʧʰ or cɕʰ |
ʤ or ɟʝ ʤʱ or ɟʝʱ |
||||||||||||||||
| Nasals | m | n | (ɳ) | (ɲ) | (ŋ) | |||||||||||||
| Fricatives | f | (v) | x | ɣ | (χ) | (ʁ) | h | ɦ | ||||||||||
| Sibilants | s | z | ʂ | ʃ | ||||||||||||||
| Flaps | ɾ | ɽ ɽʱ |
||||||||||||||||
| Trills | (r) | |||||||||||||||||
| Approximants | ʋ | j | ||||||||||||||||
| Lateral approximant |
l | |||||||||||||||||
The 25 stop consonants occur in five groups, with each group sharing the same position of articulation. These positions in their traditional order are: velar, retroflex, palatal, dental, and bilabial. In each position, there are five varieties of consonant, with four oral stops and one nasal stop. An oral stop may be voiced, aspirated, both, or neither. This four-way opposition is the hardest aspect of Hindi pronunciation for a speaker of English. The table below shows the traditional listing of the Hindi consonants (in the Devanagari script) with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/ə/), and is named in the table as such. The Roman script equivalent that is normally used to transcribe Hindi in casual transliteration is also given in the second line.
| Plosives | |||||
| Unaspirated Voiceless |
Aspirated Voiceless |
Unaspirated Voiced |
Aspirated Voiced |
Nasals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Velar | क /kə/ k; English: scald |
ख /kʰə/ kh; English called |
ग /gə/ g; English: game |
घ /gʱə/ gh; Aspirated/murmured /g/, somewhat similar to doghouse |
ङ /ŋə/ n; English: ring |
| Palatal | च /cɕə / or / tʃə/ ch; English butcher |
छ /cɕʰə / or /tʃʰə/ chh; English: chat |
ज /ɟʝə / or / dʒə/ j; English: jam |
झ /ɟʝʱə / or / dʒʱə/ jh; Aspirated/murmured /ɟʝ/, somewhat similar to hedgehog |
ञ /ɲə/ n; English: hinge |
| Retroflex | ट /ʈə/ t; like "t" but with the tongue tip curled back |
ठ /ʈʰə/ th; Aspirated /ʈ/ |
ड /ɖə/ d; like "d" but with the tongue tip curled back |
ढ /ɖʱə/ dh; Aspirated/murmured /ɖ/ |
ण /ɳə/ n; like "n" but with the tongue tip curled back |
| Apico-Dental | त /t̪ə/ t; Spanish: tomate |
थ /t̪ʰə/ th; Aspirated /t̪/ |
द /d̪ə/ d; Spanish: donde |
ध /d̪ʱə/ dh; Aspirated/murmured /d̪/ |
न /nə/ n; English: name |
| Labial | प /pə/ p; English: spin |
फ /pʰə/ ph; English pin |
ब /bə/ b; English: bone |
भ /bʱə/ bh; Aspirated/murmured /b/, somewhat similar to clubhouse |
म /mə/ m; English: mine |
| Non-Plosives/Sonorants | ||||
| Palatal | Retroflex | Dental/ Alveolar |
Velar/ Glottal |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approximant | य /jə/ y; English: you |
र /ɾə/ or /rə/ r; Scottish English: trip |
ल /lə/ l; English: love |
व /ʋə/ or /və/ v; between English "w" and "v" |
| Sibilant/ Fricative |
श /ʃə/ sh; English: ship |
ष /ʂə/ sh; Retroflex /ʃ/ |
स /sə/ s; English: same |
ह /ɦə / or / hə/ h; English: behind |
At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, three consonantal clusters are also added: क्ष /kʃə/ (in Hindi), त्र /t̪rə/ and ज्ञ /gjə/ (pronunciation given for Hindi). Other than these, sounds borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic are written with a dot (bindu or nukta) beneath the nearest approximate alphabet. They are not included in the traditional listing. Many native Hindi speakers do not pronounce these sounds (except /ɽ / and / ɽʱ/) and replace them instead with the nearest equivalents, as shown in column 4 in the table below. These are:
| Extra sounds | |||
| Symbol | IPA Pronunciation and name | Equivalent in other languages | Often replaced with: |
|---|---|---|---|
| क़ | /qə/ voiceless uvular plosive | Arabic: Qur'an | /k/ |
| ख़ | /xə/ voiceless velar fricative | German: doch | /kʰ/ |
| ग़ | /ɣə/ voiced velar fricative | Persian: Mughal | /g/ |
| ज़ | /zə/ voiced alveolar fricative | English: zoo | /ɟ / or / dʒ/ |
| य़ | /ʒ/ voiced postalveolar fricative | English: Measure | /dʒ/ |
| ड़ | /ɽə/ unaspirated retroflex flap | Similar to English butter pronounced laxly | |
| ढ़ | /ɽʱə/ aspirated retroflex flap | <none> | |
| फ़ | /fə/ voiceless labiodental fricative | English: fun | /pʰ/ |
ड़ /ɽə/ and ढ़ /ɽʱə/ are not of Persian/Arabic origin, but they are allophonic variants of simple voiced retroflex stops of Sanskrit.
Hindi has a stress accent, but it is not so important as in English. Usually in a multisyllabic Hindi word, the stress falls on the last syllable if all the syllables are equally heavy or equally light. (A light syllable is closed by a short vowel a, i, u, while a medium syllable is closed by a long vowel or diphthong ā, e, ī, o, ū, au, ai or by two consonants, and a heavy syllable is closed by both a long vowel/diphthong and two consonants.) If the word contains a mixture or heavy and light syllables, the stress falls automatically on the penultimate heaviest syllable. (Cf. McGregor, pp. xx-xxi.) Content words in Hindi normally begin on a low pitch, followed by a rise in pitch.[15][16] Strictly speaking, Hindi, like most other Indian languages, is rather a syllable timed language. The schwa /ə/ has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing (syncopated) if its syllable is unaccented. Also note that in written Hindi, many words end in short /u/ or short /i/, but in speech they are often converted to ending in long /uː/ or long /iː/, respectively.
Hindi is written in the standardized Devanagari script, which is written from left to right. The Devanagari script represents the sounds of spoken Hindi very closely, so that a person who knows the Devanagari letters can sound out a written Hindi text comprehensibly, even without knowing what the words mean or having heard them before. The entire alphabet has been discussed in the preceding section on phonology.
The standard transliteration of Hindi into the Roman alphabet is usually the IAST scheme, whereby the retrofle
