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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 Muslim influence in northern India, there are also a number of Persian and
Turkish loanwords.
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. 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 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 words. Rehkta is a form of Urdu used chiefly for
poetry.
After Chinese, Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world. 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. Khadiboli, the dialect spoken in Western
Uttar Pradesh, east of Delhi
is the basis for the language used by the government and taught in schools. 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 Mumbai and
Hyderabad. Is not easy to delimit the borders of the Hindi speaking region. A number of spoken languages are very
closely related to Hindi, and may be considered dialects, including Bambaiya Hindi, Bhaya, Braj, Braj Bhasha, Bundeli,
Chamari, Ghera, Gowli, Haryanvi, Kanauji, and others. Some of the East-Central Zone languages, including Awadhi (Avadhi),
Bagheli, Chhattisgarhi and Dhanwar, and Rajasthani languages, including Marwari, are also widely considered to be
dialects of Hindi. There has been considerable controversy on the status of Punjabi
and the Bihari languages, including Maithili, Bhojpuri, and Magadhi.
Hindi's popularity has been helped by Bollywood, the Hindi film industry. These movies have an
international appeal and now they have broken into the Western markets as well.
The beginnings of Hindi literature go back to the Prakrits that are a part of the classical
Sanskrit plays. Tulasidas's Ramacharitamanas attained wide popularity. Modern masters
include Sumitra Nandan Pant, Maithili Sharan Gupta, Mahadevi Varma, Ajneya. |
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