Hindi << HIHN dee >> language is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. It is one of the official languages of India. More than two-fifths of India’s people speak one or more of the dialects (language variations) of Hindi. Hindi is most widely spoken in the northern and central parts of India. There are also large Hindi-speaking communities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and numerous other countries.
Hindi is closely related to the Urdu language, which is primarily spoken in Pakistan and in parts of northern India. In the spoken form, the two languages are essentially the same. But in the written form, Hindi and Urdu use different alphabets and different methods of writing. Hindi is written from left to right using the Devanagari alphabet. Urdu is written from right to left using a Persian-Arabic alphabet. Both Hindi and Urdu belong to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. Scholars sometimes speak of the two languages collectively as Hindi-Urdu. The common spoken form of Hindi-Urdu is sometimes called Hindustani.
Many common English words have Hindi origins. Such words include bandana, jungle, pundit, and veranda.
Alphabet and grammar.
The Devanagari alphabet has roots in Sanskrit, the oldest formal written language of India. The basic alphabet consists of 44 letters. It includes 33 consonants and 11 vowels. The letters are formed by markings that hang down from a horizontal line. The Devanagari alphabet is a completely phonetic alphabet—that is, it is based on spoken sounds. Each letter in the alphabet represents one distinct sound.
Alphabetical order in Hindi is based on phonetic principles. The first letters in the alphabet are the vowels. The consonant groups follow. The first five consonant groups consist of five letters, with each letter representing a variation of a basic sound. The alphabetical placement of each consonant group is based on the group’s phonetic sounds and the parts of the mouth used to create the sounds. Consonant groups that are pronounced using the back and top of the mouth are placed before groups that are pronounced using the front of the mouth.
Hindi sentences typically begin with the subject, followed by the object and then the verb. All nouns have either masculine or feminine gender. Most adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case with the words they modify.
Hindi literature.
The Hindi language has a rich literary tradition. From the 1400’s to the early 1600’s, such poets as Kabir, Mira Bai, and Surdas composed great works in Hindi. The poet Tulsidas (also spelled Tulsi Das) wrote the Ramcharitmanas, the Hindi version of the epic poem the Ramayana, which was originally composed in an early form of Sanskrit. Hindi prose became prominent in the early 1900’s, with the works of such authors as Premchand and Phanisvarantha Renu.
History.
The development of the Hindi language can ultimately be traced to an early form of the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit. Sanskrit, in its earliest dialect form, dates back to at least 2000 B.C. Over a period of several hundred years, a number of popular languages developed from early Sanskrit. These languages, in turn, became the basis for such modern languages as Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu. Hindi and Urdu developed from a dialect called Khari Boli, which originated in and around the city of Delhi.
In the 1200’s, Hindi-Urdu emerged as a lingua franca—that is, a common language used in trade or communication between speakers of different native languages. During the period when Hindi-Urdu developed, northern India came under the rule of Muslim conquerors from Central Asia. As a result, many words of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic origin became part of the language’s vocabulary.
Some Hindi speakers have argued that users of the language should place greater emphasis on its origins in Sanskrit. Many such people have called for the removal of foreign words—such as words borrowed from Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and English—from the Hindi vocabulary.
When India became an independent nation in 1947, the government declared Hindi its primary official language. However, attempts to promote the use of Hindi throughout the country have not always been successful. The people of India belong to a variety of ethnic groups and speak hundreds of different languages and dialects. As a result, many people have resisted efforts to make Hindi widely spoken and understood in their regions. However, Hindi-Urdu is the main language used in Indian films and in much Indian popular music.
See also India (Languages) ; Urdu language .
