Hindi

Hindi, major language of India and most important of the many languages spoken in India (see Indian Languages). Nearly half a billion people, or 40 percent of the population of India, speak some form of Hindi as their first language. No other Indian language is spoken as a first language by more than 10 percent of the nation’s people. Hindi is a second language for many more Indians. Among the world’s languages, only Chinese and Arabic are thought to have more speakers than Hindi. Hindi is widespread outside India as well. Sizeable Indian communities speak it in the Fiji Islands, Mauritius, South Africa, and parts of the Middle East and East Africa.


India’s constitution recognizes 18 different Indian languages, but Hindi and English are considered to be the official national languages. The central government allows each state to choose its own official language, however. Within India, native speakers of Hindi are concentrated in the states of Bihār, Madhya Pradesh, Rājasthān, and Uttar Pradesh in northern and central India.

Hindi belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is a direct descendent of Sanskrit, the ancient sacred and literary language of India. It is written in the Devanagari script, an alphabet also used for writing Sanskrit. This alphabet dates back to the 7th century and is characterized by a horizontal line on the top of letters, which extends across the row.

Hindi draws much of its vocabulary from Sanskrit. Compared with Sanskrit, it has a greatly simplified structure and syntax. There are two genders, masculine and feminine, and two basic noun cases in Hindi, although the verb system remains fairly complex.

Hindi and Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, are essentially two dialects of the same language. Urdu, however, is written in the Persian-Arabic script and has adopted many words from the Persian and Arabic languages. In India, Urdu is primarily spoken by Muslims. The two languages, Hindi and Urdu, are sometimes referred to jointly as Hindustani.

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