Hindi

Modern Standard Hindi, often called Hindi, belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and uses the Devanagari script. It functions as an official language for India’s central government and acts as a common tongue across much of northern India.

Hindi holds official status in ten states—Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand—as well as six union territories: Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir. It is also an additional official language in West Bengal. Additionally, Hindi is one of India’s 22 scheduled languages.

Aside from differences in script and formal vocabulary, Modern Standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu. Their shared foundation is sometimes called Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani, and Hindi is viewed as a Sanskritised register of Hindustani. In other parts of India, Hindi is spoken in simpler or pidginised forms, such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi. Outside India, several languages are officially called “Hindi” but are not the same as Standard Hindi; they descend from related languages like Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Examples include Bhojpuri-Hindustani in South Africa and Mauritius, Fiji Hindi in Fiji, and Caribbean Hindustani in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.

Globally, Hindi ranks as the fourth most common first language, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English. When combined with mutually intelligible Urdu, it becomes the third most spoken language worldwide, after Mandarin and English. According to Ethnologue (2025), Hindi is the third most spoken language overall when counting both first and second language speakers. In India, the 2011 census shows Hindi as the fastest-growing language, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei, Gujarati, and Bengali.

**Terminology** The word *Hindī* originally described inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It came from Classical Persian *Hindī* (Iranian Persian pronunciation: *Hendi*), meaning “of or belonging to Hind (India).” Another historical name, *Hindavī* (from Persian *هندوی* ‘of or belonging to the Indian people’), was used by poets like Amir Khusrau. The terms *Hindi* and *Hindu* trace back to Old Persian, which derived them from the Sanskrit *Sindhu*, referring to the Indus River. Greek cognates include *Indus* (the river) and *India* (the land). The phrase “Modern Standard Hindi” specifically denotes the modern literary form, as opposed to colloquial or regional varieties also called Hindi in a broader sense.

**History**

**Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi** Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi directly descends from an early form of Vedic Sanskrit (distinct from later Classical Sanskrit). This early form evolved into Shauraseni Prakrit and then Śauraseni Apabhraṃśa (from Sanskrit *apabhraṃśa* “corrupt”), which appeared around the 7th century CE. Key sound changes during the shift from Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi include: - Compensatory lengthening of vowels before double consonants, sometimes with spontaneous nasalisation (e.g., Skt. *hasta* “hand” > Pkt. *hattha* > *hāth*). - Loss of all word-final vowels (e.g., *rātri* “night” > *rattī* > *rāt*). - Formation of nasalised long vowels from nasal consonants (e.g., *bandha* “bond” > *bā̃dh*). - Loss of unaccented short vowels (schwa deletion) (e.g., *susthira* “firm” > *sutthira* > *suthrā*). - Collapsing of adjacent vowels (e.g., *apara* “other” > *avara* > *aur*). - Final *-m* to *-ṽ* (e.g., *grāma* “village” > *gāma* > *gāṽ*). - Intervocalic *-ḍ-* to *-ṛ-* or *-l-* (e.g., *taḍāga* “pond” > *talāv*, *naḍa* “reed” > *nal*). - *v* to *b* (e.g., *vivāha* “marriage” > *byāh*).

**Hindustani** During the Delhi Sultanate period in medieval India—covering much of today’s north India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal, and Bangladesh—contact between Hindu and Muslim cultures enriched the Sanskrit and Prakrit base of Old Hindi with Persian loanwords, giving rise to Hindustani. Hindi gained prominence when it became the official language of the imperial court under Shah Jahan. Emperor Aurangzeb is recorded as having spoken Hindvi. During the Indian independence movement, the Hindustani vernacular became a symbol of national unity, and it remains the common language of northern India, reflected in the vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.

Standard Hindi is based on the Khariboli dialect spoken in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab (Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur). This vernacular of Delhi and its surroundings gradually replaced earlier prestige languages like Awadhi and Braj. Standard Hindi was developed by replacing foreign loanwords in Hindustani with Sanskrit words, though it still retains several Persian loanwords. Modern Hindi became a literary language in the 19th century, with early examples including *Prēm Sāgar* by Lallu Lal, *Batiyāl Pachīsī* by Sadal Misra, and *Rānī Kētakī Kī Kahānī* by Insha Allah Khan, all published in Devanagari script in the early 1800s. John Gilchrist was known for his study of Hindustani, which became the lingua franca of northern India (including present-day Pakistan) for both Britons and Indians. He compiled *An English-Hindustani Dictionary*, *A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language*, and *The Oriental Linguist*.