Hindi

History

Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi

Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi is a direct descendant of an early form of Vedic Sanskrit (not to be confused with the later variety of Classical Sanskrit). This early variety transitioned in medieval India into Shauraseni Prakrit and Śauraseni Apabhraṃśa (from Sanskrit apabhraṃśa "corrupt"), which emerged in the 7th century CE.

The sound changes that characterised the transition from Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi are:

• Compensatory lengthening of vowels preceding geminate consonants, sometimes with spontaneous nasalisation: Skt. hasta "hand" > Pkt. hattha > hāth
• Loss of all word-final vowels: rātri "night" > rattī > rāt
• Formation of nasalised long vowels from nasal consonants (-VNC- > -V̄̃C-): bandha "bond" > bā̃dh
• Loss of unaccented or unstressed short vowels (reflected in schwa deletion): susthira "firm" > sutthira > suthrā
• Collapsing of adjacent vowels (including separated by a hiatus: apara "other" > avara > aur
• Final -m to -ṽ: grāma "village" > gāma > gāṽ
• Intervocalic -ḍ- to -ṛ- or -l-: taḍāga "pond" > talāv, naḍa "reed" > nal.
• v > b: vivāha "marriage" > byāh

Hindustani

During the period of Delhi Sultanate in medieval India, which covered most of today's north India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh and which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Sanskrit and Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani. Hindi achieved prominence in India after it became the official language of the imperial court during the reign of Shah Jahan. It is recorded that Emperor Aurangzeb spoke in Hindvi. The Hindustani vernacular became an expression of Indian national unity during the Indian Independence movement, and continues to be spoken as the common language of the people of the northern Indian subcontinent, which is reflected in the Hindustani vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.

Standard Hindi is based on the Khariboli dialect, spoken in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab (Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur); the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding region gradually replaced earlier prestige languages such as Awadhi and Braj. Standard Hindi was developed by supplanting foreign loanwords from the Hindustani language and replacing them with Sanskrit words, though Standard Hindi does continue to possess several Persian loanwords. Modern Hindi became a literary language in the 19th century. Earliest examples could be found as Prēm Sāgar by Lallu Lal, Batiyāl Pachīsī of Sadal Misra, and Rānī Kētakī Kī Kahānī of Insha Allah Khan which were published in Devanagari script during the early 19th century.

John Gilchrist was principally known for his study of the Hindustani language, which was adopted as the lingua franca of northern India (including what is now present-day Pakistan) by Britons and Indians alike. He compiled and authored An English-Hindustani Dictionary, A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language, The Oriental Linguist, and many more. His lexicon of Hindustani was published in the Perso-Arabic script, Nāgarī script, and in Roman transliteration. In the late 19th century, a movement to further develop Hindi as a standardised form of Hindustani separate from Urdu took form. In 1881, Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi. However, in 2014, Urdu was accorded second official language status in the state.

Independent India

On 14 September 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted Hindi written in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Republic of India replacing the previous usage of Hindustani in the Perso-Arabic script in the British Indian Empire. To this end, several stalwarts rallied and lobbied pan-India in favour of Hindi, most notably Beohar Rajendra Simha along with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Seth Govind Das who even debated in Parliament on this issue. As such, on the 50th birthday of Beohar Rajendra Simha on 14 September 1949, the efforts came to fruition following the adoption of Hindi as the official language. Now, it is celebrated as Hindi Day.

Official status

India

Part XVII of the Indian Constitution deals with the official language of the Indian Union. Under Article 343, the official languages of the Union have been prescribed, which includes Hindi in Devanagari script and English:

(1) The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
(2) Notwithstanding anything in clause (1), for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement: Provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise the use of the Hindi language in addition to the English language and of the Devanagari form of numerals in addition to the international form of Indian numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union.

It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the Union Government by 1965 (per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351), with state governments being free to function in the language of their own choice. However, widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in South India (such as those in Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English indefinitely for all official purposes, although the constitutional directive for the Union Government to encourage the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced its policies.

Article 344 (2b) stipulates that the official language commission shall be constituted every ten years to recommend steps for the progressive use of Hindi language and impose restrictions on the use of the English language by the union government. In practice, the official language commissions are constantly endeavouring to promote Hindi but not imposing restrictions on English in official use by the union government.

At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following Indian states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Hindi is an official language of Gujarat, along with Gujarati. It acts as an additional official language of West Bengal in blocks and sub-divisions with more than 10% of the population speaking Hindi. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of official language in the following Union Territories: Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

Although there is no specification of a national language in the constitution, it is a widely held belief that Hindi is the national language of India. This is often a source of friction and contentious debate. In 2010, the Gujarat High Court clarified that Hindi is not the national language of India because the constitution does not mention it as such.

Fiji

Hindi is an official language in Fiji as per the 1997, 2012 and 2013 constitution's of Fiji. Two dialects of Hindi are spoken in Fiji, Standard Hindi and Fiji Hindi. The latter dialect traces its origins to Awadhi, an eastern Hindi dialect. However, Standard Hindi is the official variant of Hindi recognised by the constitution and used in all official purposes, education, media and businesses due to Fiji Hindi's lack of standardisation. Hindi is spoken by 380,000 people in Fiji.

Nepal

Hindi is spoken as a first language by about 77,569 people in Nepal according to the 2011 Nepal census, and further by 1,225,950 people as a second language. A Hindi proponent, Indian-born Paramananda Jha, was elected vice-president of Nepal. He took his oath of office in Hindi in July 2008. This created protests in the streets for 5 days; students burnt his effigies, and there was a general strike in 22 districts. Nepal Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that his oath in Hindi was invalid and he was kept "inactive" as vice-president. An "angry" Jha said, "I cannot be compelled to take the oath now in Nepali. I might rather take it in English."

South Africa

Hindi is a protected language in South Africa. According to the Constitution of South Africa, the Pan South African Language Board must promote and ensure respect for Hindi along with other languages. According to a doctoral dissertation by Rajend Mesthrie in 1985, although Hindi and other Indian languages have existed in South Africa for the last 125 years, there are no academic studies of any of them – of their use in South Africa, their evolution and current decline.

United Arab Emirates

Hindi was adopted as the third official court language in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. As a result of this status, the Indian workforce in UAE can file their complaints to the labour courts in the country in their own mother-tongue.

Geographical distribution

Hindi is the lingua franca of northern India (which contains the Hindi Belt), as well as an official language of the Government of India, along with English.

In Northeast India a pidgin known as Haflong Hindi has developed as a lingua franca for the people living in Haflong, Assam who speak other languages natively. In Arunachal Pradesh, Hindi emerged as a lingua franca among locals who speak over 50 dialects natively.

Hindi is quite easy to understand for many Pakistanis, who speak Urdu, which, like Hindi, is a standard register of the Hindustani language; additionally, Indian media are widely viewed in Pakistan.

A sizeable population in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, can also speak and understand Hindi-Urdu due to the popularity and influence of Bollywood films, songs and actors in the region.

Hindi is also spoken by a large population of Madheshis (people having roots in north-India but having migrated to Nepal over hundreds of years) of Nepal. Apart from this, Hindi is spoken by the large Indian diaspora which hails from, or has its origin from the "Hindi Belt" of India. A substantially large North Indian diaspora lives in countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, South Africa, Fiji and Mauritius, where it is natively spoken at home and among their own Hindustani-speaking communities.

Outside India, Hindi speakers are 8 million in Nepal; 863,077 in the United States of America; 450,170 in Mauritius; 380,000 in Fiji; 250,292 in South Africa; 150,000 in Suriname; 100,000 in Uganda; 45,800 in the United Kingdom; 20,000 in New Zealand; 20,000 in Germany; 26,000 in Trinidad and Tobago; 3,000 in Singapore.

Comparison with Standard Urdu

Linguistically, Hindi and Urdu are two registers of the same language and are mutually intelligible. Both Hindi and Urdu share a core vocabulary of native Prakrit and Sanskrit-derived words. However, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and contains more direct tatsama Sanskrit-derived words than Urdu, whereas Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script and uses more Arabic and Persian loanwords compared to Hindi. Because of this, as well as the fact that the two registers share an identical grammar, a consensus of linguists consider them to be two standardised forms of the same language, Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu. Hindi is the most commonly used scheduled language in India and is one of the two official languages of the union, the other being English. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan and is one of 22 scheduled languages of India, also having official status in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

Script

Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, an abugida. Devanagari consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants and is written from left to right. Unlike Sanskrit, Devanagari is not entirely phonetic for Hindi, especially failing to mark schwa deletion in spoken Standard Hindi.

Romanisation

The Government of India uses Hunterian transliteration as its official system of writing Hindi in the Latin script. Various other systems also exist, such as IAST, ITRANS and ISO 15919.

Romanised Hindi, also called Hinglish, is the dominant form of Hindi online. In an analysis of YouTube comments, Palakodety et al., identified that 52% of comments were in Romanised Hindi, 46% in English, and 1% in Devanagari Hindi.

Phonology

Vocabulary

Traditionally, Hindi words are divided into five principal categories according to their etymology:

• Tatsam (तत्सम transl. "same as that") words: These are words which are spelled the same in Hindi as in Sanskrit (except for the absence of final case inflections). They include words inherited from Sanskrit via Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g. Hindi नाम nām / Sanskrit नाम nāma, "name", as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. प्रार्थना prārthanā, "prayer"). Pronunciation, however, conforms to Hindi norms and may differ from that of classical Sanskrit. Amongst nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit non-inflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
• Ardhatatsam (अर्धतत्सम transl. "semi-tatsama") words: Such words are typically earlier loanwords from Sanskrit which have undergone sound changes subsequent to being borrowed. (e.g. Hindi सूरज sūraj from Sanskrit सूर्य sūrya)
• Tadbhav (तद्भव transl. "born of that") words: These are native Hindi words derived from Sanskrit after undergoing phonological rules (e.g. Sanskrit कर्म karma, "deed" becomes Shauraseni Prakrit कम्म kamma, and eventually Hindi काम kām, "work") and are spelled differently from Sanskrit.
• Dēshaj (देशज transl. "of the country") words: These are words that were not borrowings from non-indigenous languages but do not derive from attested Indo-Aryan words either. Belonging to this category are onomatopoetic words or ones borrowed from local non-Indo-Aryan languages.
• Vidēshī (विदेशी transl. "foreign") words: These include all loanwords from non-indigenous languages. The most frequent source languages in this category are Persian, Arabic, Chagatai, English, French and Portuguese. Examples are क़िला qila "fort" ultimately from Arabic (through Persian), कमेटी kamēṭī from English committee.

Prakrit

Hindi has naturally inherited a large portion of its vocabulary from Shauraseni Prakrit, in the form of tadbhava words. This process usually involves compensatory lengthening of vowels preceding consonant clusters in Prakrit, e.g. Sanskrit tīkṣṇa > Prakrit tikkha > Hindi tīkhā.

Sanskrit

Much of Modern Standard Hindi's vocabulary is borrowed from Sanskrit as tatsam borrowings, especially in technical and academic fields. The formal Hindi standard, from which much of the Persian, Arabic and English (i.e., basically vidēshī words) vocabulary has been effectively purged out and eventually replaced by neologisms compounding tatsam words, is called Śuddh Hindi (pure Hindi), and is viewed as a more prestigious dialect over other more colloquial forms of Hindi.

Excessive use of tatsam words sometimes creates problems for native speakers (especially in the northwestern India). They may have Sanskrit consonant clusters which do not exist in Hindustani, causing difficulties in pronunciation.

As a part of the process of Sanskritisation, new words are coined using Sanskrit components to be used as replacements for the foreign vocabulary. Usually these neologisms are calques of English words already adopted into spoken and colloquial Hindi. Some terms such as dūrbhāṣ "telephone", literally "far-speech" and dūrdarśan "television", literally "far-sight" have even gained some currency in formal Hindi in the place of the English borrowings (ṭêli)fōn and ṭīvī.

Persian and Arabic

Hindi also features significant Persian influence, standardised from spoken Hindustani. Early borrowings, beginning in the mid-12th century, were specific to Islam (e.g. Muḥammad, Islām) and so Persian was simply an intermediary for Arabic. Later, under the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire, Persian became the primary administrative language in the Hindi heartland. Persian borrowings reached a heyday in the 17th century, pervading all aspects of life. Even grammatical constructs, namely the izāfat, were assimilated into Hindi.

The status of Persian language then and thus its influence, is also visible in Hindi proverbs:

The emergence of Modern Standard Hindi in the 19th century went along with the Sanskritisation of its vocabulary, leading to a marginalisation (and in some cases, even the purgation) of Turko-Perso-Arabic vocabulary in Hindi, which continued after Partition when the Indian government co-opted the policy of Sanskritisation. However, many Turko-Perso-Arabic words (e.g. bas "enough", khud "self") have remained entrenched even in Modern Standard Hindi, and an even larger amount of the said words are still used in Urdu poetry written in the Devanagari script. Many words borrowed from Persian in turn were loanwords from Arabic (e.g. muśkil "difficult", havā "air", x(a)yāl "thought", kitāb "book").

English

Hindi also makes extensive use of loan translation (calqueing) and occasionally phono-semantic matching of English.

Portuguese

Many Hindustani words were derived from Portuguese due to interaction with colonists and missionaries:

Media

Literature

Hindi literature is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional – Kabir, Raskhan); Śṛṇgār (beauty – Keshav, Bihari); Vīgāthā (epic); and Ādhunik (modern).

Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems. It was primarily written in other varieties of Hindi, particularly Avadhi and Braj Bhasha, but to a degree also in Kaurai/Dehlavi, the basis for Standard Hindi. During the British Raj, Hindustani became the prestige dialect.

Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri in 1888, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in Hindi prose literature was Munshi Premchand, who is considered the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement. Literary, or Sāhityik, Hindi was popularised by the writings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Hindustani popular with educated people.

The Dvivedī Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing Standard Hindi in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love.

In the 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as Chāyāvād (shadow-ism) and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as Chāyāvādī. Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chāyāvādī poets.

Uttar Ādhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chāyāvādī movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.

Internet

Hindi literature, music, and film have all been disseminated via the internet. In 2015, Google reported a 94% increase in Hindi-content consumption year-on-year, adding that 21% of users in India prefer content in Hindi. Many Hindi newspapers also offer digital editions.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):

Hindi in Devanagari Script

अनुच्छेद १(एक): सभी मनुष्य जन्म से स्वतन्त्र तथा मर्यादा और अधिकारों में समान होते हैं। वे तर्क और विवेक से सम्पन्न हैं तथा उन्हें भ्रातृत्व की भावना से परस्पर के प्रति कार्य करना चाहिए।

Transliteration (ISO)

Anucchēd 1 (ēk): Sabhī manuṣya janma sē svatantra tathā maryādā aur adhikārō̃ mē̃ samān hōtē haĩ. Vē tark aur vivēk sē sampanna haĩ tathā unhē̃ bhrātr̥tva kī bhāvanā sē paraspar kē pratī kārya karnā cāhiē.

Transcription (IPA)

Gloss (word-to-word)

Article 1 (one) – All humans birth from independent and dignity and rights in equal are. They logic and conscience from endowed are and they fraternity in the spirit of each other towards work should.

Translation (grammatical)

Article 1 – All humans are born independent and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with logic and conscience and they should work towards each other in the spirit of fraternity.