Hindustani vocabulary

The original Hindi dialects continued to develop alongside Urdu and according to Professor Afroz Taj, "the distinction between Hindi and Urdu was chiefly a question of style. A poet could draw upon Urdu's lexical richness to create an aura of elegant sophistication, or could use the simple rustic vocabulary of dialect Hindi to evoke the folk life of the village. Somewhere in the middle lay the day to day language spoken by the great majority of people. This day to day language was often referred to by the all-encompassing term Hindustani." In Colonial India, Hindi-Urdu acquired vocabulary introduced by Christian missionaries from the Germanic and Romanic languages, e.g. pādrī (Devanagari: पादरी, Nastaleeq: پادری) from padre, meaning pastor.

When describing the state of Hindi-Urdu under the British Raj, Professor Śekhara Bandyopādhyāẏa stated that "Truly speaking, Hindi and Urdu, spoken by a great majority of people in north India, were the same language written in two scripts; Hindi was written in Devanagari script and therefore had a greater sprinkling of Sanskrit words, while Urdu was written in Persian script and thus had more Persian and Arabic words in it. At the more colloquial level, however, the two languages were mutually intelligible." After the partition of India, political forces within India tried to further Sanskritize Hindi, while political forces in Pakistan campaigned to remove Prakit/Sanskrit derived words from Urdu and supplant them with Persian and Arabic words. Despite these government efforts, the film industry, Bollywood continues to release its films in the original Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) language, easily understood and enjoyed by speakers of both registers; in addition, many of the same television channels are viewed across the border. In modern times, a third variety of Hindustani with significant English influences has also appeared, which is sometimes called Hinglish or Urdish.

Linguistic classification

Hindi (हिन्दी Hindi) is one of the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indo-European language family. The core of Hindi vocabulary is thus etymologically Indo-European. However, centuries of borrowing has led to the adoption of a wide range of words with foreign origins.

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Examples of borrowed words

Due to centuries of contact with Europeans, Turkic peoples, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, Hindi-Urdu has absorbed countless words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from other Indian languages, Chinese, Burmese, and several indigenous Austroasiatic languages of North India. After centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, particularly under the Mughal Empire, numerous Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed and fully integrated into the lexicon. Later, European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and most significantly English. Some very common borrowings are shown below.

Borrowings from neighboring languages

Other Indo-Aryan languages

Dravidian languages (द्राविड़ी دراوڑی Drāviṛī)

Austroasiatic languages

Chinese (चीनी چینی Cīnī)

Borrowings from the Persianate era

Arabic (अरबी عربی 'Arbī)

Many (though not all) Arabic loanwords in Hindi-Urdu are through Classical Persian.

Persian (फ़ारसी فارسی)

Turkic languages (तुर्की ترکی Turkī)

Almost all Turkic loans in Hindi-Urdu have been borrowed via Classical Persian.

Borrowings from the Colonial Era

Portuguese (पुर्तुगाली پرتگالی Purtugālī)

Portuguese borrowings mostly describe household items, fruits, and religious concepts dealing with Catholicism:

Household

Food

Religion

Other

French (फ़रासीसी فراسیسی Farāsīsī)

Only a handful of French borrowings are still used in Hindi-Urdu today.

English (अंग्रेज़ी انگریزی Aṅgrezī)

Most borrowed words of European origin in Hindi-Urdu were imported through English and involve civic and household concepts:

Civic life

Household

Usage Example

Days of the week

Colloquial Hindustani uses tadbhava words, (more precisely, ardhatatsama terms), with slight variations across Delhi's Khari Boli and other regional Hindi languages. In present day, Modern Standard Hindi, which is preferred by followers of Dharmic religions, uses pure and unadulterated tatsama forms (direct Sanskrit loanwords). And Standard Urdu, which is preferred by the followers of Islam and people in a Persianate culture and setting, uses 2 loanwords from Arabic (for Thursday and Friday), 2 loanwords from Persian (for Monday and Saturday), and remaining words used from colloquial Hindustani as it is. Dakhini distinctively uses a different Persian loanword for Wednesday (chār-śanba), from Rekhta, the older register of Standard Urdu, and still used today by Muslims for religious days like Akhiri Chahar Shambah.

Numbers

Zero

In Hindustani, the word sunnā is used for zero, and in Urdu, the Arabic word sifr is used. Today in formal Hindi, the Sanskrit word śūnya is used, and in Hinglish, it is zīrō (direct loanword from English).

Thousand

In Khariboli (Old Hindi), the word sahas was used to denote thousand, which was the shortened tadbhava form of the Sanskrit word sahasra. Since the Delhi Sultanate, the Persian loanword hazār became commonly used in Hindustani for denoting thousand, colloquially pronounced as hajār in Hindi.

Ordinals

For ordinal numbers, Hindustani uses tadbhava words (native vocabulary), Formal Hindi prefers tatsama (Sanskrit loanwords), and Formal Urdu prefers Perso-Arabic loanwords.