Hindustani grammar


, the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan, has two standardised registers: Hindi and Urdu. Grammatical differences between the two standards are minor but each uses its own script: Hindi uses Devanagari while Urdu uses an extended form of the Perso-Arabic script, typically in the Nastaʿlīq style.
On this grammar page, Hindustani is written in the transcription outlined in. Being "primarily a system of transliteration from the Indian scripts, based in turn upon Sanskrit", these are its salient features: subscript dots for retroflex consonants; macrons for etymologically, contrastively long vowels; h for aspirated plosives; and tildes for nasalised vowels.

Phonology

The sounds presented in parentheses in the tables below signify they are only found in loanwords from either Persian or Sanskrit. More information about phonology of Hindustani can be read on Hindustani phonology and IPA/Hindi and Urdu.

Vowels

Hindustani natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system. The vowels , , are always short in length, while the vowels , , , , , , are always considered long, in addition to an eleventh vowel /æː/ which is found in English loanwords.

Vowel and

occurs as a conditional allophone of in proximity to, if and only if the is surrounded on both sides by two schwas. and is realised as separate vowel. For example, in , the is surrounded on both sides by schwa, hence both the schwas will become fronted to short, giving the pronunciation. Syncopation of phonemic middle schwa can further occur to give.
Similarly, occurs as a conditional allophone of and in proximity to, specifically when they occur in the sequence, pronounced. For example, the word is pronounced.

Consonants

Hindustani has a core set of 28 consonants inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan. Supplementing these are two consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts, and seven consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status and cultural register.

Allophony of and

and are allophones in Hindustani. These are distinct phonemes in English, but both are allophones of the phoneme in Hindustani, including loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin. More specifically, they are conditional allophones, i.e. rules apply on whether is pronounced as or depending on context. Native Hindi speakers pronounce as in and in , treating them as a single phoneme and without being aware of the allophonic distinctions, though these are apparent to native English speakers. The rule is that the consonant is pronounced as semivowel in onglide position, i.e. between an onset consonant and a following vowel.
Consonants and vowels are outlined in the table below. Hovering the mouse cursor over them will reveal the appropriate IPA information, while in the rest of the article hovering the mouse cursor over forms will reveal the appropriate English translation.

Morphology

Nouns

Hindustani distinguishes two genders, two noun types, two numbers, and three cases. Nouns may be further divided into two classes based on declension, called type-I, type-II, and type-III. The basic difference between the two categories is that the former two have characteristic terminations in the nominative singular while the latter does not.
The table below displays the suffix paradigms. A hyphen symbol denotes change from the original termination to another, whereas a plus sign denotes an ending which should be added. -Ø denotes that no suffix is added to the noun stem. The next table of noun declensions shows the above noun case paradigms in action.
Notes:
  1. The semi-consonant -y- is added after the noun stem before adding the declension suffix in the plural declension when the noun stem ends in a vowel.
  2. A small number of marked masculine nouns like kuā̃ display nasalization of all terminations.
  3. Some masculine nouns ending in -ā do not change in the nominative plural and fall in the unmarked category. i.e. pāpā "father", cācā "uncle", rājā "king".
  4. Unmarked nouns ending in -ū and -ī generally shorten this to -u and -i before the oblique plural terminations, with the latter also inserting the semivowel y.
  5. Many feminine Sanskrit loanwords such as bhāṣā and mātā end in -ā, therefore the ending -ā is not always a reliable indicator of noun gender.
  6. In Urdu, many Arabic words may retain their original dual and plural markings. i.e. vālid "father" → vālidain "parents".
  7. The -iyā ending is also not always a reliable indicator of gender or noun type.
Some words such as pahiyā and Persian takiyā are masculine type-I: ', takiye.
Feminine loanwords such as Arabic duniyā and Sanskrit kriyā use feminine type-II endings: duniyāẽ, kriyāẽ.
  1. Perso-Arabic loans ending in final unpronounced -h are handled as masculine marked nouns. Hence ' → '. The former is the Urdu spelling, the latter the Hindi. The pronunciation is ' in both cases.

    Adjectives

s may be divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinables are marked, through termination, for the gender, number, case of the nouns they qualify. The set of declinable adjective terminations is similar but greatly simplified in comparison to that of noun terminations. Indeclinable adjectives are completely invariable, and can end in either consonants or vowels. A number of declinables display nasalisation of all terminations. Nominative masculine singular form is the citation form.
All adjectives can be used either attributively, predicatively, or substantively. Substantively they are declined as nouns rather than adjectives. The semblative postposition sā is used with adjectives for modifying or lightening their meaning; giving them an "-ish", "-esque", "like", or "quite" sense. e.g. nīlā "blue" → nīlā sā "bluish". Its emphasis is rather ambiguous, sometimes enhancing, sometimes toning down, the sense of the adjective.
  • Examples of declinable adjectives: baṛā "big", choṭā "small", acchā "good", burā "bad", kālā "black", ṭhanḍā "cold"..
  • Examples of declinable adjectives: dāyā̃ "right ", bāyā̃ "left ".
  • Examples of indeclinable adjectives: xarāb "bad", sāf "clean", bhārī "heavy", murdā "dead", sundar "beautiful", pāgal "crazy/mad", lāl "red".

    Comparatives and superlatives

s are made by using the instrumental postposition se the noun takes the oblique case and the combination of "noun + postposition" gets the instrumental case, and words like aur, zyādā and kam are added for relative comparisons. The word for "more" is optional, while "less" is required, so that in the absence of either, "more" will be inferred.
Hindustani

In the absence of an object of comparison the word for "more" is now no longer optional:
--
--

Superlatives are made through comparisons with sab with the instrumental postposition se as the suffix. Comparisons using "least" are rare; it is more common to use an antonym.

In Sanskritised and Persianised registers of Hindustani, comparative and superlative adjectival forms using suffixes derived from those languages can be found.

Numerals

The numeral systems of several of the Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindustani and Nepali, are typical decimal systems, but contracted to the extent that nearly every number 1–99 is irregular. The first four, and sixth, ordinal numbers are also irregular. The suffix -vā̃ marks ordinals five and seven onwards. The ordinals decline in the same way as the declinable adjectives. The suffix -gunā marks the multipliers which for the first three multipliers changes the numeral root. The collective forms of numerals take the same form as the oblique plural case for masculine nouns. They are formed by adding the suffix -õ''. There are two types of adverbials. The first type is formed using the suffix -bārā but only for the numerals 2, 3, and 4. The second type of adverbial is constructed periphrastically using the quantifier bār meaning "times". The adverbial "dobārā" could be translated as "again" or "for a second time", similarly "tibārā" and "caubārā" mean "for a third time" and "for a fourth time" respectively. However, the periphrasatic adverbial constructions "do bār", "tīn bār" etc. translate as "two times", "three times" etc. respectively.
''H = Hindi; U = Urdu; B = Both but comes from Persian''

Postpositions

The aforementioned inflectional case system only goes so far on its own, and rather serves as that upon which is built a system of agglutinative suffixes or particles known as postpositions, which parallel English's prepositions. It is their use with a noun or verb that necessitates the noun or verb taking the oblique case, and it is with them that the locus of grammatical function or "case-marking" then lies. There are eight such "one-word" primary case-marking postpositions.