Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi, commonly referred to as Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, and is the lingua franca for most of the northern half of India.
Hindi is an official language in ten states, and six union territories and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, Modern Standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu. The common base of the two languages is sometimes referred to as Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani, and Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of Hindustani. Hindi is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India. Outside India, several other languages are recognised officially as "Hindi" but do not refer to the Standard Hindi language described here and instead descend from other nearby languages, such as Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Examples of this are Bhojpuri-Hindustani, which is spoken in South Africa and Mauritius; Fiji Hindi, spoken in Fiji; and Caribbean Hindustani, spoken in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.
Hindi is the fourth-most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English. When counted together with the mutually intelligible Urdu, it is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. According to reports of Ethnologue, Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when including first and second language speakers.
Hindi is the fastest-growing language of India, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei, Gujarati and Bengali, according to the 2011 census of India.
Terminology
The term Hindī was originally used to refer to inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It was borrowed from Classical Persian هندی Hindī, meaning .Another name Hindavī was often used in the past, for example, by Amir Khusrau in his poetry.
The terms Hindi and Hindu trace back to Old Persian, which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu, referring to the Indus River. The Greek cognates of the same terms are Indus and India.
The term Modern Standard Hindi is commonly used to specifically refer to the modern literary Hindi language, as opposed to colloquial and regional varieties that are also referred to as Hindi in a wider sense.
History
Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi
Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi is a direct descendant of an early form of Vedic Sanskrit. This early variety transitioned in medieval India into Shauraseni Prakrit and Śauraseni Apabhraṃśa, 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 : bandha "bond" > bā̃dh
- Loss of unaccented or unstressed short vowels : 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
Standard Hindi is based on the Khariboli dialect, spoken in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab ; 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 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: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.
Notwithstanding anything in clause, 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, 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 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 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.