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Hindi (हिन्दी ''hind''), an Indo-European Language spoken mainly in North , Central , and West India , is the Official Language of the Indian Union . It is part of a Dialect Continuum of the Indo-Aryan family, bounded on the northwest and west by Panjabi Language , Sindh , and Gujarātī ; on the south by Marathi Language ; on the southeast by Or ; on the east by Bengālī ; and on the north by Nepali Language . Seeing the popularity of Hindi, BBC World Service started News in Hindi in 1940. Hindi also refers to a standardized Register of Hindustani that was made one of the official languages of India. The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Hindi. Hindi is often contrasted with Urdu , another standardized form of Hindustani that is the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are that Standard Hindi is written in Devanāgarī and has supplemented some of its Persian and Arabic vocabulary with words from Sanskrit , while Urdu is written in Nastaliq Script , a variant of the Persio-Arabic Script , and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic vocabulary. The term "Urdu" also includes dialects of Hindustani other than the standardized languages. Other than these, linguists consider Hindi and Urdu to be the same language. Classification Hindi is classified as a language belonging to the Indo-European Family of languages. It comes under the Indo Iranian Branch , in the Indo-Aryan Sub-branch . Ethnicity Area script (a prayer to a Hindu deity)]]Hindi is the predominant language in the states and territories of Himachal Pradesh , Delhi , Haryana , Chandigarh , Uttar Pradesh , Madhya Pradesh , Bihar , Uttaranchal , Jharkhand , and Chattisgarh . It is spoken and understood in Gujarat , Punjab , Rajasthan , Maharashtra and Kashmir , states that otherwise have their own native languages. It is also widely spoken in the cities of Lucknow , Mumbai , Delhi , Chandigarh , Ahmedabad , Kolkata , Bangalore and Hyderabad , all of which are cosmopolitan cities harboring large communities of people from various parts of India. Local variations of Hindi are counted as minority languages in several countries, including Fiji , Mauritius , Guyana , Suriname , and Trinidad And Tobago . Number of speakers Hindi is one the most widely spoken languages in the world, due to the large population of India. According to some estimates, about 500 million people in India and abroad are native speakers of Hindi and the total number of people who understand the language may be as high as 800 million. According to the 1991 census of India (which encompasses all the dialects of Hindi, including those that might be considered separate languages by some linguists—e.g., Bhojpuri), Hindi is spoken by about 337 million people in India as the mother tongue, which makes up about 40 % of India's 1991 population. According to ethnologue , about 180 million people in India regard Standard Hindi as their mother tongue. Another 300 million use it as second language. Outside India, Hindi speakers number 8 million in , 147,000 in Uganda , 30,000 in Germany , 20,000 in New Zealand and 5,000 in Singapore , while the UK and UAE also have large populations of Hindi speakers. Hence, according to ''ethnologue'' (1999 data), Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world, while according to ''Comerie'' (1998 data), Hindi-Urdu is the second most spoken language in the world (330 million native speakers). Because of Hindi's extreme similarity to Urdu, Urdu and Hindi speakers can usually understand one another, if both sides do not use specialized technical vocabulary (e.g., those pertaining to religion, politics, hi-fi poetry, etc.). But it would be questionable to count Urdu speakers as native speakers of Hindi, because Hindi (spoken by Indians) and Urdu (spoken by Pakistanis) are socio-politically different (although linguists ''do'' this). Official and Social status Hindi, in , Bihar , Jharkhand , Uttaranchal , Madhya Pradesh , Rajasthan , Chattisgarh , Himachal Pradesh , Haryana and the National Capital Territory of Delhi . Note again that English is the ''co-official'' (associate official) language of the Indian Union, and that each of the several states mentioned above may also have another ''co-official language'' (usually in Hindi-speaking states, it is Urdu ). Similarly Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language of many other states of the Indian Union. Many Indians claim taht Hindi is the national language of India, though this is hotly contested by some Indians of non-Hindi-speaking states. This official status is however not reflected in its social importance. As with other language groups in South Asia, affluent Hindi speakers are mostly bilingual in English as well, and English language education is a prerequisite for social status. Consequently, development in the Hindi language really benefits only the weaker sections of an already weak society. Since the elite can use English, Hindi has been particularly weak on the Internet . As a barometer, the Devanagari fonts and keyboards used on computers today were not standardized within India - earlier government standards such as the 8-bit ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) or the GIST keyboard were never widely adopted. The present system was finally standardized only during Unicode deliberations. It appears that the early draft meetings of the Unicode consortium were not even attended by the relevant Indian Ministry of Information Technology, and that Hindi standards were decided based on other Hindi language groups from Fiji and scholars from other nations. It is only when Unicode became the dominant standard that a number of changes were sought by India. As another measure of the weak social status of Hindi, the Hindi Wikipedia project has about twelve-hundred stubby articles. In contrast, the wikipedia in Thai , spoken by less than one-tenth as many people, has at least ten times as many articles. The wikipedia rank (Mar 06) for Hindi Wikipedia was 84. However, once one goes down to the level of ''informality'' and ''casualness'' (as between friends, colleagues and co-workers, and in entertainment, films and songs), it must be noted that Hindi is the ''de facto'' language spoken in India, not only among the native Hindi-speakers but also among the non-native speakers of Hindi in contemporary India, especially if the speakers in question are from different (linguistic) provinces. History See Also: History of Hindi Hindi evolved from , many Persian and Arabic words were borrowed into Hindi. Standard Hindi After independence, the Government Of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes:
Vocabulary Standard Hindi derives much of its formal and technical vocabulary from Sanskrit . Standard or ''shuddha'' ("pure") Hindi is used only in public addresses and radio or TV news, while the everyday spoken language in most areas is one of several varieties of Hindustani , whose vocabulary contains words drawn from Persian and Arabic. In addition, spoken Hindi includes words from English and other languages as well. Vernacular Urdu and Hindi are practically indistinguishable. However, the literary registers differ substantially; in highly formal situations, the languages are barely intelligible to speakers of the other. It bears mention that in centuries past both Sanskrit and Persian have been regarded as the languages of the elite, even by those of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds. There are two principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:
Similarly, Urdu treats its own vocabulary, borrowed directly from Persian and Arabic, as a separate category for morphological purposes. Hindi from which most of the Persian, Arabic and English words have been ousted and replaced by ''tatsam'' words is called ''Shuddha Hindi'' (pure Hindi). Chiefly, the proponents of the so-called '' Hindutva '' ("Hindu-ness") are vociferous supporters of ''Shuddha Hindi''. Excessive use of ''tatsam'' words sometimes creates problems for most native speakers. Strictly speaking, the ''tatsam'' words are words of Sanskrit and not of Hindi—thus they have complicated consonantal clusters which are not linguistically valid in Hindi. The educated middle class population of India can pronounce these words with ease, but people of rural backgrounds have much difficulty in pronouncing them. Similarly, vocabulary borrowed from Persian and Arabic also brings in its own consonantal clusters and "foreign" sounds, which may again cause difficulty in speaking them. Urdu and Hindi Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi are distinct languages. There are two fundamental distinctions between them: the source of borrowed vocabulary (Persian/Arabic or Sanskrit), and the script used to write them (an adaptation of the Persian script written in Nasta'liq style, or the devanagari alphabet). In colloquial situations in much of North India, where neither learned vocabulary nor writing is used, the distinction between the Urdu and Hindi is nearly meaningless. Outside of the Delhi dialect area, the distinction may be more pronounced even in colloquial speech, for "Hindi" in such cases will often refer to the local dialect. The word ''Hindi'' has two uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu. One use of Hindi is to indicate those idioms in the North Indian Dialect Continuum that are not recognized as separate languages from the language of Delhi region. Bengali and Nepali are not considered Hindi because of their long history as literary languages and because of official recognition. Panjabi, Bihari, and Chhatisghari are also often recognized to be distinct languages, though sometimes considered Hindi dialects. However, many other local idioms, such as the Bhili languages, which do not have such a distinct identity, are almost always considered to be dialects of Hindi. In other words, the boundaries of "Hindi" have little to do with mutual intelligibility, and instead depend on social perceptions of what constitutes a language. The other use of the word is Standard Hindi, the specific form (Khariboli) of the Delhi dialect of Hindi (generally called Hindustani) with direct loanwords from Sanskrit that is India's foremost national language. Standard Urdu is also a standardized form of Hindustani. Such a state of affairs, with two standardized forms of what is essentially one language, is known as a Diasystem . The colloquial language spoken by villagers and the lower classes of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The only important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Arab-Persian script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi. However, since independence the formal registers used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, Standard Urdu uses Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while Standard Hindi uses Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official languages being heavily Sanskritized or Persianized, and nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the other standard (as far as the formal vocabulary is concerned). These two standardized registers of Hindustani have become so entrenched as separate languages that often nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. However, there are unifying forces as well. For example, it is said that Indian Bollywood films are made in "Hindi", but the language used in most of them is the same as that of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally neutral Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India itself and in Pakistan. Sociolinguistics of Hindi Variants Sociolinguists {Link without Title} have traditionally given what they call as four major ''variants'' of Hindi, viz.,
Dialects Hindi in the broad sense is a Dialect Continuum without clear boundaries. For example, both Nepali and Panjabi are sometimes considered to be Hindi (based on the high level of mutual intelligibility for Panjabi and Hindi especially), though they are more often considered to be separate languages. Hindi is often divided into Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi , and these are further divided. Following is a list of principal Hindi dialects; boldface indicates those that are classified as separate languages by some linguists.
These dialects demonstrate a variety of influences including the adjacent Iranian, Dravidian, and Tibeto-Burman language families. Phonology There are approximately 11 vowels and 35 consonants in Standard Hindī. They are shown below: Vowels The vowels of Hindi with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प (p), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and the vowel following / p /) in IPA , equivalent in IAST and (approximate) equivalents in British English are listed below: Additional notes on vowels
The dropping of Schwa at the end in Hindi (for Sanskrit loanwords) causes a big problem for foreigners (Westerners learning Hindi). The IAST a appended to the end of these words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as —this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound feminine! Some examples are given below: ''The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' also describes the Near-close Near-front Unrounded Vowel () the Near-close Near-back Rounded Vowel () as occurring in Hindi phonology. They respectively occur as free allophones of short /i/ and /u/. Consonants Hindi has a large Consonant system, with about 38 distinct consonant Phoneme s. An exact number cannot be given, since the regional varieties of Hindi differ in the details of their consonant repertoire. To what extent certain sounds that appear only in foreign words should be considered part of Standard Hindi is also a matter of debate. The traditional core of the consonant system, inherited from Sanskrit , consists of a matrix of 25 Plosive s and 8 Sonorant s and Fricative s. The system is filled out by 7 sounds that originated in Persian, but are now considered Hindi sounds. The table below shows the phonology of the Hindi consonants. Note that all nasals, trills, flaps, approximants and lateral approximants in Hindi are regarded as Voiced Consonant s, and that many linguists also call the Aspirated Voiced Plosive s as Breathy Voice or Murmur Stop s. The 25 plosives occur in five groups, with each group sharing the same position of articulation. These positions in their traditional order are: Velar , Retroflex , Palatal , Dental , and Bilabial . In each position, there are five varieties of consonant, with four oral stops and one nasal stop. An oral stop may be Voiced , Aspirated , both, or neither. This four-way opposition is the hardest aspect of Hindi pronunciation for a speaker of English. The table below shows the traditional listing of the Hindi consonants (in its Devanagari Script ) with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel Schwa (), and is named in the table as such. The Roman script equivalent that is ''normally'' used to transcribe Hindi in ''casual transliteration'' is also given in the second line. At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, three cosonantal clusters are also added: क्ष (in Hindi), त्र and ज्ञ (pronunciation given for Hindi). Other than these, sounds borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic are written with a dot (''bindu'' or ''nukta'') beneath the nearest approximate alphabet. They are not included in the traditional listing. Many native Hindi speakers, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak really good khariboli or Urdu, confused these sounds (except ) and pronounce them as the nearest equivalents in Sanskritized Hindi (listed in column 4). These are: ड़ and ढ़ are not of Persian/Arabic origin, but they are allophonic variants of simple voiced retroflex stops of Sanskrit. Additional notes on the consonants Some additional features of Hindi consonant system are given here, as well as some useful tips to those whose native langugae is English but are interested in learning Hindi language.
Supra-segmental features Hindi has a stress accent, but it is not so important as in English. Usually in a multisyllabic Hindi word, the stress falls on the last syllable if all the syllables are due to long vowels or all are due to short vowels. If the word contains a mixture or short and long vowels, the stress falls automatically on the long vowels almost equally. The Schwa has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing if its syllable is unaccented. Also note that although in Hindi, many words end in short / u / or short / i /, while speaking, the ending is often converted to long / i: / and long / u: /. The tone of speaking is very important in Hindi (although Hindi is not a tonal language like Chinese) —to express the sentiments of respect, politeness, question, etc. Writing system Hindi is written in the standardized Devanagari Script which is written from left to right. The Devanagari script represents the sounds of spoken Hindi very closely, so that a person who knows the Devanagari letters can sound out a written Hindī text comprehensibly, even without knowing what the words mean. The entire alphabet has been discussed in the preceding section on phonology. The next table gives the system of combining two consonants, ie., making a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster from and syllables, Hindi usually converts the alphabetic symbol of the initial consonant X into the corresponding half-consonant (sic)—mostly achieved by cutting the right-side portion of the alphabet. To write the cluster , similarly, both X and Y would be "cut". There are many variants for this consonant cluster writing in devanagari script. The most common system is shown below for the traditional table. Here the second vowel is taken to be / n /, followed by the Schwa . This table gives only theoretical combination of consonant clusters. In practice, the number of allowable consonant clusters of Hindi is limited. Grammar ''Main article'': Hindi Grammar Despite Hindi and English both being Indo-European languages, Hindi grammar can be very complex and is different in many ways from what English speakers are used to. Most notably, Hindi is a subject-object-verb language, meaning that verbs usually fall at the end of the sentence rather than before the object (as in English). Hindi also shows mixed ergativity so that, in some cases, verbs agree with the object of a sentence rather than the subject. Unlike English, Hindi has no definite article (''the''). The numeral ''ek'' might be used as the indefinite singular article (''a/an'') if this needs to be stressed. In addition, Hindi uses Postpositions (so called because they are placed after nouns) where English uses prepositions. Other differences include gender, honorifics, interrogatives, use of cases, and different tenses. While being complicated, Hindi grammar is fairly regular, with irregularities being relatively limited. Despite differences in vocabulary and writing, Hindi grammar is nearly identical with Urdu. The concept of punctuation having been entirely unknown before the advent of the Europeans, Hindi punctuation uses western conventions for commas, exclamation points, and question marks. Periods are sometimes used to end a sentence, though the traditional "full stop" (a vertical line) is more generally used. Genders In Hindi (and of course in Urdu too), there are only two genders for nouns. All male human beings and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "masculine") are '''masculine'''. All female human beings and female animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are '''feminine'''. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to convention, which must be ''learnt by heart'' by non-Hindi speakers if they wish to learn correct Hindi. The ending of a word, if a vowel, usually helps in this gender classification. Among ''tatsam'' words, the masculine words of Sanskrit remain masculine in Hindi, and same is the case for the feminine. Sanskrit neuter nouns usually become masculine in Hindi. Among the ''tadbhav'' words, if a word end in long / α: /, it is normally masculine. If a word ends in / i: / or / in/, it is normally feminine. Similarly, the gender is also tried to be preserved for words borrowed from Arabic and Persian. The categorization of Hindi words directly borrowed from English (which are numerous) is very arbitrary—but could be influenced by the ending. Adjectives ending in long / α: / must get Inflected to agree with the gender of the noun. Interrogatives Besides the standard interrogative terms of who (कौन ''kaun''), what (क्या ''kyaa''), why (कयों ''kyõ''), when (कब ''kab''), where (कहाँ ''kahã''), how and what type (कैसा ''kaisaa''), how many (कितना ''kitnaa''), etc, the Hindi word kyaa (क्या) can be used as a generic interrogative often placed at the beginning of a sentence to turn a statement into a Yes/No question. This makes it clear when a question is being asked. Questions can also be formed simply by modifying intonation, exactly as some questions are in English. Pronouns Hindi has pronouns in the first, second and third person, all for one gender only. Thus, unlike English, there is no difference between '''he''' or '''she'''. More strictly speaking, the third person of the pronoun is actually the same as the demonstrative pronoun (this / that). The verb, upon conjugation, usually indicates the difference in the gender. The pronouns have additional cases of Accusative and Genitive . There may also be multiple ways of inflecting the pronoun, which are given in parentheses. Note that for the second person of the pronoun (''you''), Hindi has three levels of honorifics:
Imperatives (requests and commands) correspond in form to the level of honorific being used, and the verb inflects to show the level of respect and politeness desired. Because imperatives can already include politeness, the word "kripayā", which can be translated as "please", is much less common than in spoken English; it is generally only used in writing or announcements, and its use in common speech is usually intended as mockery. Word order The standard word order in Hindi is, in general, Subject Object Verb , but where different emphasis or more complex structure is needed, this rule is very easily set aside (provided that the nouns/pronouns are always followed by their postpositions or case markers). More specifically, the standard order is 1. Subject 2. Adverbs (in their standard order) 3. Indirect object and any of its adjectives 4. Direct object and any of its adjectives 5. Negation term or interrogative, if any, and finally the 6. Verb and any auxiliary verbs. (Snell, p93) The standard order can be modified in various ways to impart emphasis on particular parts of the sentence. Negation is formed by adding the word नहीं (nahī̃, "no"), in the appropriate place in the sentence, or by utilizing न (na) or मत (mat) in some cases. Note that in Hindi, the adjectives precede the nouns they qualify. The auxiliaries always follow the main verb. Also, Hindi speakers or writers enjoy considerable freedom in placing words to achieve stylistic and other socio-psychological effects, though not as much freedom as in heavily inflected languages. Bhatia 1996: 32-33. Tense and aspect of Hindi verbs Hindi verbal structure is focused on and Conditional Mood s. Case Hindi is a weakly Inflected language for case; the relationship of a noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions (i.e., prepositions that ''follow'' the noun). Hindi has three cases for nouns. The '''Direct case''' is used for nouns not followed by any postpositions, typically for the subject case. The ''' Oblique Case ''' is used for any nouns that is followed by a postposition. Adjectives modifying nouns in the oblique case will inflect that same way. Some nouns have a separate '''Vocative case'''. Hindi has two numbers: singular and plural—but they may not be shown distinctly in all declinations. Literature ''Main article: Hindi Literature '' The beginnings of Hindi Literature can be traced to the Prakrit s of classical Sanskrit Plays . Tulasidas 's Ramacharitamanasa (रामचरितमानस) attained wide popularity. Modern litterateurs include Jaishankar Prasad , Sumitranandan Pant , Maithili Sharan Gupta , Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala' , Mahadevi Varma , Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayana 'Ajneya' and Munshi Premchand . Hindi cinema No mention of Hindi may be deemed complete without mentioning the Hindi films. The mighty Hindi film industry Bollywood is located at Mumbai (Bombay), in the Marathi-speaking state Maharashtra in India. The dialogues and the songs use the dialects of Khariboli of Hindi-Urdu, Awadhi , Rajasthani , Bhojpuri , Punjabi and quite often Bambaiya Hindi (along with many English words). These Hindi movies are full of songs and dances—songs which are almost always upon the lips of any Indian (and often many Pakistanis, Afghans, Bangladeshis, Iranians, etc.), whether a native Hindi speaker or not. Most of the songs are in Urdu ''shaayari'' style. Some of the hit films include Mahal (1949), Shree 420 (1955), Mother India (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Guide (1965), Pakeezah (1972), Bobby (1973), Zanjeer (1973), Yaadon ki Baraat (1973), Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Mr. India (1987), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander (1991), Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Taal (1999), Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai (2000), Lagaan (2001), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001), Devdas (2002), Saathiya (2002), Munnabhai MBBS (2003), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Dhoom (2004), Veer-Zaara (2004), Swades (2004), Salaam Namaste (2005), Black (2005), Bunty Aur Babli (2005), Fanaa (2006), Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006)etc. History of Hindi Cinema The first Hindi film made in India -- ''Raja Harishchandra'' was released in year 1913. It was a silent film that depicted the story of king Harishchandra, who sacrificed his family and kingdom for the sake of truth. It was made by Dada Saheb Falke, regarded as the ''father of hindi cinema''. The film had an all-male cast. Initially hindi films were made on mythological topics and invariably had gods or goddesses as their protagonists. ''Alam Ara'' ushered the era of talking films or talkies in India in year 1931. The film had seven songs in it. Soon songs became an integral part of hindi cinema with some movies films having as many as 71 songs in them. Hindi television serials In addition to Bollywood cinema, the Hindi television serials are also worth a mention. They include soap operas, detective serials, horror shows, dramas, cartoons, comedies, host shows for Hindi songs, Hindu mythology, Persio-Arabic mythology and documentaries. In addition to the govenment's official TV channel ''Doordarshan'', several private channels have come up in the 1990's, e.g., Zee TV, Sony Entertainment Television, Sahara TV, Star Plus, as well as Hindi versions of Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel. One of the most popular soap operas is ''Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi'' (lit., Because the mother-in-law too was once a daughter-in-law). Sample Text The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations): :''अनुच्छेद 1—सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अिधकारों के मामले में जन्मजात स्वतन्त्रता प्राप्त है । उन्हें बुद्धि और अन्तरात्मा की देन प्राप्त है और परस्पर उन्हें भाईचारे के भाव से बर्ताव करना चाहिये ।'' :Transliteration ( IAST ): :Gloss (word-to-word): All human-beings to dignity and rights of matter in from-birth freedom acquired is. Them reason and conscience of endowment acquired is and among them brotherhood of spirit with behavior do should. :Translation (grammatical): All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Common difficulties faced in learning Hindi
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