Hindī हिन्दी, हिंदी
Spoken in:	India, Nepal (also colloquially understood in Pakistan, Bangladesh)
Region:	Indian Subcontinent
Total speakers:	ca. 337 million native, 790 million total
Ranking:	3
Language family:	Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Indo-Aryan    Central zone     Western Hindi      Hindustani       Hindī
Writing system:	Devanagari script
Official status
Official language of:	India, Fiji (as Hindustani)
Regulated by:	Central Hindi Directorate [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	hi
ISO 639-2:	hin
ISO 639-3:	hin
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Hindi (Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [hɪnd̪iː]), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is one of the official languages of the Union government of India.^[1][2] It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Gujarati; on the south by Marathi and Konkani; on the southeast by Oriya; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by Nepali. Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani termed khariboli, that emerged as the standard dialect. The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Hindi. Image File history File links Hindi2. ... Map of South Asia (see note) This article deals with the geophysical region in Asia. ... The factual accuracy of part of this article is disputed. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Central Zone cricket team is a first-class cricket team that represents central India in the Duleep Trophy. ... Braj, though never a clearly defined political region, is considered to be the land of Krishna and is derived from the Sanksrit word vraja. ... HindustānÄ« (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as HindÄ«-UrdÅ«, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of HindÄ« and Urd... Writing systems of the world today. ... च् + छ = च्छ Devanagari in Unicode The Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 . ... HindustānÄ« (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as HindÄ«-UrdÅ«, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of HindÄ« and Urd... The Central Hindi Directorate is the department under the Human Resource Ministry of India. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Image File history File links Example. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ... Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... Dark green region marks the approximate extent of northern India while the regions marked as light green lies within the sphere of north Indian influence. ... The geography of India is extremely diverse, with landscape ranging from snow-capped mountain ranges to deserts, plains, hills and plateaus. ... An official language is a language that is given a unique status in the constitutions of countries, states, and other territories. ... The Government of India (Hindi: Bharat Sarkar), officially referred to as the Union Government, and commonly as Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of a federal union of 28 states and 7 union territories, collectively called Republic of India. ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... Punjabi (sometimes spelled Panjabi) is the language of the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan. ... SindhÄ« (सिन्धी, سنڌي) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia, which is now a province of Pakistan. ... (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... is an Indo-Aryan language, part of the greater Indo-European language family. ... Marathi (मराठी ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western India (Maharashtrians). ... Konkani language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator To read this article in the Konkani Language, click this line हें लेख कोंकणींत वाचुंक हांगा क्लिक कोरा. Hem lekh Konknnint vachunk hanga click kora. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ... Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). ... In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. ... The word Hindustani is an adjective used to denote a connection to India, or, more precisely, the historical region that encompasses Northern India, Pakistan, and nearby areas. ... Khariboli (also Khadiboli, Khadi-Boli, or Khari dialect), (/ /; Hindi: खड़ी बोली; Urdu: كهڑى بولى, khaṛī bolÄ«; lit. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ...

Classification

Hindi is classified as a language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It comes under the Indo-Aryan division of the Indo-Iranian branch of this family of languages. Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ...

Etymology

Of Persian origin, the word Hindī (ہندی) comprises Hind "India", and the adjectival suffix ī. Hence Hindī translates to "Indian". In modern times, Hindī as taken to mean "Indian" is chiefly obsolete; it now specifically refers to the language bearing that name.^[3] Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... The name India may refer to either the region of Greater India (the Indian subcontinent), or to the contemporary Republic of India contained therein. ...

Demographics

Area

Stotra text in Devanagari script

Hindi is the predominant language in the states and union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Linguistic scholars refer to this area as the Hindi belt. Outside these areas, Hindi is widely spoken in cities like Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, all of which have their own native languages but harbour large communities of people from various parts of India. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (603x799, 135 KB) Summary Hindi text in Devnagari script. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (603x799, 135 KB) Summary Hindi text in Devnagari script. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... India is subdivided into twenty-eight states and seven union territories; the states and territories are themselves further subdivided. ... Jammu and Kashmir   (IPA: , Kashmiri:ज्वम त॒ कॅशीर جۄم تٕہ کٔشِیر, Urdu:جموں Ùˆ کشمیر) (often abbreviated as Kashmir), is the northern-most state of India, lying mostly in the Himalayan mountains. ... Himachal Pradesh   (Hindi: हिमाचल प्रदेश, IPA: ), formerly the Punjab Hill States, is a mostly mountainous state in northern India. ... Delhi   (Hindi: , Urdu: , Punjabi: ) is the second-largest metropolis in India after Mumbai with a population of 13 million. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, IPA: ,  ) is a state of the Indian union situated in the eastern part of the country. ... Uttarakhand (Hindi: उत्तराखंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Rājasthān (DevanāgarÄ«: राजस्थान, IPA: )   is the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. ... Chhattisgarh (Chhattisgarhi/Hindi: छत्तीसगढ़, IPA: )  , a state in central India, formed when the sixteen Chhattisgarhi-speaking southeastern districts of Madhya Pradesh gained statehood on November 1, 2000. ... The regions where Hindi is the primary language are shown in Purple, while the regions marked in Pink have large communities of Hindi-speaking people. ... “Bombay” redirects here. ... Chandigarh   (Punjabi: , Hindi: , pronunciation: ) also called The City Beautiful, is a city in India that serves as the capital of two states: Punjab and Haryana. ... Ahmedabad (Gujarati: , Hindi: अहमदाबाद ) is the largest city in the state of Gujarat and the seventh-largest urban agglomeration in India, with a population of almost 51 lakhs (5. ... Hyderabad or Haydarābād (Telugu: హైదరాబాదు Urdu: حیدر آباد ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. ...

Local variations of Hindi are counted as minority languages in several countries, including Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Suriname, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK among various other countries around the world. United States may refer to: Places: United States of America SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built. ...

Number of speakers

Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. According to the census of India^[4] (which encompasses all the dialects of Hindi, including those that might be considered separate languages by some linguists—e.g., Bhojpuri), Hindi is the mother tongue of about 337 million Indians, or about 40% of India's population that year. According to SIL International's Ethnologue,^[5] about 180 million people in India regard standard (Khari Boli) Hindi as their mother tongue, and another 300 million use it as a second language. Outside India, Hindi speakers number around 8 million in Nepal, 890,000 in South Africa, 685,000 in Mauritius, 317,000 in the U.S.,^[6] 233,000 in Yemen, 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 notable populations of Hindi speakers. Hence, according to the SIL ethnologue (1999 data), Hindi/Urdu is the fifth most spoken language in the world. According to Comrie (1998 data),^[7] Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, with 333 million native speakers. Map showing the population density of each state in India Although India occupies only 2. ... Categories: Indo-Aryan languages | Languages of India | Language stubs ... SIL International is a worldwide non-profit evangelical Christian organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

Because of Hindi's extreme similarity to Urdu, speakers of the two languages can usually understand one another, if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. Indeed, linguists sometimes count them as being part of the same language diasystem. However, Hindi and Urdu are socio-politically different, and people who self-describe as being speakers of Urdu would question their being counted as native speakers of Hindi, and vice-versa. (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... In linguistics, a diasystem is a term used in structural dialectology, to refer to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. ...

Official and social status

Official status

The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language(rājabhāṣā) of the Union (Article 343(1)).^[8] Hindi is also enumerated as one of the twenty-two languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which entitles it to representation on the Official Language Commission.^[9] It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government by 1965, with state governments being free to function in languages of their own choice. This has not, however, happened and English is also used along with Hindi for official purposes. There was widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, in some states, especially the Anti-Hindi agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu, which resulted in the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963). This act provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes, by the Union government. However, the constitutional directive to the central government to champion the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced the policies of the Union government. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. ... The new Indian Constitution went into effect on January 26, 1950. ... Tamil Nadu (தமிழ் நாடு, Land of the Tamils) is a state at the southern tip of India. ...

At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following states: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi. Each of these states may also designate a "co-official language"; in Uttar Pradesh for instance, depending on the political formation in power, sometimes this language is Urdu. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language in several states. Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, IPA: ,  ) is a state of the Indian union situated in the eastern part of the country. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Uttarakhand (Hindi: उत्तराखंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Rājasthān (DevanāgarÄ«: राजस्थान, IPA: )   is the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Chhattisgarh (छत्तीसगढ़), a state in central India, formed when the sixteen southeastern districts of Madhya Pradesh gained statehood on November 1, 2000. ... Himachal Pradesh   (Hindi: हिमाचल प्रदेश, IPA: ), formerly the Punjab Hill States, is a mostly mountainous state in northern India. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Delhi   (Hindi: , Urdu: , Punjabi: ) is the second-largest metropolis in India after Mumbai with a population of 13 million. ...

Social status

Hindi in School: India has literacy rate of 40%. Most state governed schools provide education in Hindi. Even private schools provide Hindi literature courses.

Hindi on TV: Most popular TV channels provide Hindi content. TV channels like Zee TV, Star Plus are very popular, and have very high viewership, even outside India.

Hindi Movies: Bollywood is the largest cinema industry in the world. Every years, thousands of Hindi movies are released. Hindi movies are popular not only in India but also in countries like UK, UAE, Iran, Afghanistan, and many other asian countries.

Hindi Songs: Just like Bollywood, Hindi songs are extremely popular among Indian youth. Bollywood is famous for Hindi musicals. For a movie to succeed, it must have good songs and dance numbers. Sometimes Hindi movies make more money by selling the songs, than by movie itself.

Hindi On Internet: India has Internet penetration of only 4%. And this is mainly because of language gap. Prior to unicode standard, there was no easy way for Indians to communicate in Hindi, and hence most people preffered mobile over Internet.

However, Unicode standard has given a big boost to Hindi websites on the Internet. And this is partly because there are some very good IME available for Windows and Linux.

Input_method_editor: Most asian languages use Input Method Editors to write in there native languages. There are Input Method Editors available for Chinese, Japanese, Hindi. An IME for inputting Japanese characters in Mac OS 9 An IME for inputting Japanese characters using Windows XPs radical IME pad An input method editor (IME) is a program or operating system component that allows computer users to enter characters and symbols not found on their keyboard. ...

After Microsoft released and easy to use Hindi IME, there is a steady growth in the number of Hindi webpages on Internet.

example:

Micoroft Bhasha India

Baraha IME

There are many Javascript Input Method Editors availabe that lets user type in Hindi, without installing any software on the client side. This kind of scripts often work by hooking the keyboard events in browser windows.

example:

Kushinara Hindi Toolika

History

Main article: History of the Hindi language

Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages. There is no consensus for a specific time where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindi emerged, but c. 1000 AD is commonly accepted.^[10] In the span of nearly a thousand years of Muslim influence, such as when Muslim rulers controlled much of northern India during the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, many Persian and Arabic words were absorbed into Hindi. Since almost all Arabic words came via Persian, they do not preserve the original phonology of Arabic. The history of Hindi, a major language of India. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Middle Indo-Aryan refers to a stage (c. ... Prakrit (also spelt Pracrit) (Sanskrit: , original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual, i. ... The term Apabhramsha refers to the dialects of North India before the rise of modern North Indian languages. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... The Delhi Sultanate (دلی سلطنت), or Sulthanath-e-Hind (سلطنتِ ہند) / Sulthanath-e-Dilli (سلطنتِ دلی) refers to the various Muslim dynasties that ruled in India from 1210 to 1526. ... The Mughal Empire (Persian: ‎ , Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت, Hindi: मुग़ल साम्राज्य), self-designation Gurkānī, گوركانى was an empire that at its greatest territorial extent ruled eastern parts of Khorasan (including Afghanistan) and most of the Indian subcontinent, then known as Hindustan, including most of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ...

Hindi is often contrasted with Urdu, another standardised 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 Devanagari and draws its vocabulary with words from (Indo-Aryan) Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Nastaliq script, a variant of the (Semitic) Perso-Arabic script, and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic vocabulary. Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Nastaliq (نستعليق) is a specific style for writing in the Arabic alphabet. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Perso-Arabic script. ...

Standard Hindi

After independence, the Government of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes: The Government of India (Hindi: भारत सरकार Bhārat Sarkār), officially referred to as the Union Government, and commonly as Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of a federal union of 28 states and 7 union territories, collectively called the Republic of India. ...

• standardization of Hindi grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"
• standardization of Hindi spelling
• standardization of the Devanāgarī script by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing and to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters.
• scientific mode of transcribing the Devanagari alphabet
• incorporation of diacritics to express sounds from other languages.

1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... () is an abugida script used to write, either along with other scripts, or exclusively, several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Marwari, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Nepal Bhasa from Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri and Romani. ...

Vocabulary

Further information: Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) word etymology

Standard Hindi derives much of its formal and technical vocabulary from Sanskrit. Standard or shuddh ("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. Hindustānī also known as Hindi-Urdu, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Hindustānī (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as Hindī-Urdū, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of Hindī and Urd... Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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 three principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

• Tatsam (तत्सम्) words: These are the words which have been directly lifted from Sanskrit to enrich the formal and technical vocabulary of Hindi. Such words (almost exclusively nouns) have been taken without any phonetic or spelling change. Among nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit uninflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
• Tadbhav (तद्भव) words: These are the words that might have been derived from Sanskrit or the Prakrits, but have undergone minor or major phonetic and spelling changes as they appear in modern Hindi.
• Deshaj (देशज) words: These are words of local origin.

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. For Veer Savarkars book Hindutva, see Hindutva. ...

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.

Sociolinguistics of Hindi

Variants

Sociolinguists have traditionally given what they call as four major variants or styles (शैली) of Hindi, viz.,^[11]

• High Hindi, the standardized Hindi (based on the Khariboli dialect), written in Devanagari script, which contains numerous Sanskrit loanwords, including those introduced more recently to enrich the technical and poetical vocabulary or to replace words of Perseo-Arabic origin. Traditionally, this is the register spoken by the urban Hindu population of north India and is the form of Hindi taught in Indian schools and used in television news and newspapers. Today, High Hindi with many Persian, Arabic and English loanwords is the spoken form of this language in much of the north India, and is used in Hindi films, drama and television serials.
• Dakhini, spoken in the Deccan plateau region in and around Hyderabad, similar to Urdu but with fewer words derived from Perso-Arabic in its vocabulary.
• Rekhta, a form of Urdu used in poetry.
• Urdu, a language of prestige in its own right but whose development is closely tied to that of Hindi (and also based on the Khariboli dialect), written in Perso-Arabic script. It utilizes a more extensive Persian and Arabic vocabulary and fewer Sanskrit loanwords, especially in its formal register. Before the Partition of India, Urdu's linguistic area was similar to that of High Hindi and it was considered the language of choice for the majority of educated middle classes - both Hindu and Muslim - until political currents and lingusitic nationalism post-partition encouraged a more pronounced divide between the two varieties of Khariboli.

Additionally, Hindustani is generally coined for the neutral style that is in-between High Hindi and Urdu and used in common speech. Shuddha Hindi refers to Hindi which is grammatically correct and minimizes the use of English or Farsi/Arabic words. ... च् + छ = च्छ Devanagari in Unicode The Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 . ... Dakkhini, also known as Deccani is a dialect of the Urdu language spoken in the Deccan region of southern India, centered on the city of Hyderabad, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. ... Rekhta is the highly Persianized form of Urdu, a language that combines Arabic, Persian, and Hindi. ... (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language, which is the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. ... Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Caution! This Article Is Under Construction This article or section is currently in the middle of an expansion or major revamping. ... HindustānÄ« (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as HindÄ«-UrdÅ«, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of HindÄ« and Urd...

Dialects ("Mother Tongues")

Hindi in the broad sense (formerly referred to as "Hindustani"; now often referred to as "Hindi-Urdu") is a dialect continuum without clear boundaries. For example, both Nepali and Punjabi are sometimes considered to be Hindi (based on the high level of mutual intelligibility for Punjabi 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; many linguists regard only the dialects under Western and Eastern Hindi as proper Hindi dialects, and the rest as separate languages or sub-languages. The following listing is taken from Tiwari ([1966] 2004); even he notes that the classification of the dialects under various branches and their classification as a dialect of Hindi or as an independent language depends upon the perception of the linguist. A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). ... Punjabi (also Panjabi; in Gurmukhī, in Shāhmukhī, in transliteration) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Punjabi people in India, Pakistan and other parts of the world. ... Braj, though never a clearly defined political region, is considered to be the land of Krishna and is derived from the Sanksrit word vraja. ... Chhattisgarhi is a language of India. ...

Hindi region of the Indian subcontinent

This region includes the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. Some people, such as the Government of India (while taking census) regard all the languages spoken in these states to be "mother tongues" of Hindi (barring tribal languages). Tiwari ([1966] 2004) lists them under five groups: Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, IPA: ,  ) is a state of the Indian union situated in the eastern part of the country. ... Delhi   (Hindi: , Urdu: , Punjabi: ) is the second-largest metropolis in India after Mumbai with a population of 13 million. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Rājasthān (DevanāgarÄ«: राजस्थान, IPA: )   is the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Chandigarh   (Punjabi: , Hindi: , pronunciation: ) also called The City Beautiful, is a city in India that serves as the capital of two states: Punjab and Haryana. ... Uttarakhand (Hindi: उत्तराखंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

1. Western Hindi (the speech varieties developed from Sauraseni):
   • Khari boli (खड़ी बोली) or Sarhindi or Kauravi, originally spoken in western Uttar Pradesh (the districts of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bijnor, Rampur and Moradabad, and district of Dehradun in Uttarakhand) and the Delhi region; the dialect that forms the basis of modern Standard Hindi. It is understood and/or spoken throughout the Indian subcontinent, from Afghanistan, the borders of Iran, to the borders of Burma, and in the south, it is understood in Sri Lanka^{[citation needed]}. It is the almost the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent, irrespective of political boundaries or official policies. This is not a great difference between the dialects of Khari-boli and Hindustani.
   • Braj Bhasha (ब्रज भाषा), spoken in south-central Uttar Pradesh, in the districts of Mathura, Agra, Aligarh, Dhaulpur, Mainpuri, Etah, Badaun and Bareilly. It has a rich poetic and literal tradition, especially linked with the Hindu divinity Krishna.
   • Hariyanvi (हरियाणी), spoken in the state of Haryana.
   • Bundeli (बुन्देली), the speech varieties of the districts of Jhansi, Jalaun and Hamirpur in Uttar Pradesh and Gwalior, Bhopal, Sagar, Chhatarpur, Narsinghpur, Seoni, Hoshangabad, etc. in Madhya Pradesh.
   • Kannauji (कन्नौजी), the dialect of the districts of Etawah, Farrukhabad, Shahjahanpur, Kanpur, Hardoi and Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh.
2. Eastern Hindi (the speech varieties developed from Ardhamagadhi)
   • Nepali (नेपाली), spoken in Nepal, Uttranchal, West bengal & North east india Sikkim.
   • Awadhi (अवधी), spoken in central and parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, in the districts of Allahabad, Fatehpur, Mirzapur, Unnao, Raebareli, Sitapur, Faizabad, Gonda, Basti, Bahraich, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh and Barabanki. The famous Hindu scripture Ramcharitmanas was written by Tulsidas in this dialect.
   • Bagheli (बघेली), spoken in the districts of Rewa, Nagod, Shahdol, Satna, Maihar, etc. in Madhya Pradesh.
   • Chattisgarhi (छत्तिसगढ़ी), spoken mostly in the recently created state of Chhattisgarh
3. Rajasthani, mostly spoken in the state of Rajasthan, and also comprising several notable (sub)dialects:
   • Western Rajasthani or Marwari (मारवाड़ी)
   • Eastern Rajasthani or Jaipuri (जयपुरी)
   • Northern Rajasthani or Mewati (मेवाती)
   • Southern Rajasthani or Mewari (मेवाड़ी)
   • Malwi (मालवी) spoken in Western-southern Madhya Pradesh.
4. Pahari (पहाड़ी), the speech varieties of the Himalayan mountains
   • Eastern Pahari, which includes Nepali, now considered a separate language
   • Central Pahari, which includes Garhwali and Kumauni sub-dialects of the newly created state of Uttarakhand.
   • Western Pahari, which includes the several sub-dialects spoken in Himachal Pradesh state.
5. Bihari (traditionally thought to be dialects of Hindi, contra linguistic evidence that these languages descendant of Eastern Group of Indic languages, along with Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya.)
   • Bhojpuri (भोजपुरी), which is spoken in eastern Uttar Pradesh (districts of Gorakhpur, Deoria, Mirzapur, Varanasi, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Ballia), western Bihar (districts of Chhapra, Siwan, Gopalganj and Bhojpur) and a small part of Jharkhand (districts Palamu and Ranchi). Some linguists like Dr. Chatterji consider it so different from the other two Bihari dialects that they prefer keeping it outside the Bihari group.
   • Maithili (मैथिली), spoken in the Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, East Champaran, Munger, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Purnia and North Santhal Pargana districts of Bihar and Tarai of Nepal. It was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian constitution in January 2004 and is officially considered an independent language.
   • Magahi/Magadhi (मगही / मगधी), spoken in the districts of Gaya, Patna, Munger and Bhagalpur in Bihar state and Palamu, Hazaribagh and Ranchi in Jharkhand state.

Depending upon perceptions, people also include various other dialects under Hindi, such as Nimari, Baiswari, Vajjika, Angika, etc. A Dramatic Prakrit, Sauraseni was the chief language of northern medieval India, evolving into the Hindi language complex and Punjabi. ... Khariboli (also Khadiboli, Khadi-Boli, or Khari dialect), (Hindi: खड़ी बोली; Urdu: كهڑى بولى, khaṛī bolÄ«; lit. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Saharanpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, with Saharanapur town as the district headquarters. ... Muzaffarnagar District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Meerut is a district in Uttar Pradesh state India. ... Ghaziabad District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Bijnor district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Bijnor town is the district headquarters. ... Rampur is a district in Uttar Pradesh state India. ... Moradabad is a district of Uttar Pradesh. ... Dehradun is a district of Uttaranchal state, India. ... Uttarakhand (Hindi: उत्तराखंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ... Delhi   (Hindi: , Urdu: , Punjabi: ) is the second-largest metropolis in India after Mumbai with a population of 13 million. ... Braj Bhasha is language spoken in India by more than 42,000 people. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Mathura District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state of northern India. ... Agra district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Agra town is the district headquarters. ... Aligarh is one of the few places where Hindus and Muslims live in harmony barring a few blemishes and the most illustrious example is the AMU, where uptil now Pupils from different communities come to study without any apprehensions. ... Dholpur (also Dhaulpur) is a city in eastern Rajasthan state of India. ... Mainpuri district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Mainpuri town is the district headquarters. ... Etah district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Etah town is the district headquarters. ... Badaun district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Badaun town is the district headquarters. ... Bareilly district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Bareilly town is the district headquarters. ... Krishna with Radha, 18th C Rajasthani painting Krishna (कृष्ण in Devanagari, in IAST ) is a deity worshipped across many traditions of Hinduism. ... Hariyanavi or Jatu or Bangaru is a dialect of Hindi language, spoken in the North Indian state of Haryana, and also in Delhi particularly by Jats. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Bundeli is a Western Hindi language (often considered a dialect of Hindi) spoken in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh and Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. ... Jhansi District is one a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Map of Jalaun Jalaun District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... Hamirpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Gwalior District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Bhopal District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Sagar District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Chhatarpur District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state of central India. ... Narsingpur District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Seoni district is one of the districts of Madhya Pradesh state of India, and Seoni town is the district headquarters. ... Hoshangabad District is one of the districts of Madhya Pradesh state of India, and Hoshangabad town is the district headquarters. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Kannauji language (कन्नौजी) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. ... Etawah district is a district in the southwestern portion of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... Farrukhabad District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Shahjahanpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... Kanpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Kanpur town is the district headquarters. ... Hardoi is a district of Uttar Pradesh, India. ... Pilibhit district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Pilibhit town is the district headquarters. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Prakrit (Sanskrit prakrta: natural, usual, vulgar) refers to the broad family of the Indic languages and dialects spoken in ancient India. ... Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). ... Sikkim (also Sikhim) (DevanāgarÄ«: सिक्किम  ) is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayas. ... Awadhi is a dialect of Hindi, spoken in the Awadh (Oudh) region of Uttar Pradesh. ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Allahabad district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Allahabad town is the district headquarters. ... Fatehpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh Located in the banks of the sacred rivers Ganga and Jamuna, Fatehpur was mentioned in the puranic literature. ... Mirzapur is a district in Uttar Pradesh state India. ... Unnao District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Raebareli District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Sitapur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, with Sitapur town as the district headquarters. ... Faizabad district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Faizabad town is the district headquarters. ... Gonda District is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. ... Basti district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state, India. ... Bahraich District is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Bahraich town is the district headquarters. ... Sultanpur is a district in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. ... Pratapgarh district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... Barabanki district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India. ... ÅšrÄ« Rāmcharitmānas (Hindi रामचरितमानस) is an epic poem composed by the great 16th-century Indian poet, Goswami Tulsidas (c. ... GosvāmÄ« TulsÄ«dās (1532-1623; DevanāgarÄ«: तुलसीदास) was an Awadhi poet and philosopher. ... Bagheli is a dialect of the Baghelkhand region of central India. ... Rewa District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Shahdol District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Satna District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Chhattisgarhi language (छत्तिसगढ़ी) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. ... Chhattisgarh (Chhattisgarhi/Hindi: छत्तीसगढ़, IPA: )  , a state in central India, formed when the sixteen Chhattisgarhi-speaking southeastern districts of Madhya Pradesh gained statehood on November 1, 2000. ... // Introduction Rajasthani is one of the prominent members of Indo-Aryan languages family. ... Rājasthān (DevanāgarÄ«: राजस्थान, IPA: )   is the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. ... The Marwari (also variously Marvari, Marwadi, Marvadi) is a language originating in the Western Indian state of Rajasthan, but is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and in Eastern Pakistan. ... Jaipuri language (जयपुरी) refers to the dialect of the Rajasthani languages spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, in and around the Jaipur region. ... Mewati, a dialect of Rajasthani language of Indo-Aryan family, is spoken by about five million speakers in Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, and Faridabad and Gurgaon districts of Haryana states of India. ... Mewari is one of the major dialects of Rajasthani language of Indo-Aryan languages family. ... Malvi is an Indo-European language with over a million speakers spoken in Malwa. ... Madhya PradeÅ›   (HindÄ«: मध्य प्रदेश, English: , IPA: ), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. ... Pahari (also known as Pahaari), is a crude word referring to all the different and varied dialects of communities living in the Indian part of central Himalayan range. ... Perspective view of the Himalaya and Mount Everest as seen from space looking south-south-east from over the Tibetan Plateau. ... Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). ... People belonging to the hilly Garhwal subdivision of Uttaranchal. ... Variously used to signify the people or the local dialect of Kumaon Division of Uttaranchal, a region in the Indian Himalayas. ... Uttarakhand (Hindi: उत्तराखंड), known as Uttaranchal from 2000 to 2006, became the 27th state of the Republic of India on November 9, 2000. ... Himachal Pradesh   (Hindi: हिमाचल प्रदेश, IPA: ), formerly the Punjab Hill States, is a mostly mountainous state in northern India. ... Bihari is a name given to a group of Indo-Aryan languages spoken in Bihar and neighboring states in India. ... The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages include some 210 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about many people in Asia; this language family is a part of the Indo-Aryan language family. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ... Assamese (অসমীয়া) or Asamiya is the language spoken by some of the natives of the state of Assam in northeast India. ... Oriya is the official language of the Indian state of Orissa. ... Categories: Indo-Aryan languages | Languages of India | Language stubs ... Uttar Pradesh (Hindi: , Urdu: ‎, translation: Northern Province, IPA: ,  ), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Republic of India. ... Gorakhpur District is a District of Uttar Pradesh state in India. ... Deoria district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Deoria town is the district headquarters. ... Mirzapur is a district in Uttar Pradesh state India. ... Varanasi district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, with Varanasi town as the district headquarters. ... Jaunpur district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, with Jaunpur town as the district headquarters. ... Ghazipur District is a district of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. ... Ballia district is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state, India. ... Siwan is one of the districts of Bihar state, India, and Siwan town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Gopalganj is an administrative district in the state of Bihar in India. ... Bhojpur (25°35′N 84°8′E) is an administrative district in the state of Bihar in India. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Palamau is a district of Jharkhand state, India. ... Ranchi district is one of the twenty-two districts of Jharkhand state, India. ... Maithili is of the family of Indo-Aryan languages, which are part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. ... Muzaffarpur District is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Muzaffarpur town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Sitamarhi district is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Sitamarhi town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... East Champaran is an administrative district in the state of Bihar in India. ... Munger district is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Munger town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Bhagalpur District is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Bhagalpur town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Darbhanga district is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Darbhanga town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, IPA: ,  ) is a state of the Indian union situated in the eastern part of the country. ... The Terai, or Tarai (i. ... The Magadhi language (also known as Magahi) is a language of India. ... Gaya is a city in Bihar, India, and it is also the headquarters of Gaya District. ... Patna district is one of the districts of Bihar state, India, with Patna as the district headquarters. ... Munger district is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Munger town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Bhagalpur District is one of the thirty-seven districts of Bihar state, India, and Bhagalpur town is the administrative headquarters of this district. ... Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, IPA: ,  ) is a state of the Indian union situated in the eastern part of the country. ... Palamau is a district of Jharkhand state, India. ... Hazaribagh district is one of the districts of Jharkhand state, India, and Hazaribagh town is the district headquarters. ... Ranchi district is one of the twenty-two districts of Jharkhand state, India. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Non-Hindi regions in the Indian subcontinent

• Bambaiya Hindi, the dialect of the city of Bombay (Mumbai); it is based on Khariboli dialect, but heavily influenced by Konkani, Marathi and Gujarati. Technically it is a pidgin, i.e., neither is it a mother language of any people nor is it used in formal settings by the educated and upper social strata. However, it is often used in the movies of Hindi cinema (Urdu) (Bollywood), where it often gives a comical effect on the movie characters.
• Dakhini, as discussed above.
• Kalkatiya Hindi, another Khariboli-based pidgin spoken in the city of Calcutta (Kolkata), Shillong, etc., heavily influenced by Bhojpuri and Bengali.
• Arunachal Hindi is a regional dialect of HIndi popularly spoken in Hindi. This is an amalmagation of Hindi and the various tribal dialects of the state. Words such as 'Yamtar', meaning pickle are spoken instead of achaar and so on. Arunachal Hindi is the most popular language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh even in the most remote parts of the state.

Bambaiyya Hindi, Mumbaiyya, or Bombay Hindi (Hindi: बंबय्या हिंदी) is a vernacular form of Hindi spoken primarily in Mumbai (Bombay, formerly). ... This article or section should be merged with Mumbai Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is the worlds most populous conurbation, and is the sixth most populous agglomeration in the world. ... Konkani language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator To read this article in the Konkani Language, click this line हें लेख कोंकणींत वाचुंक हांगा क्लिक कोरा. Hem lekh Konknnint vachunk hanga click kora. ... Marathi (मराठी ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western India (Maharashtrians). ... is an Indo-Aryan language, part of the greater Indo-European language family. ... A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. ... Legendary Movie Poster Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based film industry in India. ... (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. ...   (IPA: [] Bengali: কলকাতা) (formerly  ) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. ... Shillong (Hindi: शिलांग, Bengali: শিলং) is the capital of Meghalaya, one of the smaller states in India. ...

Outside the Indian subcontinent

• Tadj-Uzbeki, a term coined by Tiwari ([1966] 2004), for the dialect spoken by Indian immigrants from 13th century onwards in the border region of Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan (towns of Hisar, Shehr-e-nau, Regar, Surchi, etc). It seems to be based on the Braj, Hariyani and Rajasthani dialects, and is of course highly influenced by Uzbek, Tadjik and Russian languages.
• Mauritian Hindi, spoken in Mauritius, based on Bhojpuri and influenced by French.
• Sarnami, a form of Bhojpuri with Awadhi influence spoken by Surinamers of Indian descent.
• Fiji Hindi, a form of Awadhi spoken by Fijians of Indian descent.
• Trinidad Hindi, based on Bhojpuri, and spoken in Trinidad and Tobago by people of Indian descent.
• South African Hindi, based on Bhojpuri, and spoken in South Africa by people of Indian descent.
• Though Chinese Mandarin is forced upon the Tibetans through the education system, it is Hindi that is popular, spoken and understood widely by the Tibetan traders of Lhasa, and along the area of Tibet bordering India, which is thousands of miles^{[citation needed]}.

The Republic of Tajikistan (Тоҷикистон), formerly known as the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, is a country in Central Asia. ... This article or section should include material from Tajiki Persian Tajik or Tadjik (natively Тоҷикӣ, Tojikí, تاجیکی) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... Russian ( , transliteration: , ) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. ... Categories: Indo-Aryan languages | Languages of India | Language stubs ... Indian Indentured labourers were initially brought to Fiji from many districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. ... Tibet (older spelling Thibet; Tibetan: བོད་; Wylie: Bod; Lhasa dialect IPA: [; Simplified and Traditional Chinese: 西藏, Hanyu Pinyin: XÄ«zàng; also referred to as 藏区 (Simplified Chinese), 藏區 (Traditional Chinese), ZàngqÅ« (Hanyu Pinyin), see Name section below) is a plateau region in Central Asia and the indigenous home to the Tibetan people. ... Lhasa (Tibetan: ལྷ་ས་; Wylie: lha sa; Lhasa dialect IPA: [; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), sometimes spelled Llasa, is the traditional capital of Tibet and the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Hindi and Urdu

The term Urdu arose in 1645. Until then, and even after 1645, the term Hindi or Hindvi was used in a general sense for the dialects of central and northern India.

There are two fundamental distinctions between Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi that lead to their being recognised as distinct languages:

• the source of borrowed vocabulary (Persian/Arabic for Urdu and Sanskrit for Hindi); and
• the script used to write them in (for Urdu, an adaptation of the Perso-Arabic alphabet written in Nasta'liq style; for Hindi, an adaptation of the Devanagari script).

Colloquially and linguistically, the distinction between the Urdu and Hindi is nearly meaningless. This is true over much of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, wherever neither learned vocabulary nor writing is used. Outside the Delhi dialect area, the term "Hindi" may be used in reference to the local dialect, which may be very different from both Hindi and Urdu. Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ...

The word Hindi has many different uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu. These uses include:

1. standardized Hindi as taught in schools throughout India,
2. formal or official Hindi advocated by Purushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,
3. the vernacular nonstandard dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu as spoken throughout much of India and Pakistan, as discussed above,
4. the neutralized form of the language used in popular television and films, or
5. the more formal neutralized form of the language used in broadcast and print news reports.

The rubric "Hindi" is often used as a catch-all for those idioms in the North Indian dialect continuum that are not recognized as languages separate from the language of the Delhi region. Panjabi, Bihari, and Chhatisgarhi, while sometimes recognised as being distinct languages, are often considered dialects of Hindi. Many other local idioms, such as the Bhili languages, which do not have a distinct identity defined by an established literary tradition, are almost always considered 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. A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... Purushottam Das Tandon (August 1, 1882 – July 1, 1962), was a freedom fighter, social reformer and national political leader of India. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. ... HindustānÄ« (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as HindÄ«-UrdÅ«, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of HindÄ« and Urd... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ...

The other use of the word "Hindi" is in reference to Standard Hindi, the Khari boli register of the Delhi dialect of Hindi (generally called Hindustani) with its direct loanwords from Sanskrit. 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. In linguistics, a diasystem is a term used in structural dialectology, to refer to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. ...

Urdu was earlier called Zabān-e-Urdū-e-Mu’allah (زبانِ اردوِ معلہ, ज़बान-ऐ उर्दू), lit., the "Exalted Language of the Camp". Earlier, terms Hindi and Urdu were used interchangeably even by Urdu poets like Mir and Mirza Ghalib of the early 19th century (rather, the terms Hindvi/Hindi was used more often). By 1850, Hindi and Urdu were no longer used for the same language. Other linguists such as Sir G. A. Grierson (1903) have also claimed that Urdu is simply a dialect or style of Western Hindi. Before the Partition of India, Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad used to be the four literary centers of Urdu — none of which lie in present Pakistan. Mirza Ghalib (1796-1869), One of the greatest Urdu poets Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan (Urdu/Persian: مرزا اسد اللہ خان ), pen-name Ghalib (Urdu/Persian: غالب, Ä¡hālib) and Asad (former pen-name)(27 December 1796 — 15 February 1869), was a renowned classical Urdu and Persian poet of India. ... Delhi   (Hindi: , Urdu: , Punjabi: ) is the second-largest metropolis in India after Mumbai with a population of 13 million. ... Lucknow   (Hindi: लखनऊ, Urdu: لكهنو, ) is the capital city of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. ... Aligarh   (Hindi: अलीगढ़, Urdu: علی Ú¯Ú‘Ú¾) is a city in Aligarh District in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. ...

The colloquial language spoken by the people 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 Perso-Arabic 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 many extreme-nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. The tensions reached a peak in the Hindi-Urdu controversy in 1867 in the then United Provinces during the British Raj. However, there were and 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. In 1867, some Hindus began to demand that Hindi should be made an official language in place of Urdu 1. ... United Provinces, 1903 The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, mainly referred to simply as the United Provinces, was a former province of British India, which existed from 1902 to 1947. ... The flag of British India British India, circa 1860 The British Raj (Raj in Hindi meaning Rule; from Sanskrit Rajya) was the British rule between 1858 and 1947 of the Indian Subcontinent, which included the present-day India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Burma (Myanmar), whereby these lands were under the colonial...

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: Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ...

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels See also: IPA, Consonants Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels See also: IPA, Consonants Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

Additional notes on vowels

• The short open-mid front unrounded vowel (/ɛ/: as e in get) can occur as a conditioned allophone of schwa. Thus, the pronunciation of the vowel अ occurs in two forms. When this vowel is followed by word-middle /h/, or it surrounds word-middle /h/, or is followed by word-ending /h/, it changes allophonically to short /ɛ/. In all other cases it is the mid central vowel schwa. Thus, the following words शहर, रहना, कह are pronounced as /ʃɛhɛr/, /rɛhnɑː/ and /kɛh/ and not as /ʃəhər/, /rəhənɑː/ and /kəh/. It also occurs in loanwords from English, where it is sometimes accorded a new vowel symbol of ऍ (candra: पॅ). e.g., pen: पॅन.
• The short open back rounded vowel (/ɒ/: as o in hot), does not exist in Hindi at all, other than for English loanwords. In orthography, a new symbol has been invented for it: ऑ (पॉ). If included in Hindi phonology, it brings the number of phonemic vowels to 11.
• There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Hindi alphabet. They are
  • ऋ (originally in Sanskrit a vowel-like syllabic retroflex approximant), pronounced in modern Hindi as /ri/, used only in Sanskrit loanwords (पृ).
  • अं (called anusvāra), pronounced as /əŋ/. Its diacritic (the dot above) is used for a variety of purposes, consisting of vocalic nasalization, and the nasal consonants /n/, /m/, /ɳ/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/ before another consonant. This leads to alternative Hindi spellings for the some words, e.g., the word Hindi itself has two spellings: हिन्दी and हिंदी.
  • अः (called visarga), pronounced as /əh/. Used only in Sanskrit loanwords (पः).
  • The diacritic अँ (called candrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusvāra to indicate nasalization of the vowel (पँ).
• If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virāma diacritic below (प्).
• There is less lip-rounding than in English in the long open-mid back rounded vowel (/ɔː/: as au in caught). The vowel /ɑː/ in Hindi is more central and less back than in English, like /ä/.
• All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized, except ऑ. Barring exceptions, the nasalization is phonemic.
• In Sanskrit and in some (eastern) dialects of Hindi (as well as in a few words in Standard Hindi), the vowel ऐ is pronounced as a diphthong /əi̯/ or /ai̯/ rather than /ɛː/. Similarly, the vowel औ is pronounced in some words as the diphthong /əu̯/ or /au̯/ rather than /ɔː/. Other than these, Hindi does not have true diphthongs—two vowels might occur sequentially but then they are pronounced as two syllables (a glide might come in between while speaking).
• The vowel ऐ is used to represent the English vowel /æ/ in words like "cat" /kæt/; in these cases, many Hindi speakers pronounce it as [æː] instead of [ɛː], adding an additional vowel phoneme to the Hindi inventory.
• In the Devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without a virāma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: प as opposed to प्), the short neutral vowel schwa (/ə/) is automatically associated with it—this is of course true for the consonant when in any other position in the word. However, in Hindi, even if the word-ending consonant is written without a virāma, the associated schwa is almost never pronounced. The schwa (/ə/) may be pronounced very short only if the absence of schwa would otherwise make the pronunciation of the word very difficult — such a situation arises when there is a consonantal cluster at the end of the word. Thus, for phonological purposes, a word-ending grapheme without a halant or any other vowel-diacritic must be treated as consonant ending. The schwa in Hindi is usually dropped (syncopated) in khariboli even at certain instances in word-middle positions, where the orthography would otherwise dictate so. e.g., रुकना (to stay) is normally pronounced as /ruknɑː/, while according to the orthography, it should have been /rukənɑː/. (Tiwari, [1966] 2004). Schwa is never syncopated in the first syllable, but often syncoped in the second or the penultimate syllable — this of course reduces the number of syllables in the word. The syncopation of schwa is not phonemically contrastive.

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 /ɑː/ or /aː/—this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound feminine. Some examples are given below: Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics and phonology, schwa is the neutral, mid central unrounded vowel sound, exactly in the middle of the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... The retroflex approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association also describes the near-close near-front unrounded vowel (/ɪ/) the near-close near-back rounded vowel (/ʊ/) as occurring in Hindi phonology. They respectively occur as free allophones of short /i/ and /u/. Shiva (also spelled Siva; Sanskrit ) is considered to be the supreme God in Shaivism, a denomination of Hinduism and one of the five primary forms of the Divine in Smarta tradition or Smartism, a denomination of Hinduism. ... In Vedic religion, Varuna (Devanagari:वरुण, IAST:) is a god of the sky, of rain and of the celestial ocean, as well as a god of law and of the underworld. ... The Vedas are part of the Hindu Shruti; these religious scriptures form part of the core of the Brahminical and Vedic traditions within Hinduism and are the inspirational, metaphysical and mythological foundation for later Vedanta, Yoga, Tantra and even Bhakti forms of Hinduism. ... Lord Sri Rama (center) with wife Sita, brother Lakshmana and devotee Hanuman. ... The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian text on sex, widely considered the standard work on love in the Sanskrit literature. ... Allegiance: Magadhan Empire Rank: Emperor Succeeded by: Dasaratha Maurya Reign: 273 BC-232 BC Place of birth: Pataliputra, India Battles/Wars Kalinga War Emperor Ashoka the Great (Devanagari: अशोक(:); IAST transliteration: , pronunciation: ) (304 BC–232 BC) (Imperial Title:Devanampiya Piyadassi ie He who is the beloved of the Gods who, in... This article is about Ashoka, the emperor. ... Vowels See also: IPA, Consonants Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

Consonants

Hindi has a large consonant system, with about 38 distinct consonant phonemes. 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 20 plosives, 5 nasals, and 8 sonorants and fricatives. The system is filled out by 5 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 consonants, and that many linguists also call the aspirated voiced plosives as breathy voice or murmur stops. In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... (adj. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Breathy voice or murmured voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds are vibrating as in normal voicing, but the glottal closure is incomplete, so that the voicing is somewhat inefficient and air continues to leak between the vocal folds throughout the vibration cycle with audible friction noise. ...

The 25 stop consonants 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 the Devanagari script) with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/ə/), 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. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... The vocal cords, also known as vocal folds, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the human larynx. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ... In music, a trill is a type of ornament; see trill (music) In phonetics, a trill is a type of consonant; see trill consonant In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Trill are two symbiotic races of aliens; see Trill (Star Trek). ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... च् + छ = च्छ Devanagari in Unicode The Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 . ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, three consonantal clusters are also added: क्ष /kʃə/ (in Hindi), त्र /t̪rə/ and ज्ञ /gjə/ (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 do not pronounce these sounds (except /ɽ / and / ɽʱ/) and replace them instead with the nearest equivalents, as shown in column 4 in the table below. These are: In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolars are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the internal side of the upper gums (known as the alveoles of the upper teeth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... The vocal cords, also known as vocal folds, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the human larynx. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

ड़ /ɽə/ and ढ़ /ɽʱə/ are not of Persian/Arabic origin, but they are allophonic variants of simple voiced retroflex stops of Sanskrit. The voiceless uvular plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... The retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... The retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

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 language is English but are interested in learning Hindi language.

• The distinction between the aspirated and the unaspirated consonants is really very strong, not only in Hindi, but also in Sanskrit and many other languages of India.
• The distinction between the dental plosives and the retroflex plosives is also very stark in all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages.
• Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers should try to pronounce the voiceless aspirates by speaking these words in a quick but clear liaison-like fashion:
  • "take him", "get him", "ditch him", "slap him".
  • One could also try speaking the words "kite", "take", "chip" and "pat" with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corrsponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all.
• No nasal consonant except /m/ and /n/ can start a word in Hindi. All the other nasal consonants in modern Hindi are conditioned allophones of /n/.
• Tiwari ([1966] 2004) lists the following additional phonemes in Hindi: the aspirates /nʰ/, /mʰ/ and /lʰ/. They are phonemically contrastive to the corresponding unaspirated consonants, but orthographically appear as consonant clusters न्ह, म्ह, ल्ह.
• The retroflex flaps cannot start a word. They did not exist as such in Sanskrit—they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit's simple voiced retroflex plosives. The other Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages tend to use retroflex flaps in their vocabulary even more frequently than Hindi does. Originally, they were purely conditioned allophones in Hindi, coming if and only if the consonants /ɖ/ and /ɖʰ/ came in word-middle positions when surrounded by two vowels or word-ending positions when preceded by a vowel, and never in the word-beginning position or in consonantal clusters (where the plosives would come). But the inclusion of English words, whose alveolar plosives become retroflex in Hindi, have made at least the unaspirated retroflex flap /ɽ/ a separate phoneme. The grapheme ण /ɳ/, when followed by a vowel, is usually flapped.
• Hindi /t̪/ and /d̪/ are (apico-) dental as in Spanish or Italian.
• The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". Much though has been listed that Hindi (being an Indo-Aryan language) has retroflex plosives, certain linguists (who are also the native speakers of Hindi) disagree. According to Tiwari ([1966] 2004), the so-called retroflex plosives in Hindi are at the most (apico-) post-alveolar or pre-palatal, and sometimes even alveolar. The retroflex flaps are pronounced in a similar way, by bringing the tongue's tip to the roof of the mouth or pre-palatal region and giving it a sharp flap downwards. Hence, the so-called retroflex plosives are not phonemically contrastive with the alveolar stops that come through English loanwords, but rather with the dental plosives.
• Sanskrit /r/ is retroflex, but Hindi /r/ is the alveolar trill, as in Scottish English.
• The palatal affricates of Hindi do not have as much a sharp frictional release as in English. They have more of a plosive component. It is not very clear whether they are clearly palatal or postalveolar (as in English). Tiwari ([1966] 2004) classifies them as palatal, and certainly as affricates and not pure plosives, that Sanskrit used to have. He has also called the sibilant श as a voiceless palatal fricative /ç/, rather than postalveolar. However, Hock (1991) prefers to say that this particular sibilant is phonetically the same, whether articulated from the postalveolar region or from the palatal region.
• Hindi has neither /v/ nor /w/. Its nearest equivalent is /ʋ/, which is very close to /v/, but does not have a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. Tiwari ([1966] 2004) claims that /w/ is its allophone.
• The voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/ of Sanskrit has been replaced by /ʃ/ in modern Hindi pronunciation, but is used in spellings as such.
• It is doubtful whether Hindi has a voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/ (for the alphabet ह) or its unvoiced counterpart. The difference between them, unlike in Sanskrit, is not phonemically contrastive.
• The five new consonants borrowed from Perso-Arabic, /q/, /x/, /ɤ/, /z/ and /f/, are only peripheral phonemes in Hindi. Most native Hindi-speakers cannot produce them, and substitute /k/, /kʰ/, /g/, /ɟʝ/ and /pʰ/ respectively for these consonants. Because the phonemes /z/ and /f/ come in English loanwords, people of the new generation well-educated in English usually pronounce them correctly, but still use substitutes for the other three. In the Urdu style, all five are pronounced correctly.

Map of South Asia in native languages. ... The voiced retroflex plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... The retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages (such as Russian, Spanish, Armenian, and Polish). ... The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless retroflex fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ...

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 equally heavy or equally light. (A light syllable is closed by a short vowel a, i, u, while a medium syllable is closed by a long vowel or diphthong ā, e, ī, o, ū, au, ai or by two consonants, and a heavy syllable is closed by both a long vowel/diphthong and two consonants.) If the word contains a mixture or heavy and light syllables, the stress falls automatically on the penultimate heaviest syllable. (Cf. McGregor, pp. xx-xxi.) Strictly speaking, Hindi, like most other Indian languages, is rather a syllable timed language. The schwa /ə/ has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing (syncopated) if its syllable is unaccented. Also note that in written Hindi, many words end in short /u/ or short /i/, but in speech they are often converted to ending in long /uː/ or long /iː/, respectively. The intonation 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. In linguistics, the timing in a language comprises the rhythmic qualities of speech, in particular how syllables are distributed across time. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

Writing system

Main article: Hindustani orthography

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 Hindi text comprehensibly, even without knowing what the words mean or having heard them before. The entire alphabet has been discussed in the preceding section on phonology. Hindustani, Hindi, and Urdu have been written in several different scripts. ... च् + छ = च्छ Devanagari in Unicode The Unicode range for Devanagari is U+0900 . ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ...

Transliteration Conventions

The standard transliteration of Hindi into the Roman alphabet is usually the IAST scheme, whereby the retroflex consonants (retroflex t, d, their aspirates, n, vowel-like r) and the breath h are shown with a dot beneath; the long vowels are shown with a macron or a bar (as ā above; aspiration of a plosive is shown with a following h; and elided a's are removed for a truer correspondence to speech. Other alphabet characters are pronounced as in normal English. Another transliteration (ITRANS) uses capital letters of English to transcribe the long vowels and retroflex consonants. However, since English is a lingua franca of the educated Indians, and since computer keyboards do not have features for typing the IAST characters, Indians today use a casual transliteration into English for Hindi words; in such a casual transliteration, used especially in online chatting, the retroflex and dental consonants are not differentiated, and neither the short and the long vowels (except that sometimes people double the alphabet to indicate a long vowel). IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ... The Indian languages TRANSliteration (ITRANS) is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly, but not exclusively, for DevanāgarÄ« (used for the Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali, Sindhi and other languages). ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...

Grammar

Main article: Hindi-Urdu grammar

Hindī-Urdū grammar (Hindī: हिन्दी-उर्दू व्याकरण hindī-urdū vyākaraṇ, Urdū: ہندی-اردو قواعد, hindī-urdū qavāid), also known as Hindustānī grammar, is the grammar of the Hindī-Urdū (Hindustānī) language. ...

Sample Text

See also: Urdu#Examples

The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations): (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... Eleanor Roosevelt with the Spanish version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ...

अनुच्छेद 1 — सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अधिकारों 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): IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ...

anucched 1 — sabhī manuṣyoṃ ko gaurav aur adhikāroṃ ke māmle meṃ janmajāt svatantratā prāpt hai. Unheṃ buddhi aur antarātmā kī den prāpt hai aur paraspar unheṃ bhāīcāre ke bhāv se bartāv karnā cāhiye.

Gloss (word-to-word):

Article 1 — All human-beings to dignity and rights' matter in from-birth freedom acquired is. Them to reason and conscience's endowment acquired is and always them to brotherhood's spirit with behaviour to do want.

Translation (grammatical):

Article 1 — 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

• the phonetic mechanism of some sounds peculiar to Hindi (eg. rda, dha etc) The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants will be difficult for English speakers. In addition, the distinction between dental and alveoloar (or retroflex) consonants will also pose problems. English speakers will find that they need to carefully distinguish between four different d-sounds and four different t-sounds.
• pronunciation of vowels: In English, unstressed vowels tend to have a "schwa" quality. The pronunciation of such vowels in English is changed to an "uh" sound; this is called reducing a vowel sound. The second syllable of "unify" is pronounced /ə/, not "ee." The same for the unstressed second syllable of "person" which is also pronounced /ə/ rather than "oh." In Hindi, English-speakers must constantly be careful not to reduce these vowels.
  • In this respect, probably the most important mistake would be for English speakers to reduce final "ah" sounds to "uh." This can be especially important because an English pronunciation will lead to misunderstandings about grammar and gender. In Hindi, "vo bolta hai" is "he talks" whereas "vo bolti hai" is "she talks." A typical English pronunciation in the first sentence would be "vo boltuh hai," which will be understood as "she talks" by most Hindi-native speakers.
• The 'a' ending of many Sanskrit and Sanskrit borrowed masculine-gender words, due to Romanization, is highly confused by non-native speakers, because the short 'a' is dropped in Hindi. There are exceptions, of course, if the devanagari script itself dictates the additional diacritical mark for the vowel "long ā" at the end of certain masculine words, like Brahmā (ब्रह्मा).
• the Verbal concordance; Hindi exhibits split ergativity; see Ergative-absolutive language for an example.
• Relative-correlative constructions. In English interrogative and relative pronouns are the same word. In "Who are you?" the word "who" is an interrogative, or question, pronoun. In "My friend who lives in Sydney can speak Hindi," the word "who" is not an interrogative, or question-pronoun. It is a relative, or linking-pronoun. In Hindi, there are different words for each. The interrogative pronoun tends to start with the "k" sound:" kab = when?, kahaaN = where?, kitna = how much? The relative pronouns are usually very similar but start with "j" sounds: jab = when, jahaaN = where, jitna = how much.

Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics, romanization (or Latinization, also spelled romanisation or Latinisation) is the representation of a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system. ... This article concerns the Hindu creator god, Brahma. ... Look up Concordance on Wiktionary, the free dictionary see Concordance system for usage in politics. ... Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology (usually accusative) in some contexts. ... An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. ...

Literature

Main article: Hindi literature

Hindi literature draws upon the heritage of Sanskrit literature, and has a long history. Tulasidas's Ramacharitamanasa was an early work in Awadhi that attained wide popularity. Modern Hindi literary figures include : Hindi literature (Hindi: हिंदी साहित्य) Hindi poetry is divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional - Kabir, Raskhan); Shringar (beauty - Keshav, Bihari); Veer-Gatha (extolling brave warriors); and Adhunik (modern). ... Goswami Tulsidas (1532-1623) was a medieval Hindi poet and philosopher. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Sri Ramacharit Manas. ...

Main Poetry (Kavya) writers

• Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar'
• Jaishankar Prasad
• Sumitranandan Pant
• Subhadra kumari chauhan
• Maithili Sharan Gupta
• Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala'
• Mahadevi Verma
• Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayana 'Ajneya'
• Harivansh Rai Bachchan
• Nagarjun
• Dharmveer Bharti
• Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay 'Hariaudh'
• Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh
• Shamsher Bahadur Singh
• Dushyant Kumar
• Gopal Das 'Neeraj'
• Ashok Vajpayee
• Vishnu Khare
• Rajesh Joshi
• Manglesh Dabral
• Alokdhanva
• Kumar Ambuj
• Sarveswar Dayal Saxena
• Dr. Jagdish Gupt

Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (रामधारी सिंह दिनकर) (1908 - April 24, 1974) was one of the most famous modern Hindi poets. ... Jaishankar Prasad (January 30, 1889 - January 14, 1937) (Hindi: जयशंकर प्रसाद) was one of the most famous figures in modern Hindi literature. ... Sumitranandan Pant (सुमित्रानन्‍दन पंत) (1900 - December 28, 1977) was one of the most famous modern Hindi poets. ... Maithilisharan Gupt (1886-1965) was one of the most famous modern Hindi poets. ... Suryakant Tripathi Nirala (January 22, 1896-October 15, 1961) was one of the most famous figures of the modern Hindi literature. ... Mahadevi Verma (1907-1987) was an Indian Poetess. ... S. H. Vatsyayan (सच्‍चिदानन्‍द हीरानन्‍द वात्‍स्‍यायन) (1911–1987), (Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayana), was popularly known by his pen-name... Harivanshrai Srivastav Bachchan ( November 27, 1907 - January 18, 2003) was a Hindi poet. ... Nagarjun (Hindi:, Baba Nagarjun, Vaidya Nath Mishra, Yatri) (1911-1998), was a major Hindi and Maithili poet who has also penned a number of novels, short stories, literary biographies and travelogues. ... Dr. Dharamvir Bharati (धर्मवीर भारती) (December 25, 1926 - September 4, 1997), was an Indian writer. ...

Main Prose (Gadya) writers

• Bharatendu Harishchandra
• Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan
• Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla
• Mahadevi Verma
• Munshi Premchand
• Phanishwar Nath Renu
• Harishankar Parsai
• Surender Mohan Pathak
• Agyeya
• Jainendra
• Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh
• Ramvriksh Venipuri
• Prabhakar Machve
• Chakradhar Sharma Guleri
• Vishnu Prabhakar
• Amrit Lal Naagar
• Bheeshm Sahni
• Usha Priyamvada
• Krishna Sobti
• Rangeya Raghav
• Nirmal Verma
• Jitendra Sahay
• Kamaleshwar
• Mithileshwar
• Babu Gulabrai
• Suryakant Nirala
• Manohar Lal

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan He was born Kedarnath Pande on 9 April 1893. ... Ram Chandra Shukla better known as Acharya Shukla (October 4, 1882 - 1942) is regarded as the first codifier of the history of Hindi literature in a scientific system by efforting great research with scanty resources and published ‘Hindi Sahitya Ka Itihaas’(1928-29). ... Mahadevi Verma (1907-1987) was an Indian Poetess. ... Munshi Premchand (July 31, 1880-October 8, 1936) (pen name: Premchand) was one of the greatest literary figures of modern Hindi and Urdu literature. ... Phanishwar Nath Renu (फणीश्‍वर नाथ रेणु) (1921-1977) is one of the great Hindi novelists of the post-Premchand era. ... Harishankar Parsai (1922 – 1995) was a Hindi writer. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

Entertainment and showbusiness

Main article: Bollywood

Further information: Bollywood songs

Hindi films play an important role in popular culture. The dialogues and songs of Hindi films use Khariboli and Hindi-Urdu in general, but the intermittent use of various dialects such as Awadhi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Punjabi and quite often Bambaiya Hindi, as also of many English words, is common. Bollywood (Hindi: , Urdu: ) is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. ... Bollywood songs (often termed filmi songs) are heard far beyond the borders of India. ... The word Hindustani is an adjective used to denote a connection to India, or, more precisely, the historical region that encompasses Northern India, Pakistan, and nearby areas. ... Awadhi is a dialect of Hindi, spoken in the Awadh (Oudh) region of Uttar Pradesh. ... Categories: Indo-Aryan languages | Languages of India | Language stubs ... Punjabi (also Panjabi; in Gurmukhī, Panjābī in Shāhmukhī) is the language of the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan. ... Bambaiyya Hindi, Mumbaiyya, or Bombay Hindi (Hindi: बंबय्या हिंदी) is a vernacular form of Hindi spoken primarily in Mumbai (Bombay, formerly). ...

Alam Ara (1931), which ushered in the era of "talkie" films in India, was a Hindi film. This film had seven songs in it. Music soon became an integral part of Hindi cinema. It is a very important part of popular culture and now comprises an entire genre of popular music. So popular is film music that songs filmed even 50-60 years ago are a staple of radio/TV and are generally very familiar to an Indian.

Hindi movies and songs are popular in many parts of India, such as Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, that do not speak Hindi as a native language. Indeed, the Hindi film industry is largely based at Mumbai (Bombay), in the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra. Hindi films are also popular abroad, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan,Nepal,Bangladesh, Iran and UK. “Bombay” redirects here. ... Maharashtra   (Marathi: महाराष्ट्र , English: , IPA: ) is Indias third largest state in terms of area and second largest in terms of population after Uttar Pradesh. ...

The role of radio and television in propagating Hindi beyond its native audience cannot be overstated. Television in India was controlled by the central government until the proliferation of satellite TV rendered regulation redundant. During the era of control, Hindi predominated on both radio and TV, enjoying more air-time than local languages. After the advent of satellite TV, several private channels emerged to compete with the government's official TV channel. Today, a large number of satellite channels provide viewers with much variety in entertainment. These include soap operas, detective serials, horror shows, dramas, cartoons, comedies, host shows for Hindi songs, Hindu mythology and documentaries.

^{Superscript text}== Common Phrases ==

Hinglish

Main article: Hinglish

"Hinglish" is the use of Hindi and English, combining both, in one sentence. This is more commonly seen in urban and semi-urban centers of population, but is slowly spreading its root into rural and remote areas via television and word of mouth, slowly achieving vernacular status. Many speakers do not realize that they are incorporating English words into Hindi sentences or Hindi words into English sentences. Hinglish, a portmanteau of the words Hindi and English, is the arbitrary usage of Hindi and English, combining both, in one sentence. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

This highly popular mixing of both the languages in most parts of northern and central India has grown from the fact that English is a popular language of choice amongst the urban youth who find themselves comfortable in its lexicon. It is already the medium for imparting education in many schools across the nation. The advent of cable television and its pervasive growth has seen the masses exposed to a wide variety of programming from across the world. Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house. ...

Another factor contributing to the spread of Hinglish is the popularity of Bollywood films. Bollywood (Hindi: , Urdu: ) is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. ...

Examples

• "Dad, time kya hua hai?" (Dad, what is the time right now?).
• "I have hazaar things on my mind right now." (I have thousands of things on my mind right now.)
• "Mama, mujhe mall se jeans lenee hai." (Mama, I want to buy jeans from the mall).

See also

• Links to Hindi Resources on the Web
• Hindi Computing Resources
• The list of Hindi words and list of words of Hindi origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project
• Hindi literature
• Hindustānī (Hindī-Urdū) word etymology
• Complex Text Layout languages
• Where is Hindi on the Internet?
• Languages of India
• List of national languages of India
• List of Indian languages by total speakers
• History of Hindi: a detailed chronology
• Hindi Wikipedia
• Hinglish

Wiktionary (from wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... Hindi literature (Hindi: हिंदी साहित्य) Hindi poetry is divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional - Kabir, Raskhan); Shringar (beauty - Keshav, Bihari); Veer-Gatha (extolling brave warriors); and Adhunik (modern). ... Hindustānī also known as Hindi-Urdu, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. ... Complex Text Layout languages (frequently referred to as CTL languages) are languages whose writing systems require complex transformations between text input and text display for proper rendering on the screen or the printed page. ... The most-used language on the Internet is English. ... Map of South Asia in native languages. ... India has a diverse list of spoken languages among different groups of people. ... Indian languages spoken by more than ten million people are given below. ... The history of Hindi, a major language of India. ... A screenshot of the Hindi Wikipedia Main Page taken on January 7, 2006 A screenshot of the Hindi Wikipedia Main Page taken on 8 May, 2006 The Hindi Wikipedia (Hindi: विकिपीडिया wikipīḍiyā) is the Hindi language edition of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. ... Hinglish, a portmanteau of the words Hindi and English, is the arbitrary usage of Hindi and English, combining both, in one sentence. ...

References

Notes

1. ^ The Union: Official Languages
2. ^ PDF from india.gov.in containing Articles 343 which states so
3. ^ McGregor, R.S. (1993) Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, USA. Reprint 2004. p. 1071.
4. ^ Census of India
5. ^ SIL International's report on Hindi in its Ethnologue
6. ^ Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000 - Census 2000 Brief Issued October 2003. Retrieved 24 August 2006.
7. ^ http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
8. ^ PDF (in Hindi & English) from india.gov.in to confirm the claims on rajbhasha
9. ^ Article 344(1) of the Constitution of India
10. ^ Shapiro, M: Hindi.
11. ^ Ethnologue report for Hindi

Bibliography

• International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Bhatia, Tej K. Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-11087-4 (Book), 0415110882 (Cassettes), 0415110890 (Book & Cassette Course)
• Grierson, G. A. Linguistic Survey of India Vol I-XI, Calcutta, 1928, ISBN 81-85395-27-6
• Hock, Hans H. (1991), Principles of Historical Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin–New York, ISBN 3-11-012962-0
• McGregor, R. S. (1977), Outline of Hindi Grammar, 2nd Ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford-Delhi, ISBN 0-19-870008-3 (3rd ed.)
• Shapiro, Michael C. Hindi. Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates, 2001.
• Snell, Rupert Teach yourself Hindi: A complete guide for beginners. Lincolnwood, IL : NTC Publishing Group, 1992. ISBN 0-8442-3863-5
• Taj, Afroz (2002) A door into Hindi. Retrieved November 8, 2005.
• Tiwari, Bholanath ([1966] 2004) हिन्दी भाषा (Hindī Bhāshā), Kitāb Mahal, Allahabad, ISBN 81-225-0017-X.

November 8 is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 53 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Further reading

• Bhatia, Tej K A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition. Leiden, Netherlands & New York, NY : E.J. Brill, 1987. ISBN 90-04-07924-6

External links

Hindi edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikibooks has more on the topic of

Hindi

• A compilation of Tools and Techniques for Hindi Computing
• KeyTrans Intelligent transliteration email and spell check for Hindi and other Indian languages
• हाइट्रांस | HiTrans, Roman-Nagari Transliteration scheme and conversion tool
• भोजपत्र देवनागरी - Unicode Tool
• Microsoft hindi IME keyboard हिन्दी कीबोर्ड - free download from Bhashaindia.com
• Romanized to Unicode Hindi transliterator
• Online Hindi Type Pad Easy Hindi Typing with English Keyboard.
• Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies - an audio podcast
• Hindi Chauvinism - A report in The Hindu
• The National language issue
• Transcript of a debate in the Sixth session of the Tenth Lok Sabha
• Hindi against India
• Request free Hindi Fonts and Devanagari Tools CD from Indian Government
• A short introduction to Hindi grammar
• Hindi Typewriter layout keyboard typing helpComprehensive Discussion & resources to help typing Hindi over internet.
• History and Evolution of Hindi Language Extended resource compiled by Abhinav Bhatele, with phonological, morphological, and lexical development in Hindi, with many period extracts. (Accessed Mar 16, 2006).
• Ethnologue on Hindi
• Useful Hindi phrases in English and other Indian languages.
• Wordanywhere.com Hindi/Telugu/English Dictionary, useful phrases and translation forums
• Hindi News
• Generator for Hindi typographical filler text
• Hindi Language Resources
• Hindi documents and dictionary
• A compilation of popular Hindi Poetry at geeta-kavita.com
• International Institute of Information Technologies IIIT, online and downloadable dictionaries cross referenced in English for Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu languages. Includes Classical Hindi Literature, writings of Meera, Suradas, Tulasidas, Premchand, Rahim et cetera.
• Hindi Translation
• Hindi News and Movies Site
• Official Unicode Chart for Devanagari (PDF)
• writeKA English-to-Hindi Online Transliterator
• Website of Microsoft to Provide Solutions for Hindi Language on net
• Windows Indic Script Support
• How to enable Indic Language Support at OS level
• Hindi English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
• Hindi To English Talktive Dictioanry
• List of Hindi news websites on Squidoo
• The Constitution of India of 1950 The Constitution of India of 1950, which contains Articles about the Language of the Union (PART XVII - Chapter I)

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• The Union: Official Language
• for Articles 343-351 of the constitution of India
• (in Hindi and English) to confirm the claims on Rajbhasha
• for the eighth schedule of the constitution of India
• Govt of India site about Rajbhasha
• Possible changes in Hindi language
• Sound samples of the Hindi alphabet

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The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, which are the earliest sacred texts of India,. The Vedas were first passed down orally and therefore have no known date. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Prakrit (also spelt Pracrit) (Sanskrit: , original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual, i. ... Pali may refer to: Pāli, a Middle Indo-Aryan language Pali, Rajasthan, a town and district in Rajasthan, western India Pali, a Hawaiian word, meaning cliffs Nuuanu Pali, a region on the Hawaiian island of Oahu Ballaleshwar Pali, the Ganapati temple of pali and place in Maharastra This is... The Magadhi language (also known as मगही Magahi) is a language spoken by 11,362,000 people in India. ... Kingdom of Mitanni Mitanni (cuneiform KUR URUMi-it-ta-ni, also Mittani Mi-ta-an-ni, in Assyrian sources Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat ) was a Hurrian kingdom in northern Mesopotamia from ca. ... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ... The dialects of the Bengali language are part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan language group of the Indo-European language family. ... Chittagonian is an Indo-European language spoken by the people of Chittagong in Bangladesh and the much of the southeast of the country. ... Sylheti (native name সিলটী Silôţi; Bengali name সিলেটী SileÅ£i) is the language of Sylhet proper, the north-eastern region of Bangladesh and southern districts of Assam around Silchar. ... HindustānÄ« (/ /; हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی), also known as HindÄ«-UrdÅ«, is a term used by linguists to describe several closely related idioms in the northern, central and northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and the vernacular blend between its two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of HindÄ« and Urd... (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... Angika is a language of the Ang or Anga region of India, a 58,000 km² area of Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states. ... Assamese ( ) (IPA: ) is a language spoken in the state of Assam in northeast India. ... Bhojpuri is a popular regional language spoken in northeastern India in the western part of state of Bihar, the northwestern part of Jharkhand, and the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, as well as an adjoining area of southern plains of Nepal. ... The Bishnupriya Manipuri language (BPM) (ইমার ঠার/বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী) is an Indo-Aryan language. ... Dhivehi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 300,000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the official language of the country and in the island of Minicoy (Maliku) in neighbouring India where it is known as Mahl. ... Dogri (डोगरी or ڈوگرى) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about two million people in India and Pakistan, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, but also in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, other parts of Kashmir, and elsewhere. ... is an Indo-Aryan language, part of the greater Indo-European language family. ... Konkani language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator To read this article in the Konkani Language, click this line हें लेख कोंकणींत वाचुंक हांगा क्लिक कोरा. Hem lekh Konknnint vachunk hanga click kora. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Maithili (मैथिली MaithilÄ«) is of the family of Indo-Aryan languages, which are part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. ... Marathi (मराठी ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western India (Maharashtrians). ... Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Punjabi (also Panjabi; in GurmukhÄ«, in ShāhmukhÄ«, in transliteration) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Punjabi people in India, Pakistan and other parts of the world. ... Romani (or Romany) is the language of the Roma and Sinti, peoples often referred to in English as Gypsies. The Indo-Aryan Romani language should not be confused with either Romanian (spoken by Romanians), or Romansh (spoken in parts of southeastern Switzerland), both of which are Romance languages. ... SindhÄ« (सिन्धी, سنڌي) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia, which is now a province of Pakistan. ... Sinhala (also referred to as Sinhalese; earlier referred to as Singhalese) is the mother tongue of the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. ... Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Bactrian language is an extinct language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria, also called Tocharistan, in northern Afghanistan. ... The Pamir languages of the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia are Shughni, Sarikoli, Yazgulyam, Munji, Sanglechi-Ishkashimi, Wakhi, and Yidgha. ... Shughni is one of the Pamir languages of the Southeastern Iranian language group. ... The Sarikoli language (also Sarikul, Sariqul, Sariköli) is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by Tajik people in China. ... The Wakhi Tajiki language is an Iranian language in the subbranch of Southeastern Iranian languages (see Pamir languages). ... Pashto (‎, IPA: also known as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto ‎, Pashtoe, Pashtu, Pushtu, Pushtoo, Pathan, or Afghan language) is an Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian language family spoken by Pashtuns living in southeastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. ... The Scythian languages are the Northeastern Iranian dialects spoken by the Scythian (Sarmatian, Saka) tribes of the nomadic pastoralists in Scythia (Central Asia, Pontic-Caspian steppe) between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD. Very little is known about them; they likely formed a dialect continuum, the western... This article is in need of improvement. ... The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language spoken in Sogdiana (Zarafshan River Valley) in the modern day republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (chief cities: Samarkand, Panjikent, Ferghana). ... The Yaghnobi language [1] is a living Northeastern Iranian language (the only other living member being the Ossetic), and is spoken in high valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by Yaghnobi people. ... The relevance of particular information in (or previously in) this article or section is disputed. ... Sketch of the first column of the Behistun Inscription Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language. ... Pahlavi is a term that refers: (1) to a script used in Iran derived from the Aramaic script, and (2) more broadly, to Middle Persian, the Middle Iranian language written in this script. ... Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... Persian (Local names: فارسی Fârsi or پارسی Pârsi)* is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as well as by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... Dari (Persian: ‎ ) is the official name for the Persian language in Afghanistan, popularly and locally known as Farsi. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... Bukhori, also known as Bukharic or Bukharan, is an Indo-Iranian language. ... Balochi (also Baluchi, Baloci or Baluci) is a Northwestern Iranian language. ... The main Zoroastrian fire temple in Yazd, Iran. ... Gileki or Giliki (Gilaki in Persian) is a northwestern Iranian language and is spoken in Irans Gilan province. ... The Kurdish language is a language spoken in the region called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ... Luri is a dialect of Persian language. ... Mazandarani or Tabari (Also known as: Mazenik, Tabersi) is an Iranian language of the northwestern branch. ... Talysh (also Talishi, Taleshi or Talyshi) are an Iranian people who speak one of the Northwestern Iranian languages. ... The Tat language or Tati is a Western Iranian language spoken by the Tat ethnic group in The Republic of Azerbaijan and Russia. ... Tat language or Tati (Persian: ) is a group of northwestern Iranian dialects which are closely related to Talysh language. ... Zazaki (Zazakî, Zazaish) or Dimli is a language closely related to the Persian and , spoken by the Zaza in eastern Anatolia Zazaland Zazaistan, (Turkey), an ethnic minority related to the Iranians. ... The Dardic languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages. ... Dameli is a language spoken by less than 5,000 people in the remote valley of Damil-Nisar, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... Domaaki - also known as Dumaki or Doma - is a language spoken in parts of northern Pakistan. ... Gawar-Bati is known in Chitral as Aranduyiwar, because it is spoken in Village Arandu, which is the last village in the bottom of Chitral and is across the Kunar River from Berkot in Afghanistan. ... The Kalasha language is classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral Group. ... Kashmiri (कॉशुर, کٲشُر) is a northern Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in the valley of Kashmir, a region situated mostly in the Indian Jammu and Kashmir state. ... Khowar is classified as a Dardic Language. ... Pashayi - also known as Pashai - is a language (or a group of languages) spoken in parts of southwestern Afghanistan. ... Palula, also known as Phalura and as Ashretiwar, is spoken by 7,000 to 15,000 people in Ashret and Biori Valleys, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... Tshina is a Dardic Language and is spoken by majority of people in Northern Areas of Pakistan. ... Shumashti - also known as Shumasht - is a language spoken in parts of western Afghanistan. ... Nuristani languages form a language sub-family of the Indo-Iranian languages localized between the Iranian languages and the Indo-Aryan languages Ashkun language Kamviri language Kati language (Bashgali) Prasuni language (Wasi-Weri) Tregami language Waigali language (Kalasha-Ala) Categories: Language stubs | Indo-Iranian languages ... Askunu is a language of Afghanistan spoken by the Askunu people in the region of Pech Valley around Wama, northwest of Asadabad in Kunar province. ... Kamkata-viri contains the two main dialects Kata-vari and Kamviri. ... Tregami or Trigami is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the villages of Gambir and Katar in the Nurestan Province of Afghanistan. ... Vasi-vari is a language spoken by the Vasi in a few villages in the Prasun Valley in Afghanistan. ... Waigali or Waigeli is a language spoken in a few villages in the central part of the Kunar Province of Afghanistan. ...