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"Hindi" redirects here. For other uses, see Hindi (disambiguation).
Standard Hindi
मानक हिन्दी Mānak Hindī
The word "Hindi" in Devanagari script
The word "Hindi" in Devanagari script
Native toIndia, Nepal, Mauritius and significant communities in UK, USA, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Myanmar, Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Africa, Uganda, New Zealand
Native speakers
(see Hindi-Urdu)
Devanagari
Official status
Official language in
 India
Regulated byCentral Hindi Directorate (India)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-1hi
ISO 639-2hin
ISO 639-3hin

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi (Devanagari: मानक हिन्दी), High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardised register of Hindustani identified with Hindus. It is one of the 22 official languages of India and is used as the primary official language of the Republic of India along with English.[3][4] Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khariboli dialect. By contrast, the spoken Hindi dialects form an extensive dialect continuum of the Indic language family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati and Marathi; on the southeast by Oriya; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by Nepali.

The number of speakers of Standard Hindi is ambiguous. According to the 2001 Indian census,[5] 258 million people in India regarded their native language to be "Hindi". However, this includes large numbers of speakers of Hindi dialects besides Standard Hindi; as of 2009, the best figure Ethnologue could find for Khariboli Hindi was a dated 1991 figure of 180 million.[6]

The regulating authority for Standard Hindi is the Central Hindi Directorate.[7]

This article deals specifically with the standard register of Hindi promulgated since independence. For its earlier history, as well as aspects such as phonology and grammar that it shares with Urdu, see Hindi-Urdu.

Official status

The Constitution of India, adopted in 1956, 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] The Constitution of India has stipulated the usage of Hindi and English to be the two languages of communication for the Central Government.

It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government by 1965 (per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351),[8] with state governments being free to function in languages of their own choice. However, widespread resistance movements to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers (such as the Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963), which provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes. 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.

At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following states in India: Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, 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.

History

Main article: History of Hindustani

The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is khariboli, the vernacular of the Delhi region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire (17th century) and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court." (See History of Hindustani for the history of this period.) After independence, the Government of India set about standardizing Hindi as a separate language from Urdu, instituting the following conventions:

  • standardization of 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 the orthography, using the Devanagari script, by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing, to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters, and introducing diacritics to express sounds from other languages.
  • standardization of vocabulary, replacing most of the more learned Persian loan words with new coinages from Sanskrit. (See next.)

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 many words drawn from Persian and Arabic. In addition, spoken Hindi includes words from English and other languages as well.

Vernacular Urdu and Hindi share the same grammar and core vocabulary and so are practically indistinguishable. However, the literary registers differ substantially in borrowed vocabulary; in highly formal situations, the languages are barely intelligible to speakers of the other. Hindi has looked to Sanskrit for borrowings from at least the 19th century, and Urdu has looked to Persian and Arabic for borrowings from the eighteenth century. On another dimension, Hindi is associated with the Hindu community and Urdu with the Muslim community though this is much more a twentieth century phenomenon when the political impetus to actively distinguish Hindi from Urdu gathered pace amongst the educated Hindus driving this change. Prior to this it was the norm for both educated Hindu and Muslim Indians to be fluent in Urdu.

There are five principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

  • Tatsam (तत्सम् / تتسم / same as that) words: These are words which are spelled the same in Hindi as in Sanskrit (except for the absence of final case inflections).[10] They include words inherited from Sanskrit via Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g. Hindustani nām/Sanskrit nāma, "name"),[11] as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. prārthanā, "prayer").[12] Pronunciation, however, conforms to Hindi norms and may differ from that of classical Sanskrit. 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.
  • Ardhātatsam (अर्धातात्सम् / اردهاتاتسم) words: These are words that were borrowed from Sanskrit in the middle Indo-Aryan or early New Indo-Aryan stages.[citation needed] Such words typically have undergone sound changes subsequent to being borrowed.
  • Tadbhav (तद्भव / تدبھو / born of that) words: These are words which are spelled differently from Sanskrit but are derivable from a Sanskrit prototype by phonological rules (e.g. Sanskrit karma, "deed" becomes Pali kamma, and eventually Hindi kām, "work").[10]
  • Deshaj (देशज / ديشج) words: These are words that were not borrowings but do not derive from attested Indo-Aryan words either. Belonging to this category are onomatopoetic words.
  • Videshī (विदेशी / ودیشی) words: these include all words borrowed from sources other than Indo-Aryan. The most frequent sources of borrowing in this category have been Persian, Arabic, Portuguese and English.

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 Hindutva ideology ("Hindu-ness") are vociferous supporters of Shuddha Hindi.

Excessive use of tatsam words sometimes creates problems for most native speakers. Strictly speaking, the tatsam words are words of Sanskrit and not of Hindi—thus they have complicated consonantal clusters which are not linguistically valid in Hindi. The educated middle class population of India can pronounce these words with ease, but people of rural backgrounds have much difficulty in pronouncing them. Similarly, vocabulary borrowed from Persian and Arabic also brings in its own consonantal clusters and "foreign" sounds, which may again cause difficulty in speaking them.

Literature

Main article: Hindi literature

Hindi literature, is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional - Kabir, Raskhan); Shringar (beauty - Keshav, Bihari); Veer-Gatha (extolling brave warriors); and Adhunik (modern).

Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems. It was not written in the current dialect but in other Hindi languages, particularly in Avadhi and Braj Bhasha, but later also in Khariboli. During the British Raj, Hindustani became the prestige dialect. Hindustani with heavily Sanskritized vocabulary or Sahityik Hindi (Literary Hindi) was popularized by the writings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Hindustani popular among the educated people. Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in the Hindi prose literature was Munshi Premchand, who is considered as the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement.

The Dwivedi Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing the Modern Hindi language in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love.

In the 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as Chhayavaad (shadowism) and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as Chhayavaadi. Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chhayavaadi poets.

Uttar Adhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chhayavaadi movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.

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):

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):

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.

Transcription (IPA):

ənʊtʃʰːeːd̪ eːk — səbʱiː mənʊʃjõː koː ɡɔːɾəʋ ɔːr əd̪ʱɪkaːɾõ keː maːmleː mẽː dʒənmədʒaːt̪ sʋət̪ənt̪ɾət̪aː pɾaːpt̪ hɛː. ʊnʱẽ bʊd̪ʱːɪ ɔːɾ ənt̪əɾaːt̪maː kiː d̪eːn pɾaːpt̪ hɛː ɔːɾ pəɾəspəɾ ʊnʱẽː bʱaːiːtʃaːɾeː keː bʱaːʋ seː bəɾt̪aːʋ kəɾnə tʃaːhɪeː.

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 should.

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 phrases

English Hindi (Transliteration) Hindi (Devanagari)
Hindi [hindī] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) हिन्दी
English [aṃgrezī] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) अंग्रेज़ी
Yes [hāṃ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) हाँ
You1 [āp (formal)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) आप
You² [tum (Informal)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) तुम
You³ [tū (used intimately, often derogatory)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) तू
Your [āpkā (formal)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) आपका
Your [tumhārā (Informal)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) तुम्हारा
Your [terā (used intimately, often derogatory)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) तेरा
Me [maiṃ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) मैं
My [merā ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) मेरा
No [13][[File:[14]]] [na] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) न
Not [nahīṃ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) नहीं
Hi/Hello [namaste] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) नमस्ते
Goodbye [namaste] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), [] Error: {{Lang}}: no text (help) नमस्ते
How are you? [āp kaise haiṃ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) आप कैसे हैं?
See you later [phir mileṃge] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) फिर मिलेंगे
Thank you [dhanyavād] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), [] Error: {{Lang}}: no text (help) धन्यवाद
I'm Sorry [kshamā kījiye] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) क्षमा कीजिये
Why? [kyoṃ?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) क्यों?
Who? [kaun?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) कौन?
What? [kyā?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) क्या?
When? [kab?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) कब?
Where? [kahāṃ?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) कहाँ?
How? [kaise?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) कैसे?
How many? [kitne?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) कितने?
I did not understand [main samjhā nahīṃ (For males)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) मैं नहीं समझा
Help me (please)
Help me!		 [meri madad kījiye / sahāyatā kījie!] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) मेरी मदद कीजिये / सहायता कीजिये
Do you speak English? [kyā āp aṃgrezī bolte hain? (For adressing a male)] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) क्या आप अंग्रेज़ी बोलते हैं?
Time please?
Time please?		 [samay kyā huā? / kitne baje hain?] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) समय क्या हुआ? / कितने बजे हैं?
I do not know [mujhe nahīṃ patā] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) मुझे नहीं पता

Sanskritization

Under the Indian government's encouragement, the officially sponsored version of the Khari-boli dialect has undergone a sea-change after it was declared the language of central government functioning in 1950. A major change has been the Sanskritisation of Hindi (introduction of Sanskrit vocabulary in Khariboli). Three factors motivated this conscious bid to sanskritize Hindi, being:

  • The independence movement inculcated a nationalistic pride in India's ancient culture, including its ancient classical language Sanskrit;
  • Independence was accompanied by partition along religious lines, with Muslim-majority areas seceding to form Pakistan, and a partial rejection of Persian and Arabic influence in the Hindu-majority areas; Saadat Hasan Manto, the Pakistani Urdu writer opposed to Hindi-Urdu divide.[15]
  • The people of south and east India were averse to the dominance of the language and culture of north India in the affairs of the country. The Hindu populations of these regions did not identify with Hindi itself or with the Mughal (Persian, Turkic) cultural influences that had shaped Hindi, but they were more receptive to Sanskrit. Sanskritization was thus viewed as a means to make Hindi more palatable as a national language. However, in the state of Tamil Nadu, there was strong anti-Brahmin sentiment and the Sanskrit language was associated with the Brahmins; therefore, the opposition to Hindi only became stronger, resulting in anti-Hindi agitations.

In its non-Sanskritized form, the Khariboli-based dialect is the normal and principal dialect used in the Hindi cinema. It is almost exclusively used in contemporary Hindi television serials, songs, education, and of course, in normal daily speech in almost all the urban regions of north India, wherever Hindi is also the state language. The rural dialect varies from region to region.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Dhanesh Jain (2003). The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge. p. 251. ISBN 9780700711307. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
  3. ^ The Union: Official Languages
  4. ^ PDF from india.gov.in containing Articles 343 which states so
  5. ^ Census of India
  6. ^ Ethnologue, "Hindi"
  7. ^ Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
  8. ^ a b PDF (in Hindi & English) from india.gov.in to confirm the claims on rajbhasha
  9. ^ Article 344(1) of the Constitution of India
  10. ^ a b Masica, p. 65
  11. ^ Masica, p. 66
  12. ^ Masica, p. 67
  13. ^ come
  14. ^ ramesh
  15. ^ Himmat Singh Gill (2000-01-23). "Books: Indian male is dissected and found wanting". The Tribune Spectrum. Retrieved 2007-03-24. ... Sukrita Kumar elsewhere commenting on how the division of the Hindi and Urdu languages took place in free India, quotes Sadat Hasan Manto actively protesting this divide, and believes that, 'the increased Sanskritisation of Hindi was probably a move towards establishing a distinct identity of the Hindi language ...

Bibliography

Dictionaries

  • McGregor, R.S. (1993), Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (2004 ed.), Oxford University Press, USA.

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
Hindi edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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