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This article is about the Hindi language in the narrow sense. For other uses, see Hindi (disambiguation).
Hindi
मानक हिन्दी Manak Hindi
The word "Hindi" in Devanagari script
Native toIndia
Significant communities in South Africa, Nepal
Native speakers
(180 million[1] cited 1991)
Total: 490 million, including Urdu[2]
Devanagari
Official status
Official language in
 India
Regulated byCentral Hindi Directorate (India)[3]
Language codes
ISO 639-1hi
ISO 639-2hin
ISO 639-3hin
hin-hin
Linguasphere59-AAF-qf
Areas (red) where Hindi-Urdu (Khariboli/Kauravi) is the native language

Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi and also known as Manak Hindi,[4] High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardised and sanskritised register of the Hindi-Urdu language. It is the native language of "a relatively small number of speakers" in Delhi, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, northeastern Madhya Pradesh, and parts of eastern Rajasthan,[5] and is one of the official languages of the Republic of India.

Colloquial Hindi is mutually intelligible with another register of Hindi-Urdu called (Modern Standard) Urdu. Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialized contexts which rely on educated vocabulary. Speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert that they are distinct languages, despite the fact that native speakers generally cannot tell the colloquial languages apart. The number of native speakers of Standard Hindi is unclear. According to the 2001 Indian census,[6] 258 million people in India reported their native language to be "Hindi". However, this includes large numbers of speakers of Hindi languages other than Standard Hindi; as of 2009, the best figure Ethnologue could find for Khariboli dialect (the basis of Hindustani) was a 1991 citation of 180 million.[1] This places Hindi in a three-way tie with Bengali and Portuguese for the fifth-largest language in the world.[7]

Official status

The Indian constitution, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi shall be written in the Devanagari script and will be the official language of the Federal Government of India.[8] However, English continues to be used as an official language along with Hindi. 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. Most government documentation is prepared in three languages: English, Hindi, and the official language of the local state.

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),[10] with state governments being free to function in the language of their own choice. However, widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in South India (such as the anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu) and in West Bengal, led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English indefinitely for all official purposes. However, the constitutional directive 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: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi. Each 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 additional states.

History

Further information: History of Hindustani

The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is khadiboli, the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding western Uttar Pradesh and southern Uttarakhand region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire (17th century) and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court." As noted and referenced in History of Hindustani, prior to the independence of India and Pakistan, it was not referred to as Urdu but as Hindustani. After independence, the Government of India set about standardising Hindi as a separate language from Urdu, instituting the following conventions:[original research?]

  • 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.

The Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the Official Language of the Union on 14th September 1949. Hence it is celebrated as Hindi Day.

In the year 1881 Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language replacing Urdu and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.

Sanskrit vocabulary

Further information: Hindustani etymology

Formal Standard Hindi draws much of its academic vocabulary from Sanskrit, and has looked to Sanskrit for borrowing from at least the 15th century BC. Standard Hindi loans words are classified into five principal categories:

  • Tatsam (तत्सम / 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).[11] They include words inherited from Sanskrit via Prakrit which have survived without modification (e.g. Hindustani nām/Sanskrit nāma, "name"; Hindustani Suraj/Sanskrit Surya, "sun"),[12] as well as forms borrowed directly from Sanskrit in more modern times (e.g. prārthanā, "prayer").[13] 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.
  • Ardhatatsam (अर्धतत्सम) 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 / 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").[11]
  • Deshaj (देशज) 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) 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.

The Hindi standard, from which much of the Persian, Arabic and English vocabulary has been purged and replaced by tatsam words, is called Shuddha Hindi (pure Hindi). Proponents of Hindutva ("Hindu-ness") ideology are vociferous supporters of Shuddha Hindi. Although, It contains loan words from Persian and Arabic vocabulary.

Similarly, Urdu treats its own vocabulary, borrowed directly from Persian and Arabic, as a separate category for morphological purposes. Excessive use of tatsam words creates problems for native speakers. They may have Sanskrit consonant clusters which do not exist in native Hindi. The educated middle class of India may be able to pronounce such words, but others have difficulty. Persian and Arabic vocabulary given 'authentic' pronunciations cause similar difficulty.

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 kanjars 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 और समानता 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 aur Ṣamāntā 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 and equality 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.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b Ethnologue, "Hindi"
  2. ^ BBC: A Guide to Urdu
  3. ^ Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
  4. ^ Devanagari: मानक हिन्दी; meaning "Standard Hindi"
  5. ^ Hindi (2005). Keith Brown (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2 ed.). Elsevier. ISBN 0-08-044299-4.
  6. ^ Census of India
  7. ^ Ethnologue, "Statistical Summaries: by language size"
  8. ^ "SEQUENCE OF EVENTS WITH REFERENCE TO OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNION".
  9. ^ [1] of the Constitution of India
  10. ^ PDF (in Hindi & English) from india.gov.in to confirm the claims on rajbhasha
  11. ^ a b Masica, p. 65
  12. ^ Masica, p. 66
  13. ^ Masica, p. 67

Bibliography

Dictionaries

  • John Thompson Platts (1884). A dictionary of Urdū, classical Hindī, and English (reprint ed.). LONDON: H. Milford. p. 1259. Retrieved 2011-07-06.Oxford University
  • McGregor, R.S. (1993), Oxford Hindi–English Dictionary (2004 ed.), Oxford University Press, USA.
A Tram in Melbourne with a caution message in Hindi

Further reading

Hindi edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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