Hindi language

Hindi language
Indo-Aryan language of India, spoken or understood by more than 30% of the country's population.

Modern Standard Hindi is a lingua franca (as well as native language) of millions of people in North India and the official language of the Indian Union. It is effectively a continuation of Hindustani, which developed from Khari Boli, the speech of certain classes and districts in Delhi affiliated with the Mughal court in the 16th–18th centuries. A heavily Persianized variant of Khari Boli used by Muslim authors formed the basis for Urdu. Hindustani was codified by the British at Fort William College in Calcutta (now Kolkata). There Hindu intellectuals promoted a Sanskritized form of Hindustani (see Sanskrit language) written in the Devanagari script (see Indic writing systems) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; it became the progenitor of modern literary Hindi as used by Hindu authors. During the Indian independence movement, Hindustani was regarded as a national unifying factor, but after the partition in 1947 this attitude changed, and the name has practically dropped from use in favour of either Hindi or Urdu. Linguists, particularly George Abraham Grierson, have also used the term Hindi to refer collectively to all the dialects and regional literary languages of the northern Indian plain. Hindi has drastically simplified the complex grammar of Old Indo-Aryan while preserving certain phonetic features.

* * *

      official language of the Republic of India, a central Indo-Aryan language (Indo-Aryan languages) claimed as a mother tongue by some 180,000,000 speakers in India. There are also significant numbers of Hindi speakers outside of India, including nearly 1,000,000 in South Africa, 700,000 in Mauritius, 350,000 in Bangladesh, 235,000 in Yemen, and 150,000 in Uganda. Many more hundreds of thousands speak Hindi as a second language. Literary Hindi, written in the Devanagari (Devanāgarī) script, shows a strong influence of Sanskrit (Sanskrit language) as a source for borrowings; it is based on the Khari Boli dialect, to the north and east of Delhi. Also commonly treated as dialects of Hindi are Braj Bhasa (Braj Bhasa language), which was an important literary medium from the 15th to the 17th century; Awadhi, also a literary medium; and Bagheli, Chattisgarhi, Bundeli, and Kanauji.

      Hindi has a much simpler inflectional (inflection) system than does Sanskrit, although the literary language uses a great number of Sanskrit forms. Nouns and pronouns have lost the full declension in eight cases of Sanskrit and instead make use of postpositions—small words attached to the end of nouns and functioning much like English prepositions. There are only two genders, masculine and feminine, whereas Gujarati and Marathi retain three. Verbs also are much reduced in inflectional complexity, with only the present and future indicative forms fully conjugated; other constructions are based on participial forms.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • List of Hindi language authors — This is a list of authors of Hindi literature, i.e. people who write in Hindi language. its dialects and Hindustani language. This literature related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it. Contents: A B …   Wikipedia

  • Hindi-Urdu — हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی Hindustānī …   Wikipedia

  • 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).Regions and dialectsHindi language,… …   Wikipedia

  • Hindi (disambiguation) — Hindi may refer to: *the Hindi language, the name of an Indo Aryan language with various definitions: **in the narrowest sense, Modern Standard Hindi **historically, any Central zone literary standard dialect or khari boli , including Braj Bhasha …   Wikipedia

  • Hindi — (हिन्दी) Gesprochen in Indien Sprecher Geschätzte 370 Millionen Muttersprachler, 155 Millionen Zweitsprachler Linguistische Klassifikation Indogermanische Sprachen Indoiranische Sprachen …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Hindi languages — Infobox Language family name=Hindi altname= region=South Asia familycolor=Indo European fam2=Indo Iranian fam3=Indo Aryan child1= Western Hindi child2= Eastern Hindi child3= Bihari child4= Pahari child5= Rajasthani map caption= The Hindi belt… …   Wikipedia

  • Hindi Wikipedia — Infobox website name = Hindi Wikipedia caption = url = http://hi.wikipedia.org/ commercial = No location = Miami, Florida type = Internet encyclopedia project language = Hindi registration = Optional owner = Wikimedia Foundation author = The… …   Wikipedia

  • Hindi — /ˈhɪndi/ (say hindee) noun 1. an Indo European language of northern and central India, written in the Devanagari script; derived principally from the dialect of the Delhi Agra region and extensively influenced by Sanskrit especially at the formal …  

  • language — /lang gwij/, n. 1. a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition: the two languages of Belgium; a Bantu language; the French… …   Universalium

  • Hindi — 1. noun /ˈhɪndi/ A language spoken in the Northern States of India. Also spoken in Fiji, Guyana and as a second language by Indians in many other countries. The word Hindi is borrowed from Persian into other languages. 2. adjective /ˈhɪndi/ Of or …   Wiktionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”