Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी, हिंदी, ISO: Hindī), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: मानक हिन्दी, ISO: Mānak Hindī), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India.

What Language is Hindi?

Hindi (Damagi: हिन्दी or हिंदी, Latin transliteration: Hindī), also known as Hindi, is a language under the Indo-European family of languages. Hindi is the eighth-ranked language in the world in terms of the number of countries spoken, and became the official language of the central government of India on January 26, 1965. Hindi and Urdu (together known as Hindustani) are similar, the main difference is that the former uses Devanagari letters, the latter uses Arabic letters, the former introduces a little more Sanskrit loanwords, and the latter has Arabic and Persian loanwords a little more.

It is the most spoken language in India. In addition, a considerable number of Indian residents in Mauritius, Fiji, the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname and other places also speak Hindi.

Introduction

Standard Hindi has 11 vowels and 43 consonants. Among the 54 phonemes, 1 vowel and 5 consonants are loanwords, which are only used in loanwords. The 10 original vowels in Hindi all have corresponding nasal forms. Among the consonants, not only the voiceless stop, voiceless stop fricative, etc. have corresponding aspirated sounds, but also the voiced stop, voiced stop fricative, and flutter. Aspirated and unaspirated sounds have different meanings. There is generally no accent and no intonation.

Grammar is greatly simplified than Sanskrit, and nouns have feminine, masculine and singular and plural categories. In a few pronouns the residual form of the case is also retained. The noun case form has disappeared. The relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence is expressed by a postposition after the noun or pronoun. When a noun or pronoun has a postposition, its form changes to some extent.

In addition to the categories of person, gender, number, etc., verbs also have categories such as aspect, tense, type, and state. The basic word order of a sentence is subject-object-predicate. In terms of vocabulary, most of the basic vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit. The terminology of various professional disciplines has recently tended to be taken directly from Sanskrit, or to create new Sanskrit words using Sanskrit word formation. During the period of Muslim rule, Hindi absorbed a large number of Persian and Arabic loanwords.

During the British rule, it absorbed a large number of English loanwords, and it continued to absorb new loanwords from English. While absorbing loanwords, it also absorbs some word-forming means of loanwords. Hindi uses Devanagari script. This is a vowel-labeled script that evolved from the ancient Brahmi alphabet. Write from left to right.

Grammar

Hindi is a subject-object-verb language, which means that the verb is usually located at the end of the sentence rather than before the object (whereas English is often the subject-verb-object). Hindi also shows partial ergitiveness, so in some cases the verb agrees with the object of the sentence rather than the subject. Unlike English, Hindi does not have definite articles. For emphasis, use the numeral एक (ek, “1”) as the indefinite article.

Also, Hindi uses postpositions where English uses prepositions (so called because they come after a noun or pronoun). Other differences include gender, honorifics, interrogative words, use of case, and different tenses. Despite its complexity, Hindi grammar is fairly formal, with relatively limited irregularities.

Regardless of the differences in vocabulary and writing, Hindi grammar is almost identical to Urdu grammar. The concept of punctuation other than complete pauses was completely absent before the arrival of the Europeans, and Hindi punctuation uses the Western customary commas, exclamation marks and question marks. Sometimes a full stop is used to end sentences, although the traditional “full pause” (a vertical bar) is still used.

Dialect

There are 5 major dialects of Hindi, namely Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Bihar, Rajasthani and Mountain Hindi. Within each major dialect there are several dialects. The basis of the standard language is the Kripoli dialect, which is a Western Hindi language, which is spoken in the areas around Delhi and Merat. Like most languages ​​in northern India, Hindi is derived from Sanskrit.

Hindi and Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, are actually the same language, although the former is written in the Sanskrit alphabet while the latter is written in the Arabic alphabet. While most of the vocabulary in pure Hindi comes from Sanskrit, Urdu has many borrowed words from Persian and Arabic sources. Both Hindi and Urdu are based on Hindustani, a spoken language that was used as a communicative language in many parts of India for more than four centuries.