Hindi

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See Khariboli for "Hindi" as defined by SIL International.
Hindī
हिन्दी, हिंदी
Spoken in: India, Pakistan, Nepal, Fiji, Bangladesh, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana
Total speakers: — 
Ranking: 3 to 5 (native speakers)
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Indo-Aryan[citation needed]
   Hindī 
Writing system: Devanagari script 
Official status
Official language of:  India
 Fiji (as Hindustani)
Regulated by: Central Hindi Directorate (only in India)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-1: hi
ISO 639-2: hin
ISO 639-3: variously:
hin — Khariboli
anp — Angika
awa — Awadhi
bho — Bhojpuri
gbm — Garhwali
hne — Chhattisgarhi
kfy — Kumaoni
mag — Magadhi
mai — Maithili
raj — Rajasthani
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Hindi (pronunciation (help·info), Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [hɪnd̪iː]), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of India along with English.[2][3] It is part of a language continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, 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.

More narrowly, Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani termed khariboli, that emerged as the standard dialect.

Contents

  • 1 Etymology
  • 2 Demographics
    • 2.1 Area
    • 2.2 Number of speakers
  • 3 Official status
  • 4 History
    • 4.1 Standard Hindi
  • 5 Vocabulary
  • 6 Sociolinguistics of Hindi
    • 6.1 Variants
    • 6.2 Dialects
      • 6.2.1 Hindi region of the Indian subcontinent
      • 6.2.2 Non-Hindi regions in the Indian subcontinent
      • 6.2.3 Outside the Indian subcontinent
    • 6.3 Hindi and Urdu
  • 7 Phonology
    • 7.1 Vowels
    • 7.2 Additional notes on vowels
    • 7.3 Consonants
    • 7.4 Additional notes on the consonants
    • 7.5 Supra-segmental features
  • 8 Writing system
  • 9 Transliteration Conventions
  • 10 Grammar
  • 11 Sample Text
  • 12 Common difficulties faced in learning Hindi
  • 13 Literature
    • 13.1 Main Poetry (Kavya) writers
    • 13.2 Main Prose (Gadya) writers
  • 14 Entertainment and showbusiness
  • 15 Common Phrases
  • 16 Hinglish
    • 16.1 Examples
  • 17 See also
  • 18 References
    • 18.1 Notes
    • 18.2 Bibliography
  • 19 Further reading
  • 20 External links
    • 20.1 General
    • 20.2 Dictionaries
    • 20.3 Links to Hindi Wikimedia projects

[edit] Etymology

Origin of word Hindi can be traced back to Sanskrit word Sindhu (Sanskrit: सिन्धु). Zoroastrians who were India's immediate neighbors pronounced "Sindhu" as "Hindu" in their Avestan language. Using the word "Hindu" for "Sindhu", they referred to the people who lived near or across the Sindhu River as "Hindu" and their home as "Hindustan". The Sanskrit word Sindhu in its Avestan form Hindu (for Indian people), Hind (for Indian country) and Hindi (for Indian language) passed on to later Iranian languages like Pahlavi and Persian.[citation needed]

In modern contexts, the word Hindī 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.[4]

[edit] Demographics

[edit] Area

Stotra text in Devanagari script

Hindi is the predominant language in the Indian states and union territories of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Linguistic scholars refer to this area as the Hindi belt. [citation needed] Outside these areas, Hindi is widely spoken and understood in cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, and Hyderabad, all of which have their own native languages but harbour large communities of people from various parts of India. In fact, it is possible to live and transact business in almost all major cities of India with the knowledge of Hindi.

Local variations of Hindi are counted as minority languages in several countries, including Australia, Canada, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, UK and USA among various other countries around the world.

[edit] Number of speakers

Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. According to the 1991 census of India[5] (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,[6] 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.,[7] 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),[8] Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, with 333 million native speakers.

The 337 million number of the 1991 census includes the following:

From 1991 to 2006, the population of India has grown by about 30% (from 838 to 1,095 million), so that the number of current speakers may be expected to be roughly a third higher than those given above.

Because of extreme similarity between Hindi and 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 not question their being counted as native speakers of Hindi, and vice-versa.

[edit] Official status

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The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language(rājabhāṣā) of the Union (Article 343(1)).[9] 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.[10] 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, 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.

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.

[edit] History

Main article: History of the Hindi language

Like many other modern Indian languages, it is believed that Hindi had been evolved from Sanskrit, by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages. Though there is no consensus for a specific time, Hindi originated as local dilects such as Braj, Awadhi and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century.[11] 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 khari boli and was called Urdu or Hindustani. Since almost all Arabic words came via Persian, they do not preserve the original phonology of Arabic.

Hindi is only contrasted with Urdu in the way both were written. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are the way 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." Vocabulary is in quotes here since it is mostly the literary vocabulary that shows this visible distinction with the everyday vocabulary being essentially common between the two. To a common unbiased person, both Hindi and Urdu are same (Hindustani) though politics of religion and ethnicity portrays them as two separate languages since they are written in two entirely different scripts Hindi-Urdu controversy. Interestingly, if Urdu is written in Devanagiri script, it will be assumed as Hindi and vice versa. The popular examples are Bolywood songs and gazals.

[edit] Standard Hindi

Main article: Standard Hindi

After independence, the Government of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes:

[edit] 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.

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 has been associated with the Hindu community and Urdu with the Muslim community.

There are five principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

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.

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.

[edit] Sociolinguistics of Hindi

[edit] Variants

Sociolinguists have traditionally classified Hindi into four major variants or styles, viz.,[12]

Hindustani is generally coined for a hybrid of High Hindi and Urdu, which is used in common speech in India.

[edit] Dialects

Main article: Hindi languages

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.

[edit] 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:

  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 and Urdu. It is understood and/or spoken throughout the Indian subcontinent, from Afghanistan and the borders of Iran to the borders of Burma[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, Hathras, 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)
    • 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

Rajasthani, Malwi, Pahari languages and Bihari languages are considered as dialects of Hindi by the Indian census of 1991. In 2003, Maithili (Bihari) gained the status of an independent official language.

These are usually classified as separate languages by the linguists, belonging to the Western, Northern and Eastern zones of Indo-Aryan.

Depending upon perceptions, people also include various other dialects under Hindi, such as Nimari, Baiswari, Vajjika, Angika, etc.[citation needed]

[edit] Non-Hindi regions in the Indian subcontinent

[edit] Outside the Indian subcontinent

[edit] 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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[edit] Phonology

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See International Phonetic Alphabet for a pronunciation key.

There are approximately 11 vowels and 35 consonants in Standard Hindī. They are shown below:

[edit] 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:

Alphabet Diacritical mark with प Pronunciation Pronunciation with /p/ IAST equiv. English equivalent
अ प /ə/ /pə/ a short or long Schwa: as the a in above or ago
आ पा /ɑː/ /pɑː/ ā long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father
इ पि /ɪ/ /pɪ/ i short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
ई पी /iː/ /piː/ ī long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
उ पु /ʊ/ /pʊ/ u short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
ऊ पू /uː/ /puː/ ū long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
ए पे /eː/ /peː/ e long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong)
ऐ पै /ɛː/ /pɛː/ ai long open-mid front unrounded vowel: as e in bed, but longer
ओ पो /οː/ /pοː/ o long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
औ पौ /ɔː/ /pɔː/ au long open-mid back rounded vowel: as au in caught

[edit] Additional notes on vowels

The dropping of schwa at the end in Hindi (for Sanskrit loanwords) causes a big problem for foreigners (Westerners learning Hindi). Some examples are given below:

Hindi/Sanskrit word Usual transliteration Sanskrit pronunciation Hindi pronunciation English pronunciation
शिव—a deity Shiva /ɕiʋə/ /ʃiʋ/ /ʃiːvə/
वरुण—a deity Varuna /ʋəruɳə/ /ʋəruɳ/ /vʌɹuːnə/
वेद—a scripture Veda /ʋeːd̪ə/ /ʋeːd̪/ /veɪdə/
राम—a hero Rama or Rāma /rɑːmə/ /rɑːm/ /ɹɑːmə/
कामसूत्र—a love manual Kamasutra /kɑːməsuːt̪rə/ /kɑːmː suːt̪r̩/ or /kɑːm suːt̪rə/ /kɑːmə suːtɹə/
अशोक—an emperor Ashoka or Asoka /əɕoːkə/ /əʃoːk/ /ʌsəʊkə/

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/.

[edit] 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.

Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Dental Alveolar Retroflex Post-alveolar/
Palatal		 Velar Uvular Glottal
Plosives (unaspirated)
Plosives (aspirated)		 p
pʰ		 b
bʱ		 t̪
t̪ʰ		 d̪
d̪ʱ		 ʈ
ʈʰ		 ɖ
ɖʱ		 k
kʰ		 g
gʱ		 q
Affricates ʧ or cɕ
ʧʰ or cɕʰ		 ʤ or ɟʝ
ʤʱ or ɟʝʱ
Nasals m n (ɳ) (ɲ) (ŋ)
Fricatives f x ɣ (χ) (ʁ) (h) ɦ
Sibilants s z ʂ ʃ
Flaps ɽ
ɽʱ
Approximants ʋ ɹ j
Lateral
approximant		 l

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.

Plosives
Unaspirated
Voiceless		 Aspirated
Voiceless		 Unaspirated
Voiced		 Aspirated
Voiced		 Nasals
Velar क /kə/
k; English: scald		 ख /kʰə/
kh; English called		 ग /gə/
g; English: game		 घ /gʱə/
gh; Aspirated/murmured /g/		 ङ /ŋə/
n; English: ring
Palatal च /cɕə / or / tʃə/
ch; English butcher		 छ /cɕʰə / or /tʃʰə/
chh; English: chat		 ज /ɟʝə / or / dʒə/
j; English: jam		 झ /ɟʝʱə / or / dʒʱə/
jh; Aspirated/murmured /ɟʝ/		 ञ /ɲə/
n; English: hinge
Retroflex ट /ʈə/
t; like "t" but with the tongue tip curled back		 ठ /ʈʰə/
th; Aspirated /ʈ/		 ड /ɖə/
d; like "d" but with the tongue tip curled back		 ढ /ɖʱə/
dh; Aspirated/murmured /ɖ/		 ण /ɳə/
n; like "n" but with the tongue tip curled back
Apico-Dental त /t̪ə/
t; Spanish: tomate		 थ /t̪ʰə/
th; Aspirated /t̪/		 द /d̪ə/
d; Spanish: donde		 ध /d̪ʱə/
dh; Aspirated/murmured /d̪/		 न /nə/
n; English: name
Labial प /pə/
p; English: spin		 फ /pʰə/
ph; English pin		 ब /bə/
b; English: bone		 भ /bʱə/
bh; Aspirated/murmured /b/		 म /mə/
m; English: mine
Non-Plosives/Sonorants
Palatal Retroflex Dental/
Alveolar		 Velar/
Glottal
Approximant य /jə/
y; English: you		 र /rə/
r; Scottish English: trip		 ल /lə/
l; English: love		 व /ʋə/
v; between English "w" and "v"
Sibilant/
Fricative		 श /ʃə/
sh; English: ship		 ष /ʂə/
sh; Retroflex /ʃ/		 स /sə/
s; English: same		 ह /ɦə / or / hə/
h; English: behind

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:

Extra sounds
Symbol IPA Pronunciation and name Equivalent in other languages Often replaced with:
क़ /qə/ voiceless uvular plosive Arabic: Qur'an /k/
ख़ /xə/ voiceless velar fricative German: doch /kʰ/
ग़ /ɣə/ voiced velar fricative Persian: Mughal /g/
ज़ /zə/ voiced alveolar fricative English: zoo /ɟ / or / dʒ/
य़ /ʒ/ voiced postalveolar fricative English: Measure /dʒ/
ड़ /ɽə/ unaspirated retroflex flap Similar to English butter pronounced laxly
ढ़ /ɽʱə/ aspirated retroflex flap <none>
फ़ /fə/ voiceless labiodental fricative English: fun /pʰ/

ड़ /ɽə/ and ढ़ /ɽʱə/ are not of Persian/Arabic origin, but they are allophonic variants of simple voiced retroflex stops of Sanskrit.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.) Content words in Hindi normally begin on a low pitch, followed by a rise in pitch.[13][14] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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).

[edit] Grammar

Main article: Hindi-Urdu grammar

[edit] 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.

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.

[edit] Common difficulties faced in learning Hindi

[edit] Literature

Main article: Hindi literature
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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 :

[edit] Main Poetry (Kavya) writers

[edit] Main Prose (Gadya) writers

[edit] 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.

Alam Ara (1931), which ushered in the era of "talkie" films in India, was a Hindustani film. This film had seven songs in it. Music soon became an integral part of Hindustani/ 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.

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.

[edit] Common Phrases

English Hindi (Transliteration) Hindi (Devanagari)
Hindi Hindī हिन्दी
English Angrezī अंग्रेज़ी
Yes Hān हाँ
You1 āp (assigned to Elders/Respected Person) आप
You² Tum (assigned to Children/Person smaller in age) तुम
You³ Tū (used intimately) तू
No Nahīn नहीं
Hi/Hello Namaste नमस्ते
Goodbye Namaste, Alvidā, Khudā Hāfiz नमस्ते, अलविदा, ख़ुदा हाफ़िज़
How are you? āp Kaisé Hain? आप कैसे हैं?
See you Phir Milengé फिर मिलेंगे
Thank you Dhanyavād, Shukrīā धन्यवाद, शुक्रीया
I'm Sorry Kshamā Kījiyé, (also Māf Kījiyé) क्षमा कीजिये (माफ कीजिये)
Why? Kyon? क्यों?
Who? Kaun? कौन?
What? Kyā? क्या?
When? Kab? कब?
Where? Kahān? कहाँ?
How? Kāisé? कैसे?
How much? Kitné? कितने?
I did not understand Main samjha nahīn मैं समझा नहीं
Help me (please)
Help me!		 Meré maddath kījiyé / Sahāyatā kījié! मेरी मदद कीजिये / सहायता कीजिये
Do you speak English? Kyā āp angrezī bolté hain? क्या आप अंग्रेज़ी बोलते हैं?
Time please?
Time please?		 Samay kyā hua? / kitné bajé hain? समय क्या हुआ? / कितने बजे हैं?
I do not know Mujhé nahīn pata मुझे नहीं पता

[edit] 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.

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.

Another factor contributing to the spread of Hinglish is the popularity of Bollywood films.

[edit] Examples