Hindi is the third most widely-spoken language in the world (after English and Mandarin): an estimated 500-700 million people speak the language. A direct descendant of Sanskrit through Prakrit and Apabhramsha, Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of languages, a subset of the Indo-European family. It has been tempted and enriched by Persian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, and English. Hindi is broadly identical with Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, and is closely associated with Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati. A good knowledge of Hindi is therefore likely to be useful to anyone having an interest in the countries of South Asia or in the numerous South Asian communities of the world.
There are no particular difficulties in the study of the language. Hindi inherited its writing system from Sanskrit. The script, Devanagari, is highly logical and therefore straight forward and easy to learn. Pronunciation is easy because, unlike English, letters are always pronounced exactly in the same manner. It can be used for both exact and rational reasoning and the expressive form suited for poetry and songs.
The general appearance of the Devanagari script is that of letters 'hanging from a line'. This 'line', also found in many other South Asian scripts, is actually a part of most of the letters and is drawn as the writing proceeds. The script does not have capital letters.
Amongst its interesting features is a three-tier level of honorifics, allowing great subtlety in adjusting the level of communication to suit 'formal', 'familiar' and 'intimate' conversational contexts. Thus, the polite communicating of gratitude, etc, is an intrinsic part of the language itself and does not rely solely on separate words for 'please' and 'thank you'.
Hindi is the official language of the Republic of India, and the common second language of Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam. A Brief History
Hindi (and Urdu) is descended from Hindustani, the common form of speech that was spoken in the area in and around Delhi in North India around the ninth and tenth centuries. This language was given the Persian name Hindvi/Hindi - ie the language of Hind, the land of the Indus River - by the Persian-speaking Turks who overran Punjab and the Gangetic plains in the early eleventh century and established what is known as the Delhi Sultanate. Hindvi was constructed largely from Sanskrit loan words that had been 'softened' for 'bol-chal' (common speech).
It also absorbed Persian, and through Persian, Arabic loan words, and developed as a mixed or broken language of communication between the newly arrived immigrants and the resident native population of North India. It travelled south and west as the Sultanate expanded beyond the Gangetic plains. It developed into a national language during the colonial period when the British began to cultivate it as a standard among government officials. From the eighteenth century Hindvi began to flower as a literary language. In the course of another century it split into Hindi and Urdu, the former representing a Sanskrit bias and the latter a Persian one. Today, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script while Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script.
There are no particular difficulties in the study of the language. Hindi inherited its writing system from Sanskrit. The script, Devanagari, is highly logical and therefore straight forward and easy to learn. Pronunciation is easy because, unlike English, letters are always pronounced exactly in the same manner. It can be used for both exact and rational reasoning and the expressive form suited for poetry and songs.
The general appearance of the Devanagari script is that of letters 'hanging from a line'. This 'line', also found in many other South Asian scripts, is actually a part of most of the letters and is drawn as the writing proceeds. The script does not have capital letters.
Amongst its interesting features is a three-tier level of honorifics, allowing great subtlety in adjusting the level of communication to suit 'formal', 'familiar' and 'intimate' conversational contexts. Thus, the polite communicating of gratitude, etc, is an intrinsic part of the language itself and does not rely solely on separate words for 'please' and 'thank you'.
Hindi is the official language of the Republic of India, and the common second language of Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam. A Brief History
Hindi (and Urdu) is descended from Hindustani, the common form of speech that was spoken in the area in and around Delhi in North India around the ninth and tenth centuries. This language was given the Persian name Hindvi/Hindi - ie the language of Hind, the land of the Indus River - by the Persian-speaking Turks who overran Punjab and the Gangetic plains in the early eleventh century and established what is known as the Delhi Sultanate. Hindvi was constructed largely from Sanskrit loan words that had been 'softened' for 'bol-chal' (common speech).
It also absorbed Persian, and through Persian, Arabic loan words, and developed as a mixed or broken language of communication between the newly arrived immigrants and the resident native population of North India. It travelled south and west as the Sultanate expanded beyond the Gangetic plains. It developed into a national language during the colonial period when the British began to cultivate it as a standard among government officials. From the eighteenth century Hindvi began to flower as a literary language. In the course of another century it split into Hindi and Urdu, the former representing a Sanskrit bias and the latter a Persian one. Today, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script while Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script.
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