Hindi (??????), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (???? ??????

), is a stan
dardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language. Hindustani is the
native language of most people living in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chh
attisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Harya
na, and Rajasthan.[5] Modern Standard Hindi is one of the official languages of
India.
Hindi is the fourth-most-widely spoken language in the world,[6] but this includ
es not only Hindu speakers of Hindustani, but also people who identify as native
speakers of related languages who consider their speech to be a dialect of Hind
i, the Hindi belt. In the 2001 Indian census, 258 million (258,000,000) people i
n India reported Hindi to be their native language;[7] as of 2009, the best figu
re Ethnologue could find for speakers of actual Hindustani Hindi was 180 million
in 1991.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Official status
2 History
3 Comparison with Modern Standard Urdu
4 Script
5 Sanskrit vocabulary
6 Literature
7 Internet
8 Sample text
9 See also
10 References
10.1 Notes
10.2 Bibliography
10.3 Dictionaries
11 Further reading
12 External links
Official status[edit]
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 o
f 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 E
ighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which entitles it to representation
on the Official Language Commission.[9] The Constitution of India has effective
ly instituted the usage of Hindi and English as the two languages of communicati
on for the Union Government. Most government documentation is prepared in three
languages: English, Hindi, and the primary official language of the local state,
if it is not Hindi or English.
Article 351 of the Indian constitution stipulates that Hindi language shall be e
nriched by drawing for its vocabulary primarily from Sanskrit and secondarily fr
om other languages.[10] The trend is different in Hindi cinema where more and mo
re English, Persian, Turkish and Arabic vocabulary is preferred. Article 344 sti
pulates that official language commission shall be constituted every ten years t
o recommend steps for progressive use of Hindi language and imposing restriction
s on the use of the English language. In practice, the official language commiss
ions are constantly endeavouring to promote Hindi but not imposing restrictions
on English in official use.