Hindi (हिन्दी)

Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language with about 487 million speakers. It is one of
the official languages of India and is the main language used in the northern
states of Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and is spoken in much of north
and central India alongside other languages such as Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi or
Bengali. In other parts of India, as well as in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan,
Hindi is understood. In Fiji people of Indian origin speak Hindi, and in
some areas the Fijian people also speak it.

Hindi is closely related to Urdu, the main language of
Pakistan, which is written with the Arabic script, and linguists consider Standard
Hindi and Standard Urdu to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari
Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. Apart from the difference in
writing systems, the other main difference between Hindi and Urdu is that Hindi
contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains more vocabulary from
Persian. At an informal spoken level there are few significant differences
between Urdu and Hindi and they could be considered varieties a single language.

Hindi first started to be used in writing during the 4th century AD. It was
originally written with the Brahmi script but since the
11th century AD it has been written with the Devanāgarī alphabet.
The first printed book in Hindi was John Gilchrist’s Grammar of the Hindoostanee
Language which was published in 1796.

Devanāgarī alphabet for Hindi

Vowels (स्वर) and vowel diacritics

Consonants (व्यंजन)

Numerals