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Hindi
 

Hindi (हिन्दी or हिंदी in Devanāgarī; pronunciation: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in Northern and Central India is the primary official language and the National language (sic) of the Union government of India. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indo-Aryan family, bounded on the northwest and west by , Sindh, and Gujarātī; on the south by ; on the southeast by Or; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by . Seeing the popularity of Hindi, BBC World Service started News in Hindi in 1940.

Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani termed Khari boli, that emerged as the standard dialect of Hindi. The grammatical description in this article concerns this standard Hindi.

Hindi is often contrasted with , another standardized form of Hindustani that is the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are that Standard Hindi is written in Devanāgarī and draws its vocabulary with words from Sanskrit, while is written in Nastaliq script, a variant of the Persio-Arabic script, and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic vocabulary. The term "" also includes dialects of Hindustani other than the standardized languages. Other than these, linguists consider Hindi and to be the same language.

Classification

Hindi is classified as a language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It comes under the Indo-Aryan division of the Indo-Iranian branch of that family of languages.

Demographics

Area

Hindi is the predominant language in the states and union territories of Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttaranchal, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. Outside these areas, Hindi is widely spoken in cities like Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad, all of which have their own native languages but harbour large communities of people from various parts of India.

Local variations of Hindi are counted as minority languages in several countries, including Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Suriname, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago.

Number of speakers

Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, due to the large population of India. According to the 1991 census of IndiaCensus of India (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 EthnologueSIL International's report on Hindi in its Ethnologue, 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.*, 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 Comerie (1998 data), Hindi-Urdu is the second most spoken language in the world, with 330 million native speakers.

Because of Hindi's extreme similarity to , 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 are socio-politically different, and people who self-describe as being speakers of would question their being counted as native speakers of Hindi, and vice-versa.

Official and social status

A general belief prevails that Hindi is "the national language" of India, but this is hotly contested by many non-Hindi-speaking Indians: in fact, the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution lists a number of languages recognised as being "Official languages" for the purpose of communication between the Union and the speakers of those states.

Official status

The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script the "official language (rājabhāshā) of the Union" (Art. 343(1)). 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 de facto, although de jure, Hindi is the first official language of the Union. There was widespread resistance to the alleged 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, thus making English the associate official language of the Union. However, the constituitonal 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 Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi. Each of these states may also designate a "co-official language" (usually in these states). Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language in several states.

Social status

While the central government has sedulously promoted the spread of Hindi, its official status is not reflected in social importance. As with other south Asian language groups, even native speakers of Hindi, if elite, are usually facile in English. Education in English is a prerequisite for social status—hence the existence of several English medium "public" (actually private) and Christian missionary schools in India. English remains the sole language of higher education in almost every field of learning except Hindi literature itself.

Since the elite can use English, Hindi has been particularly weak on the Internet. As a barometer, the Devanagari fonts and keyboards used on computers today were not standardized within India - earlier government standards such as the 8-bit ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) or the GIST keyboard were never widely adopted. The present system was finally standardized only during Unicode deliberations. Indeed, Hindi unicode standards were finalised based on inputs from scholars hailing from Fiji and other countries. It is only when Unicode became the dominant standard that a number of changes were sought by the Indian government.

At the informal level (as between friends, colleagues and co-workers, and in entertainment, films, etc.), the use of Hindi has been growing, even among non-native speakers. Hindi is often used if the speakers in question hail from different linguistic provinces, especially if they belong to a social strata that has not accessed a very good English education, and often even otherwise. Hindi movies have been playing a substantial role in popularizing the language all over the country. Popular Hindi TV serials do the same today.

History

Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages. There is no consensus for a specific time where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindi emerged, but c. 1,000 AD is commonly accepted.Shapiro, M: Hindi. Over nearly a thousand years of Muslim influence such as when Muslim rulers controlled much of northern India during the Mughal Empire, many Persian and Arabic words were borrowed into Hindi.

Standard Hindi

After independence, the Government of India worked on standardizing Hindi, instituting the following changes:
  • standardization of Hindi grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"
  • standardization of Hindi spelling
  • standardization of the Devanagari (Devanāgarī) script by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing and to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters.
  • scientific mode of transcribing the Devanagari alphabet
  • incorporation of diacritics to express sounds from other languages.

Vocabulary

Main article: Origin of some common Hindi words

Standard Hindi derives much of its formal and technical vocabulary from Sanskrit. Standard or shuddha ("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 and Hindi are practically indistinguishable. However, the literary registers differ substantially; in highly formal situations, the languages are barely intelligible to speakers of the other. It bears mention that in centuries past both Sanskrit and Persian have been regarded as the languages of the elite, even by those of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds.

There are two principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

  • tatsam (तत्सम्) words: These are the words which have been directly lifted from Sanskrit to enrich the formal and technical vocabulary of Hindi. Such words (almost exclusively nouns) have been taken without any phonetic or spelling change. Among nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit uninflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declension.
  • tadbhav (तद्भव) words: These are the words that might have been derived from Sanskrit or the Prakrits, but have undergone minor or major phonetic and spelling changes as they appear in modern Hindi.
  • Deshaj (देशज) words: These are words of local origin.

Similarly, 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.

Hindi and

The term Urdu arose in 1645. Until then, and even after 1645, the term Hindi (literally meaning the language of Hind, meaning India) was used in a general sense for the dialects of North West India.

There are two fundamental distinctions between Standard and Standard Hindi that lead to their being recognised as distinct languages:

  • the source of borrowed vocabulary (Persian/Arabic for and Sanskrit for Hindi); and
  • the script used to write them in (for , an adaptation of the Persian alphabet written in Nasta'liq style; for Hindi, an adaptation of the Devanagari script).
Colloquially, the distinction between the and Hindi is nearly meaningless. This is true over much of North India, where 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 .

The word Hindi has many different uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of . 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 India and Pakistan,
  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 Chhatisghari, 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 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.

The colloquial language spoken by villagers and the lower classes of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or by its speakers. The only important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Arab-Persian script, the language is generally considered to be , 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 often nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and have always been separate languages. However, there 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 speakers in Pakistan. The dialogue is frequently developed in English and later translated to an intentionally neutral Hindustani which can be easily understood by speakers of most North Indian languages, both in India itself and in Pakistan.

Sociolinguistics of Hindi

Dialects

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 Panjabi are sometimes considered to be Hindi (based on the high level of mutual intelligibility for Panjabi 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; boldface indicates those that are classified as separate languages by some linguists.

The two major classes are terms Eastern Hindi and Western Hindi.

Western Hindi Dialects:

  • Khadiboli or Sarhindi, spoken in western Uttar Pradesh and the Delhi region; the dialect that forms the basis of Standard Hindi. It is understood and spoken throughout the Indian subcontinent, from Afghanistan, the borders of Iran, to the borders of Burma, and in the south, it is understood in Sri Lanka. It is the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent, irrespective of political boundaries or official policies. This dialect, with many Sanskrit loanwords, is used in the Hindi news and radio. This is not a great difference between the dialects of Khariboli and Hindustani.
  • Rajasthani, mostly spoken in the state of Rajasthan, and also comprised of several notable (sub)dialects:
  • Braj Bhasha, in a vaguely defined region of north central India, centered on Mathua
  • Bundeli, mostly spoken in the Bundelkhand region and the Jhansi district of Uttar Pradesh
  • Hariyanvi, Bangaru or Jatu, mostly spoken in the state of Haryana
  • Kanauji, mostly spoken in Kanauj, Uttar Pradesh

Eastern Hindi Dialects:

  • Purabia, The Eastern Hindi dialect centered on the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, with a strong influence on the Sanskritized learned vocabulary of standard Hindi.
  • Chhattisgarhi (sometimes spelled "Chattisgarhi"; also known as Lahariya or Khalwahi), spoken mostly in the recently created state of Chhattisgarh
  • Bagheli, spoken mostly in the Baghelkhand region of the state of Madhya Pradesh
  • Awadhi, spoken mostly in central Uttar Pradesh, the area formerly comprising the kingdom of Awadh or "Oudh"
    • Fijian Hindustani, a form of Awadhi spoken by Fijians of Indian descent
  • Bihari, mostly spoken in the state of Bihar, which in turn is comprised of several principal dialects:
    • Angika
    • Bhojpuri
    • Sarnami - a form of Bhojpuri with Awadhi influence spoken by Surinamers of Indian descent
    • Maithili, now an official language of Bihar
    • Magahi
    • Vajjika

These dialects demonstrate a variety of influences including the adjacent Iranian, Dravidian, and Tibeto-Burman language families.

Phonology

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

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 ) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and (approximate) equivalents in British English are listed below:

AlphabetDiacritical mark with “प”PronunciationPronunciation with IAST equiv.English equivalent
अपashort or long Schwa: as the a in above or ago
आपाālong Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father
इपिi short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
ईपीī long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
उपुu short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
ऊपूū long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
एपेe long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong)
ऐपैai long near-open front unrounded vowel: as a in cat
ओपोo long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
औपौau long open-mid back rounded vowel: as au in caught
short open-mid front unrounded vowel: as e in get

Additional notes on vowels

  • The short open-mid front unrounded vowel (: as e in get), does not have any symbol or diacritic in Hindi script. It occurs only as an allophonic variant of schwa (in place word-middle a, determined only by convention) in certain words in the standard Khariboli dialect. E.g., the orthography dictates that रहना must be pronounced as , but it is actually pronounced as . It also occurs in loanwords from English, where it might be accorded a new vowel symbol of ऍ (chandra: पॅ).
  • The short open-mid back rounded vowel (: as o in hot), does not exist in Hindi at all, other than for English loanwords. In orthography, a new symbol has been invented for it: ऑ (पॉ).
  • There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Hindi alphabet. They are
    • ऋ (originally in Sanskrit a vowel-like syllabic retroflex approximant), pronounced in modern Hindi as , used only in Sanskrit loanwords (पृ).
    • अं (called anusvāra), pronounced as /əŋ/. Its diacritic (the dot above) is used both for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable and for the sound of a vowel-like or . (पं).
    • अः (called visarga), pronounced as . Used only in Sanskrit loanwords (पः).
    • The diacritic अँ (called chandrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusvāra to indicate nasalization of the vowel (पँ).
  • If a lonely consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virāma diacritic below (प्).
  • There is less lip-rounding than in English in the long open-mid back rounded vowel (: as au in caught). The vowel in Hindi is more central and less back than in English.
  • All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized.
  • In Sanskrit and in some dialects of Hindi (as well as in a few words in Standard Hindi), the vowel ऐ is pronounced as a diphthong or rather than . Similarly, the vowel औ is pronounced in some words as the diphthong / or rather than . Other than these, Hindi does not have true diphthongs—two vowels might occur sequentially but then they are pronounced as two syllables (a glide might come in between while speaking).
  • In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without a virāma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: प as opposed to प्), the short neutral vowel schwa () is automatically associated with it—this is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. However in Hindi, even if the word-ending consonant is written without a virāma, the associated schwa is almost never pronounced. The schwa () is pronounced very short only if the absence of schwa would otherwise make the pronunciation of the word very difficult — such a situation arises when there is a consonantal cluster at the end of the word. The schwa in Hindi is usually dropped (syncopated) in khariboli even at certain instances in word-middle positions, where the orthography would otherwise dictate so. e.g., रुकना (to stay) is normally pronounced as , while according to the orthography, it should have been .

The dropping of schwa at the end in Hindi (for Sanskrit loanwords) causes a big problem for foreigners (Westerners learning Hindi). The IAST a appended to the end of these words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as —this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound feminine. Some examples are given below:

Hindi/Sanskrit word Usual transliterartion Sanskrit pronunciation Hindi pronunciation Foreigners' pronunciation
शिव—a deity Shiva
वरुण—a deity Varuna
वेद—a scripture Veda
राम—a hero Rama or Rāma
कामसूत्र—a love manual Kamasutra
अशोक—an emperor Ashoka or Asoka

The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association also describes the near-close near-front unrounded vowel () the near-close near-back rounded vowel () as occurring in Hindi phonology. They respectively occur as free allophones of short and .

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 7 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)
Nasals
Fricatives
Sibilants
Trills
Flaps
Approximants
Lateral
approximant

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 its Devanagari script) with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (), 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
k; English: skip 		ख
kh; English: locK-Hard; German Eckhart; Aspirated 		ग
g; English: game 		घ
gh; English: diG-Hard 		ङ
n; English: ring
Palatal च
ch; English: chat 		छ
chh; English: staunCh-Heart Aspirated 		ज
j; English: jam 		झ
jh; English: heDGEHog Aspirated 		ञ
n; English: caNyon
Retroflex ट
t; American Eng: hurting 		ठ
th; English: lighT-Heart; Aspirated 		ड
d; English: dust 		ढ
dh; English: reD-Hot Aspirated 		ण
n; American Eng: hunter
Apico-Dental त
t; Spanish: tomate 		थ
th; English: thirsty; Aspirated 		द
d; English: the (before a consonant eg 'the clock'); Spanish: donde 		ध
dh; English: and THE Hero to win the award is .. ;Aspirated 		न
n; English: name
Labial प
p; English: spin 		फ
ph; English: fist 		ब
b; English: bone 		भ
bh; English: ruB-Hard Aspirated 		म
m; English: mine

Non-Plosives/Sonorants
Palatal Retroflex Dental/
Alveolar 		Velar/
Glottal
Approximant य
y; English: you 		र
r; Scottish English: trip 		ल
l; English: love 		व
v; English: vase
Sibilant/
Fricative 		श
sh; English: ship 		ष
sh; Retroflex 		स
s; English: same 		ह
h; English: behind

At the end of the traditional table of alphabets, three cosonantal clusters are also added: क्ष (in Hindi), त्र and ज्ञ (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, especially those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak really good khariboli or , confused these sounds (except ) and pronounce them as the nearest equivalents in Sanskritized Hindi (listed in column 4). These are:

Extra sounds
Symbol IPA Pronunciation and name English (etc.) equiv. Confused with:
क़ voiceless uvular plosive Arabic: Qur'an
फ़ voiceless labiodental fricative English: fun
ख़ voiceless velar fricative German: doch
ग़ voiced velar fricative Persian: Mughal
ज़ voiced alveolar fricative English: zoo
ड़ unaspirated retroflex flap
ढ़ aspirated retroflex flap

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

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 langugae is English but are interested in learning Hindi language.
  • No nasal consonant except and can start a word in Hindi. Hence all the other nasal consonants in modern Hindi tend to be pronounced as either or .
  • The distinction between the aspirated and the unaspirated consonants is really very strong, not only in Hindi, but also in Sanskrit and all other Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages of India.
  • The distinction between the dental plosives and the retroflex plosives is also very stark in all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages.
  • The retroflex flaps cannot start a word. They did not exist as such in Sanskrit—they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit's simple voiced retroflex plosives. The other Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages tend to use retroflex flaps in their vocabulary even more frequently than Hindi does.
  • Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers should try to pronounce the voiceless aspirates by speaking these words in a quick but clear liaison-like fashion:
    • "take him", "get him", "ditch him", "slap him".
    • One could also try speaking the words "kite", "take", "chip" and "pat" with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corrsponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all.
  • Hindi are dental as in Spanish or French.
  • The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". Much though has been listed that Hindi (being an Indo-Aryan language) has retroflex plosives, certain linguists (who are also the native speakers of Hindi) disagreeTiwari, B., भाषाविज्ञान Bhāṣhāvijñān, Kitaab Mahal Publ., Ed. 2004, Allahabad, ISBN: 81-225-0007-2. According to them, the so-called retroflex polisives in Hindi are at the most post-alveolar, and sometimes even alveolar. The retroflex flaps are pronounced in a similar way, by bringing the tongue's tip to the roof of the mouth and giving it a sharp flap downwards.
  • Sanskrit is retroflex, but Hindi is alveolar trill, as in Scottish English.
  • The palatal (postalveolar) affricates of Hindi do not have as much a sharp frictional release as in English. These are more like pure plosives than affricates.
  • Hindi has neither nor . Its nearest equivalent is , which is very close to , but does not have a friction or buzzing sound associated with it.
  • The retroflex sibilant of Sanskrit has been replaced by in modern Hindi pronunciation.
  • It is doubtful whether Hindi has a voiced glottal fricative (for the alphabet ह) or not. Sanskrit had this.
  • The standard transliteration of Hindi into the Roman (English) 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 above; aspiration of a plosive is shown with a following h, and is used for sh; and c is used for ch. 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).

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 due to long vowels or all are due to short vowels. If the word contains a mixture or short and long vowels, the stress falls automatically on the long vowels almost equally. Strictly speaking, Hindi, like most other Indian languages, is rather a syllable timed language. The schwa has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing (syncopated) if its syllable is unaccented. Also note that although in Hindi, many words end in short / u / or short / i /, while speaking, the ending is often converted to long and long . The tone of speaking is very important in Hindi (although Hindi is not a tonal language like Chinese) —to express the sentiments of respect, politeness, question, etc.

Writing system

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 Hindī text comprehensibly, even without knowing what the words mean. The entire alphabet has been discussed in the preceding section on phonology.

The next table gives the system of combining two consonants, ie., making a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster from and syllables, Hindi usually converts the alphabetic symbol of the initial consonant X into the corresponding half-consonant (sic)—mostly achieved by cutting the right-side portion of the alphabet. To write the cluster , similarly, both X and Y would be "cut". There are many variants for this consonant cluster writing in devanagari script. The most common system is shown below for the traditional table. Here the second vowel is taken to be / n /, followed by the schwa.

ka-group क्न ख्न ग्न घ्न ङ्न
cha-group च्न छ्न ज्न झ्न ञ्न
Ta-group ट्न ठ्न ड्न ढ्न ण्न
ta-group त्न थ्न द्न ध्न न्न
pa-group प्न फ्न ब्न भ्न म्न
ya-group य्न र्न ल्न व्न
sha-group श्न ष्न स्न ह्न

This table gives only theoretical combination of consonant clusters. In practice, the number of allowable consonant clusters of Hindi is limited.

Grammar

Main article: Hindi grammar

Despite Hindi and English both being Indo-European languages, Hindi grammar can be very complex and is different in many ways from what English speakers are used to. Most notably, Hindi is a subject-object-verb language, meaning that verbs usually fall at the end of the sentence rather than before the object (as in English). Hindi also shows mixed ergativity so that, in some cases, verbs agree with the object of a sentence rather than the subject. Unlike English, Hindi has no definite article (the). The numeral ek might be used as the indefinite singular article (a/an) if this needs to be stressed.

In addition, Hindi uses postpositions (so called because they are placed after nouns) where English uses prepositions. Other differences include gender, honorifics, interrogatives, use of cases, and different tenses. While being complicated, Hindi grammar is fairly regular, with irregularities being relatively limited. Despite differences in vocabulary and writing, Hindi grammar is nearly identical with . The concept of punctuation having been entirely unknown before the advent of the Europeans, Hindi punctuation uses western conventions for commas, exclamation points, and question marks. Periods are sometimes used to end a sentence, though the traditional "full stop" (a vertical line) is more generally used.

Genders

In Hindi as well as , there are only two genders for nouns. All male human beings and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "masculine") are masculine. All female human beings and female animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to convention, which must be memorised by non-Hindi speakers if they wish to learn correct Hindi. While this is the same as and similar to many other Indo-European languages such as French and Spanish, it is a very challenging learning requirement for many people in south India who are native speakers of languages which do not feature such inflecton, but are expected by the government to learn Hindi. It is also a challenge for those who are used to only the English language, which although an Indo-European language, has dropped nearly all of its gender inflection.

The ending of a word, if a vowel, usually helps in this gender classification. Among tatsam words, the masculine words of Sanskrit remain masculine in Hindi, and same is the case for the feminine. Sanskrit neuter nouns usually become masculine in Hindi. Among the tadbhav words, if a word end in long , it is normally masculine. If a word ends in or , it is normally feminine. The gender of words borrowed from Arabic and Persian is determined either by phonology (usually the last vowel in the word) or by the gender of the nearest Hindi equivalent. The gender assignment of Hindi words directly borrowed from English (which are numerous) is also usually determined by the gender of the nearest Hindi "synonym" or by the ending. Most adjectives ending in a vowel are inflected to agree with the gender of the noun: 'my daughter' vs. 'my son'.

Interrogatives

Besides the standard interrogative terms of who (कौन kaun), what (क्या kyaa), why (कयों kyõ), when (कब kab), where (कहाँ kahã), how and what type (कैसा kaisaa), how many (कितना kitnaa), etc, the Hindi word kyaa (क्या) can be used as a generic interrogative often placed at the beginning of a sentence to turn a statement into a Yes/No question. This makes it clear when a question is being asked. Questions can also be formed simply by modifying intonation, exactly as some questions are in English.

Pronouns

Hindi has pronouns in the first, second and third person for one gender only. Thus, unlike English, there is no difference between he or she. More strictly speaking, the third person of the pronoun is actually the same as the demonstrative pronoun (this / that). The verb, upon conjugation, usually indicates the difference in the gender. The pronouns have additional cases of accusative and genitive. There may also be multiple ways of inflecting the pronoun, which are given in parentheses. Note that for the second person of the pronoun (you), Hindi has three levels of honorifics:
  • आप (): Formal and respectable form for you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all formal settings and speaking to persons who are senior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying आप लोग ( you people) or आप सब () you all).
  • तुम (): Informal form of you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all informal settings and speaking to persons who are junior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying तुम लोग ( you people) or तुम सब () you all).
  • तू (): Extremely informal form of you, as thou. Strictly singular, its plural form being . Except for very close friends or poetic language involving God, it could be perceived as offensive in India.

Imperatives (requests and commands) correspond in form to the level of honorific being used, and the verb inflects to show the level of respect and politeness desired. Because imperatives can already include politeness, the word "kripayā", which can be translated as "please", is much less common than in spoken English; it is generally only used in writing or announcements, and its use in common speech is usually intended as mockery.

Word order

The standard word order in Hindi is, in general, Subject Object Verb, but where different emphasis or more complex structure is needed, this rule is very easily set aside (provided that the nouns/pronouns are always followed by their postpositions or case markers). More specifically, the standard order is 1. Subject 2. Adverbs (in their standard order) 3. Indirect object and any of its adjectives 4. Direct object and any of its adjectives 5. Negation term or interrogative, if any, and finally the 6. Verb and any auxiliary verbs. (Snell, p93) The standard order can be modified in various ways to impart emphasis on particular parts of the sentence. Negation is formed by adding the word नहीं (nahī̃, "no"), in the appropriate place in the sentence, or by utilizing न (na) or मत (mat) in some cases. Note that in Hindi, the adjectives precede the nouns they qualify. The auxiliaries always follow the main verb. Also, Hindi speakers or writers enjoy considerable freedom in placing words to achieve stylistic and other socio-psychological effects, though not as much freedom as in heavily inflected languages. Bhatia 1996: 32-33.

Tense and aspect of Hindi verbs

Hindi verbal structure is focused on aspect with distinctions based on tense usually shown through use of the verb honā (to be) as an auxiliary. There are three aspects: habitual (imperfect), progressive (also known as continuous) and perfective. Verbs in each aspect are marked for tense in almost all cases with the proper inflected form of honā. Hindi has four simple tenses, present, past, future (presumptive), and subjunctive (referred to as a mood by many linguists).Shapiro, M: "Hindi" Verbs are conjugated not only to show the number and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) of their subject, but also its gender. Additionally, Hindi has imperative and conditional moods.

Case

Hindi is a weakly inflected language for case; the relationship of a noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions (i.e., prepositions that follow the noun). Hindi has three cases for nouns. The Direct case is used for nouns not followed by any postpositions, typically for the subject case. The Oblique case is used for any nouns that is followed by a postposition. Adjectives modifying nouns in the oblique case will inflect that same way. Some nouns have a separate Vocative case. Hindi has two numbers: singular and plural—but they may not be shown distinctly in all declinations.

Sample Text

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):
Gloss (word-to-word): All human-beings to dignity and rights of matter in from-birth freedom acquired is. Them reason and conscience of endowment acquired is and among them brotherhood of spirit with behavior do should.
Translation (grammatical): 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.

Common difficulties faced in learning Hindi

  • the phonetic mechanism of some sounds peculiar to Hindi (eg. rda, dha etc) The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants will be difficult for English speakers. In addition, the distinction between dental and alveoloar (or retroflex) consonants will also pose problems. English speakers will find that they need to carefully distinguish between four different d-sounds and four different t-sounds.
  • pronunciation of vowels: In English, unstressed vowels tend to have a "schwa" quality. The pronunciation of such vowels in English is changed to an "uh" sound; this is called reducing a vowel sound. The second syllable of "unify" is pronounced , not "ee." The same for the unstressed second syllable of "person" which is also pronounced rather than "oh." In Hindi, English-speakers must constantly be careful not to reduce these vowels.
    • In this respect, probably the most important mistake would be for English speakers to reduce final "ah" sounds to "uh." This can be especially important because an English pronunciation will lead to misunderstandings about grammar and gender. In Hindi, "vo bolta hai" is "he talks" whereas "vo bolti hai" is "she talks." A typical English pronunciation in the first sentence would be "vo boltuh hai," which will be understood as "she talks" by most Hindi-native speakers.
  • The 'a' ending of many Sanskrit and Sanskrit borrowed gender-masculine words, due to Romanization, is highly confused by non-native speakers, because the short 'a' is dropped in Hindi. There are exceptions, of course, if the devanagari script itself dictates the additional diacritical mark for the vowel "long ā" at the end of certain masculine words, like Brahmā (ब्रह्मा).
  • the Verbal concordance; Hindi exhibits split ergativity; see Ergative-absolutive language for an example.
  • Relative-correlative constructions. In English interrogative and relative pronouns are the same word. In "Who are you?" the word "who" is an interrogative, or question, pronoun. In "My friend who lives in Sydney can speak Hindi," the word "who" is not an interrogative, or question-pronoun. It is a relative, or linking-pronoun. In Hindi, there are different words for each. The interrogative pronoun tends to start with the "k" sound:" kab = when?, kahaaN = where?, kitna = how much? The relative pronouns are usually very similar but start with "j" sounds: jab = when, jahaaN = where, jitna = how much.

Literature

Main article: Hindi literature

Hindi literature draws upon the heritage of Sanskrit literature, and has a long history. Tulasidas's Ramacharitamanasa was an early work in recognizable Hindi that attained wide popularity. Modern Hindi litterateurs include :

Main Poetry (Kavya) writers


Main Prose (Gadya) writers

  • Munshi Premchand
  • Phanishwar Nath Renu
  • Ramchandra Shukla
  • Jainendra
  • Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh
  • Ramvriksh Venipuri
  • Prabhakar Machve
  • Chakradhar Sharma Guleri
  • Vishnu Prabhakar
  • Amrit Lal Naagar
  • Bheeshm Sahni
  • Usha Priyamvada
  • Krishna Sobti
  • Rangeya Raghav
  • Nirmal Verma
  • Jitendra Sahay
  • Nishant Ketu
  • Kamaleshwar
  • Mithileshwar
Etc.

Entertainment and showbiz

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 Hindi film. This film had seven songs in it. Music soon became an integral part of 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 a layman. Most of these songs are written in shaayari style.

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, Bangladesh and Iran.

The role of radio and television in propogating 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, Persio-Arabic mythology and documentaries.

Hinglish

Hinglish, a portmanteau of the words Hindi and English, is the arbitrary usage 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 urbane youth who finds itself 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.

Examples

  • "Dad, time kya hua hai?" (Dad, what is the time right now?).
  • "I have hazaar things on my mind right now." (I have thousands of things on my mind right now.)

Also see Hinglish''

See also

Notes

References

  • International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
  • Bhatia, Tej K. Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0415110874 (Book), 0415110882 (Cassettes), 0415110890 (Book & Cassette Course)
  • Shapiro, Michael C. Hindi. Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates, 2001.
  • Snell, Rupert Teach yourself Hindi: A complete guide for beginners. Lincolnwood, IL : NTC Publishing Group, 1992. ISBN 0844238635
  • Taj, Afroz (2002) A door into Hindi. Retrieved November 8, 2005.

Further reading

  • Bhatia, Tej K A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition. Leiden, Nehterlands & New York, NY : E.J. Brill, 1987. ISBN 9004079246

External links

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