Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , IAST: , IPA: ) is the name given to an Indo-Aryan language, or a dialect continuum of languages, spoken in northern and central India (the "Hindi belt").

Native speakers of Hindi dialects between them account for 41% of the Indian population (2001 Indian census). As defined in the Constitution, Hindi is one of the two official languages of communication (English, the other) for India's federal government and is one of the 22 scheduled languages specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. Official Hindi is often described as Modern Standard Hindi, which along with English, is used for administration of the central government. Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khari boli dialect. Urdu is a different, persianised, register of the same dialect.

Etymology

Evidence from the 17th century indicates that the language then called "Hindi" existed in two differing styles: among Muslims it was liable to contain a larger component of Persian-derived words and would be written down in a script derived from Persian, while among Hindus it used a vocabulary more influenced by Sanskrit and was written in Devanagari script. These styles eventually developed into modern Urdu and modern Hindi respectively. However the word "Urdu" was not used until around 1780: before then the word "Hindi" could be used for both purposes. in Pollock (2003). The use of "Hindi" to designate what would now be called "Urdu" continued as late as the early twentieth century. AlthoughHindī as taken to mean "Indian" is sometimes still used, it has come to specifically refer to the language(s) bearing that name.

Definitions

"Hindi" as the term for a language is used in at least four different but overlapping senses:

1. defined regionally, Hindi languages, i.e. the dialects native to Northern India

   in a narrower sense, the Central zone dialects, divided into Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi

   in a wider sense, all languages native to north-central India, stretching from Rajasthani in the west and Pahari in the northwest to Bihari in the east.

   Image:Hindi Indoarisch.png|East and West Hindi dialects Image:Hindi belt.png|Hindi per the 1991 census

   History

   main: Hindavi

   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 dialects such as Braj, Awadhi and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century. 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.