The concept of a Hindustani language as a "unifying language" or "fusion language" that could transcend communal and religious divisions across the subcontinent was endorsed byMahatma Gandhi,[27] as it was not seen to be associated with either the Hindu or Muslim communities as was the case with Hindi and Urdu respectively, and it was also considered a simpler language for people to learn.[28][29] The conversion from Hindi to Urdu (or vice versa) is generally achieved by merelytransliterating between the two scripts. Translation, on the other hand, is generally only required for religious and literary texts.[30]
As of 2025,Hindi andUrdu together constitute the3rd-most-spoken language in the world afterEnglish andMandarin, with 855 million native and second-language speakers, according toEthnologue,[56] though this includes millions who self-reported their language as 'Hindi' on the Indian census but speak a number of otherHindi languages than Hindustani.[57] The total number of Hindi–Urdu speakers was reported to be over 300 million in 1995, making Hindustani the third- or fourth-most spoken language in the world.[58][47]
Although the Mughals were ofTimurid (Gurkānī)Turco-Mongol descent,[68] they werePersianised, and Persian had gradually become the state language of the Mughal empire afterBabur.[69][70][71][72] Mughal patronage led to a continuation and reinforcement of Persian by Central AsianTurkic rulers in the Indian Subcontinent,[73] since Persian was also patronized by the earlier Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate who laid the basis for the introduction and use of Persian in the subcontinent.[74]
Hindustani began to take shape as a Persianised vernacular during theDelhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) andMughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) inSouth Asia.[75] Hindustani retained thegrammar, as well as thecore Sanskritic and Prakritic vocabulary, of the local Indian language of the Ganges-Yamuna Doab calledKhariboli.[59][35][75][76][77] However, as an emerging common dialect, Hindustani absorbed large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic loanwords, and as Mughal conquests grew it spread as a lingua franca across much of northern India; this was a result of thecontact of Hindu and Muslim cultures in Hindustan that created a compositeGanga-Jamuni tehzeeb.[38][36][39][78] The language was also known asRekhta, or 'mixed', which implies that the Sanskritic and Prakritic vocabulary base of Old Hindi was mixed with Persian loanwords.[76][35][37][59][79][80] Written in thePerso-Arabic,Devanagari,[81] and occasionallyKaithi orGurmukhi scripts,[82] it remained the primary lingua franca of northern India for the next four centuries, although it varied significantly in vocabulary depending on the local language. Alongside Persian, it achieved the status of a literary language in Muslim courts and was also used for literary purposes in various other settings such asSufi,Nirgun Sant,Krishna Bhakta circles, andRajput Hindu courts. Its major centres of development included the Mughal courts of Delhi,Lucknow,Agra andLahore as well as the Rajput courts ofAmber andJaipur.[82]
In the 18th century, towards the end of the Mughal period, with the fragmentation of the empire and the elite system, a variant of Hindustani, one of the successors ofapabhraṃśa vernaculars at Delhi, and nearby cities, came to gradually replace Persian as thelingua franca among the educated eliteupper class particularly in northern India, though Persian still retained much of its pre-eminence for a short period. The termHindustani was given to that language.[83] The Perso-Arabic script form of this language underwent a standardisation process and further Persianisation during this period (18th century) and came to be known as Urdu, a name derived from Persian:Zabān-e Urdū-e Mualla ('language of the court') orZabān-e Urdū (زبان اردو, 'language of the camp'). The etymology of the wordUrdu is ofChagatai origin,Ordū ('camp'), cognate with Englishhorde, and known in local translation asLashkari Zabān (لشکری زبان),[84] which is shortened toLashkari (لشکری).[85] This is all due to its origin as the common speech of the Mughal army. As a literary language, Urdu took shape in courtly, elite settings. Along with English, it became an official language of northern parts ofBritish India in 1837.[86][87]
Hindi as a standardised literaryregister of the Hindustani arose in the 19th century. While the first literary works (mostly translations of earlier works) in Sanskritised Hindustani were already written in the early 19th century as part of a literary project that included both Hindu and Muslim writers (e.g.Lallu Lal,Insha Allah Khan), the call for a distinct Sanskritised standard of Hindustani written in Devanagari under the name of Hindi became increasingly politicised in the course of the century and gained pace around 1880 in an effort to displace Urdu's official position.[88]
John Fletcher Hurst in his book published in 1891 mentioned that the Hindustani or camp language of theMughal Empire's courts at Delhi was not regarded by philologists as a distinct language but only as a dialect ofHindi with admixture of Persian. He continued: "But it has all the magnitude and importance of separate language. It is linguistic result of Muslim rule of eleventh & twelfth centuries and is spoken by manyHindus inNorth India and byMusalman population in all parts of India." Next to English it was the official language ofBritish Indian Empire, was commonly written in Arabic or Persian characters, and was spoken by approximately 100,000,000 people.[89] The process of hybridization also led to the formation of words in which the first element of the compound was from Khari Boli and the second fromPersian, such asrajmahal 'palace' (raja 'royal, king' +mahal 'house, place') andrangmahal 'fashion house' (rang 'colour, dye' +mahal 'house, place').[90] AsMuslim rule expanded, Hindustani speakers traveled to distant parts of India as administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans. As it reached new areas, Hindustani further hybridized with local languages. In theDeccan, for instance,Hindustani blended withTelugu and came to be calledDakhani. In Dakhani, aspirated consonants were replaced with their unaspirated counterparts; for instance,dekh 'see' becamedek,ghula 'dissolved' becamegula,kuch 'some' becamekuc, andsamajh 'understand' becamesamaj.[90]
When the British colonised theIndian subcontinent from the late 18th through to the late 19th century, they used the words 'Hindustani', 'Hindi', and 'Urdu' interchangeably. They developed it as the language of administration ofBritish India,[91] further preparing it to be the official language of modern India and Pakistan. However, with independence, use of the word 'Hindustani' declined, being largely replaced by 'Hindi' and 'Urdu', or 'Hindi–Urdu' when either of those was too specific.[92] More recently, the word 'Hindustani' has been used for the colloquial language ofBollywood films, which are popular in both India and Pakistan and which cannot be unambiguously identified as either Hindi or Urdu.
British rule over India also introduced some English words into Hindustani, with theseinfluences increasing with the later spread of English as a world language. This has created a new variant of Hindustani known asHinglish orUrdish.[93][23][24][25][26]
At the spoken level, Hindi and Urdu are consideredregisters of a single language, Hindustani or Hindi–Urdu, as they share a commongrammar and core vocabulary,[20][21][94][49][47] they differ in literary and formal vocabulary; where literary Hindi draws heavily on Sanskrit and to a lesser extentPrakrit, literary Urdu draws heavily on Persian and Arabic loanwords.[95] The grammar and base vocabulary (most pronouns, verbs, adpositions, etc.) of both Hindi and Urdu, however, are the same and derive from a Prakritic base, and both have Persian/Arabic influence.[94]
A grammar of the Hindustani language, published 1843A road sign using Hindi, Urdu, and English
The standardised registers Hindi and Urdu are collectively known asHindi–Urdu.[13] Hindustani is thelingua franca of the north and west of theIndian subcontinent, though it is understood fairly well in other regions also, especially in the urban areas.[14] This has led it to be characterised as a continuum that ranges between Hindi and Urdu.[96] A common vernacular sharing characteristics with Sanskritised Hindi, regional Hindi and Urdu, Hindustani is more commonly used as a vernacular than highly Sanskritised Hindi or highly Persianised Urdu.[44]
This can be seen in the popular culture ofBollywood or, more generally, the vernacular of North Indians and Pakistanis, which generally employs a lexicon common to both Hindi and Urdu speakers.[46] Minor subtleties in region will also affect the 'brand' of Hindustani, sometimes pushing the Hindustani closer to Urdu or to Hindi. One might reasonably assume that the Hindustani spoken inLucknow,Uttar Pradesh (known for its usage of Urdu) andVaranasi (a holy city for Hindus and thus using highly Sanskritised Hindi) is somewhat different.[13]
Standard Hindi, one of the22 officially recognized languages of India and theofficial language of the Union, is usually written in the indigenousDevanagari script of India and exhibits less Persian and Arabic influence than Urdu. It has a literature of 500 years, with prose, poetry, religion and philosophy. One could conceive of a wide spectrum of dialects and registers, with the highly Persianised Urdu at one end of the spectrum and a heavily Sanskritised variety spoken in the region aroundVaranasi, at the other end. In common usage in India, the termHindi includes all these dialects except those at the Urdu spectrum. Thus, the different meanings of the wordHindi include, among others:[citation needed]
standardized Hindi as taught in schools throughout India (except some states such as Tamil Nadu),
formal or official Hindi advocated byPurushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,
the vernacular dialects of Hindustani as spoken throughout India,
the neutralized form of Hindustani used in popular television and films (which is nearly identical to colloquial Urdu), or
the more formal neutralized form of Hindustani used in television and print news reports.
AsDakhini (or Deccani) where it also draws words from local languages, it survives and enjoys a rich history in theDeccan and other parts ofSouth India, with the prestige dialect beingHyderabadi Urdu spoken in and around the capital of theNizams and theDeccan Sultanates.
The termbazaar Hindustani, in other words, the 'street talk' or literally 'marketplace Hindustani', also known asColloquial Hindi[e] orSimplified Urdu,[f] has arisen to denote a colloquial register of the language that uses vocabulary common to both Hindi and Urdu while eschewing high-register and specialized Arabic or Sanskrit derived words.[99] It has emerged in various South Asian cities where Hindustani is not the main language, in order to facilitate communication across language barriers. It is characterized by loanwords from local languages.[100]
During theBritish Raj, the termHindustani was used by British officials.[101] In 1796,John Borthwick Gilchrist published "A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language".[101][105] Uponpartition, India and Pakistan established national standards that they calledHindi andUrdu, respectively, and attempted to make distinct, with the result thatHindustani commonly, but mistakenly, came to be seen as a "mixture" of Hindi and Urdu.
Grierson, in his highly influentialLinguistic Survey of India, proposed that the namesHindustani, Urdu, andHindi be separated in use for different varieties of the Hindustani language, rather than as the overlapping synonyms they frequently were:
We may now define the three main varieties of Hindōstānī as follows:—Hindōstānī is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also thelingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Dēva-nāgarī characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name 'Urdū' can then be confined to that special variety of Hindōstānī in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, 'Hindī' can be confined to the form of Hindōstānī in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only be written in the Dēva-nāgarī character.[3]
Official status
Hindustani, in its standardised registers, is one of the official languages of both India (Hindi) and Pakistan (Urdu).
Before 1947, Hindustani was officially recognised by the British Raj. In the post-independence period however, the term Hindustani has lost currency and is not given any official recognition by the Indian or Pakistani governments. The language is instead recognised by its standard forms, Hindi and Urdu.[106]
Hindi
Hindi is declared by Article 343(1),Part 17 of theIndian Constitution as the "official language (राजभाषा,rājabhāṣā) of the Union." (In this context, "Union" means the Federal Government and not the entire country[citation needed]—India has23 official languages.) At the same time, however, the definitive text of federal laws is officially the English text and proceedings in the higher appellate courts must be conducted in English.
In the remaining states, Hindi is not an official language. In states likeTamil Nadu andKarnataka, studying Hindi is not compulsory in the state curriculum. However, an option to take the same as second or third language does exist. In many other states, studying Hindi is usually compulsory in the school curriculum as a third language (the first two languages being the state's official language and English), though the intensiveness of Hindi in the curriculum varies.[107]
Urdu
Urdu is the national language (قومی زبان,qaumi zabān) of Pakistan, where it sharesofficial language status withEnglish. Although English is spoken by many, andPunjabi is the native language of the majority of the population, Urdu is thelingua franca. In India, Urdu is one of the languages recognised in theEighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and is an official language of the Indian states ofJharkhand,Bihar,Telangana,Uttar Pradesh,West Bengal, and also the Union Territories of Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Although the government school system in most other states emphasises Standard Hindi, at universities in cities such asLucknow,Aligarh andHyderabad, Urdu is spoken and learnt, andSaaf orKhaalis Urdu is treated with just as much respect asShuddh Hindi.
Besides being thelingua franca of North India and Pakistan in South Asia,[14][44] Hindustani is also spoken by many in the South Asian diaspora and their descendants around the world, includingNorth America (e.g., in Canada, Hindustani is one of the fastest growing languages),[108]Europe, and theMiddle East.
A sizeable population inAfghanistan, especially inKabul, can also speak and understand Hindi–Urdu due to the popularity and influence ofBollywood films and songs in the region, as well as the fact that many Afghan refugees spent time in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s.[109][110]
Fiji Hindi was derived from the Hindustani linguistic group and is spoken widely by Fijians ofIndian origin.
Hindustani phonology, shared by both Hindi and Urdu, is characterized by a symmetrical ten-vowel system, where vowels are distinguished by length, with long vowels typically being tense and short vowels lax. The language also includesnasalized vowels, as well as a wide array of consonants, includingaspirated and murmured sounds. Hindustani maintains a four-way phonation distinction among plosives, unlike the two-way distinction in English.
Hindi–Urdu's core vocabulary has an Indic base, being derived fromPrakrit andClassical Sanskrit, which in turn both derive fromVedic Sanskrit,[47][21][49][50] as well as a substantial number ofloanwords fromPersian andArabic (via Persian).[95][51] Hindustani contains around 5,500 words of Persian and Arabic origin.[111] There are also quite a few words borrowed from English, as well as some words from other European languages such asPortuguese andDutch.[112]
Hindustani also borrowed Persian prefixes to create new words. Persian affixes became so assimilated that they were used with originalKhari Boli words as well.
Historically, Hindustani was written in theKaithi, Devanagari, and Urdu alphabets.[81] Kaithi and Devanagari are two of theBrahmic scripts native to India, whereas the Urdu alphabet is a derivation of the Perso-Arabic script written inNastaʿlīq, which is the preferred calligraphic style for Urdu.
Today, Hindustani continues to be written in the Urdu alphabet in Pakistan. In India, the Hindi register is officially written in Devanagari, and Urdu in the Urdu alphabet, to the extent that these standards are partly defined by their script.
However, in popular publications in India, Urdu is also written in Devanagari, with slight variations to establish a Devanagari Urdu alphabet alongside the Devanagari Hindi alphabet.
Because ofanglicisation in South Asia and the international use of theLatin script, Hindustani is occasionally written in the Latin script. This adaptation is calledRoman Urdu or Romanised Hindi, depending upon the register used. Since Urdu and Hindi aremutually intelligible when spoken, Romanised Hindi and Roman Urdu (unlike Devanagari Hindi and Urdu in the Urdu alphabet) are mostly mutually intelligible as well.
The following is a sample text, Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, in the two official registers of Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu. Because this is a formal legal text, differences in vocabulary are most pronounced.
Literary Hindi
अनुच्छेद १ — सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अधिकारों के विषय में जन्मजात स्वतन्त्रता और समानता प्राप्त हैं। उन्हें बुद्धि और अन्तरात्मा की देन प्राप्त है और परस्पर उन्हें भाईचारे के भाव से बर्ताव करना चाहिए।[114]
Urdu transliteration
انُچھید ١ : سبھی منُشیوں کو گورو اور ادھکاروں کے وِشئے میں جنمجات سوَتنتْرتا پراپت ہیں۔ اُنہیں بدھی اور انتراتما کی دین پراپت ہے اور پرسپر اُنہیں بھائی چارے کے بھاؤ سے برتاؤ کرنا چاہئے۔
Article 1—All human-beings to dignity and rights' matter in from-birth freedom acquired is. Them to reason and conscience's endowment acquired is and always them to brotherhood's spirit with behaviour to do should.
Translation (grammatical)
Article 1—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.
Literary Urdu
:دفعہ ١: تمام اِنسان آزاد اور حُقوق و عِزت کے اعتبار سے برابر پَیدا ہُوئے ہَیں۔ انہیں ضمِیر اور عقل ودِیعت ہوئی ہَیں۔ اِس لئے انہیں ایک دُوسرے کے ساتھ بھائی چارے کا سُلُوک کرنا چاہئے۔
Devanagari transliteration
दफ़ा १ — तमाम इनसान आज़ाद और हुक़ूक़ ओ इज़्ज़त के ऐतबार से बराबर पैदा हुए हैं। उन्हें ज़मीर और अक़्ल वदीयत हुई हैं। इसलिए उन्हें एक दूसरे के साथ भाई चारे का सुलूक करना चाहीए।
Article 1: All humans free[,] and rights and dignity's consideration from equal born are. To them conscience and intellect endowed is. Therefore, they one another's with brotherhood's treatment do must.
Translation (grammatical)
Article 1—All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, they should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Film titles are often screened in three scripts: Latin, Devanagari and occasionally Perso-Arabic. The use of Urdu or Hindi in films depends on the film's context: historical films set in theDelhi Sultanate orMughal Empire are almost entirely in Urdu, whereas films based onHindu mythology orancient India make heavy use of Hindi with Sanskrit vocabulary.
In recent years,boycotts have been launched against Bollywood films byHindu nationalists partially on the basis that the films feature too much Urdu, with some critics employing the epithet "Urduwood".[116][117][118]
^This will only display in aNastaliq font if you will have one installed, otherwise it may display in a modernArabic font in a style more common for writingArabic and most other non-Urdu languages such asNaskh. If thisپاکستان and thisپاکستان looks like thisپاکستان, then you are not seeing it in Nastaliq.
^ab"Hindi" L1: 322 million (2011 Indian census), including perhaps 150 million speakers of other languages that reported their language as "Hindi" on the census. L2: 274 million (2016, source unknown). Urdu L1: 67 million (2011 & 2017 censuses), L2: 102 million (1999 Pakistan, source unknown, and 2001 Indian census):Ethnologue 21.Hindi atEthnologue (21st ed., 2018).Urdu atEthnologue (21st ed., 2018).
^abcdGrierson, vol. 9–1, p. 47.We may now define the three main varieties of Hindōstānī as follows:—Hindōstānī is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also thelingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Dēva-nāgarī characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name 'Urdū' can then be confined to that special variety of Hindōstānī in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, 'Hindī' can be confined to the form of Hindōstānī in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only be written in the Dēva-nāgarī character.
^abcRay, Aniruddha (2011).The Varied Facets of History: Essays in Honour of Aniruddha Ray. Primus Books.ISBN978-93-80607-16-0.There was theHindustani Dictionary of Fallon published in 1879; and two years later (1881), John J. Platts produced hisDictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English, which implied that Hindi and Urdu were literary forms of a single language. More recently, Christopher R. King in hisOne Language, Two Scripts (1994) has presented the late history of the single spoken language in two forms, with the clarity and detail that the subject deserves.
^Gangopadhyay, Avik (2020).Glimpses of Indian Languages. Evincepub publishing. p. 43.ISBN9789390197828.
McGregor, R. S., ed. (1993), "हिंदुस्तानी",The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, p. 1071,2.hindustani [P. hindustani] f Hindustani (a mixed Hindi dialect of the Delhi region which came to be used as a lingua franca widely throughout India and what is now Pakistan)
Das, Shyamasundar (1975),Hindi Shabda Sagar (Hindi dictionary) in 11 volumes, revised edition, Kashi (Varanasi):Nagari Pracharini Sabha, p. 5505,हिंदुस्तानी hindustānī३ संज्ञा स्त्री॰ १. हिंदुस्तान की भाषा । २. बोलचाल या व्यवहार की वह हिंदी जिसमें न तो बहुत अरबी फारसी के शब्द हों न संस्कृत के । उ॰—साहिब लोगों ने इस देश की भाषा का एक नया नाम हिंदुस्तानी रखा । Translation: Hindustani hindustānī3 noun feminine 1. The language of Hindustan. 2. That version of Hindi employed for common speech or business in which neither many Arabic or Persian words nor Sanskrit words are present. Context: The British gave the new name Hindustani to the language of this country.
Chaturvedi, Mahendra (1970), "हिंदुस्तानी",A Practical Hindi-English Dictionary, Delhi: National Publishing House,hindustānī hīndusta:nī: a theoretically existent style of the Hindi language which is supposed to consist of current and simple words of any sources whatever and is neither too much biassed in favour of Perso-Arabic elements nor has any place for too much high-flown Sanskritized vocabulary
^"Hindustani language". Encyclopedia Britannica. 1 November 2018. Retrieved18 October 2021.(subscription required) lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan. Two variants of Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi, are official languages in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century CE in and around the Indian cities of Delhi and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony. In the 19th century its use was widely promoted by the British, who initiated an effort at standardization. Hindustani is widely recognized as India's most common lingua franca, but its status as a vernacular renders it difficult to measure precisely its number of speakers.
^Yoon, Bogum; Pratt, Kristen L., eds. (15 January 2023).Primary Language Impact on Second Language and Literacy Learning. Lexington Books. p. 198.In terms of cross-linguistic relations, Urdu's combinations of Arabic-Persian orthography and Sanskrit linguistic roots provides interesting theoretical as well as practical comparisons demonstrated in table 12.1.
^Trask, R. L. (8 August 2019),"Hindi-Urdu",Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 149–150,ISBN9781474473316,Hindi-Urdu The most important modern Indo-Aryan language, spoken by well over 250 million people, mainly in India and Pakistan. At the spoken levelHindi andUrdu are the same language (calledHindustani before the political partition), but the two varieties are written in different alphabets and differ substantially in their abstract and technical vocabularies
^Crystal, David (2001),A Dictionary of Language,Chicago:University of Chicago Press,ISBN9780226122038,(p. 115) Figure: A family of languages: the Indo-European family tree, reflecting geographical distribution. Proto Indo-European>Indo-Iranian>Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit)> Midland (Rajasthani, Bihari, Hindi/Urdu); (p. 149)Hindi There is little structural difference between Hindi and Urdu, and the two are often grouped together under the single label Hindi/Urdu, sometimes abbreviated to Hirdu, and formerly often called Hindustani; (p. 160)India ... With such linguistic diversity, Hindi/Urdu has come to be widely used as a lingua franca.
^Gandhi, M. K. (2018).An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth: A Critical Edition. Translated byDesai, Mahadev. annotation by Suhrud, Tridip.New Haven and London:Yale University Press.ISBN9780300234077.(p. 737) I was handicapped for want of suitable Hindi or Urdu words. This was my first occasion for delivering an argumentative speech before an audience especially composed of Mussalmans of the North. I had spoken in Urdu at the Muslim League at Calcutta, but it was only for a few minutes, and the speech was intended only to be a feeling appeal to the audience. Here, on the contrary, I was faced with a critical, if not hostile, audience, to whom I had to explain and bring home my view-point. But I had cast aside all shyness. I was not there to deliver an address in the faultless, polished Urdu of the Delhi Muslims, but to place before the gathering my views in such broken Hindi as I could command. And in this I was successful. This meeting afforded me a direct proof of the fact that Hindi-Urdu alone could become the lingua franca<Footnote M8> of India. (M8: "national language" in the Gujarati original).
^abBasu, Manisha (2017).The Rhetoric of Hindutva.Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-107-14987-8.Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals.
^abcdGube, Jan; Gao, Fang (2019).Education, Ethnicity and Equity in the Multilingual Asian Context.Springer Publishing.ISBN978-981-13-3125-1.The national language of India and Pakistan 'Standard Urdu' is mutually intelligible with 'Standard Hindi' because both languages share the same Indic base and are all but indistinguishable in phonology and grammar (Lust et al. 2000).
^Bhat, Riyaz Ahmad; Bhat, Irshad Ahmad; Jain, Naman; Sharma, Dipti Misra (2016)."A House United: Bridging the Script and Lexical Barrier between Hindi and Urdu"(PDF). Proceedings of COLING 2016, the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics. Retrieved18 October 2021.Hindi and Urdu transliteration has received a lot of attention from the NLP research community of South Asia (Malik et al., 2008; Lehal and Saini, 2012; Lehal and Saini, 2014). It has been seen to break the barrier that makes the two look different.
^Dhanesh Jain; George Cardona, eds. (2007).The Indo-Aryan languages. London: Routledge.ISBN978-1-135-79711-9.OCLC648298147.Such an early date for the inception of a Hindi literature, one made possible only by subsuming the large body of Apabhraṁśa literature into Hindi, has not, however, been generally accepted by scholars (p. 279).
^Kachru, Yamuna (2006).Hindi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.The periodbetween 1000 AD-1200/1300 AD is designated the Old NIA stage because it is at this stage that the NIA languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi assumed distinct identities (p. 1, emphasis added)
^Dua, Hans (2008). "Hindustani". In Keith Brown; Sarah Ogilvie (eds.).Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 497–500.Hindustani as a colloquial speech developed over almost seven centuries from1100 to 1800 (p. 497, emphasis added).
^Chapman, Graham. "Religious vs. regional determinism: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as inheritors of empire." Shared space: Divided space. Essays on conflict and territorial organization (1990): 106-134.
^abcdeFirst Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913-1936.Brill Academic Publishers. 1993. p. 1024.ISBN9789004097964.Whilst the Muhammadan rulers of India spoke Persian, which enjoyed the prestige of being their court language, the common language of the country continued to be Hindi, derived through Prakrit from Sanskrit. On this dialect of the common people was grafted the Persian language, which brought a new language, Urdu, into existence. Sir George Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, assigns no distinct place to Urdu, but treats it as an offshoot of Western Hindi.
^ab"Women of the Indian Sub-Continent: Makings of a Culture - Rekhta Foundation".Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved25 February 2020.The "Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb" is one such instance of the composite culture that marks various regions of the country. Prevalent in the North, particularly in the central plains, it is born of the union between the Hindu and Muslim cultures. Most of the temples were lined along the Ganges and the Khanqah (Sufi school of thought) were situated along the Yamuna river (also called Jamuna). Thus, it came to be known as the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, with the word "tehzeeb" meaning culture. More than communal harmony, its most beautiful by-product was "Hindustani" which later gave us the Hindi and Urdu languages.
^abMatthews, David John; Shackle, C.; Husain, Shahanara (1985).Urdu literature. Urdu Markaz; Third World Foundation for Social and Economic Studies.ISBN978-0-907962-30-4.But with the establishment of Muslim rule in Delhi, it was the Old Hindi of this area which came to form the major partner with Persian. This variety of Hindi is called Khari Boli, 'the upright speech'.
^abDhulipala, Venkat (2000).The Politics of Secularism: Medieval Indian Historiography and the Sufis.University of Wisconsin–Madison. p. 27.Persian became the court language, and many Persian words crept into popular usage. The composite culture of northern India, known as the Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb was a product of the interaction between Hindu society and Islam.
^abIndian Journal of Social Work, Volume 4.Tata Institute of Social Sciences. 1943. p. 264.... more words of Sanskrit origin but 75% of the vocabulary is common. It is also admitted that while this language is known as Hindustani, ... Muslims call it Urdu and the Hindus call it Hindi. ... Urdu is a national language evolved through years of Hindu and Muslim cultural contact and, as stated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, is essentially an Indian language and has no place outside.
^abMody, Sujata Sudhakar (2008).Literature, Language, and Nation Formation: The Story of a Modern Hindi Journal 1900-1920. University of California, Berkeley. p. 7....Hindustani, Rekhta, and Urdu as later names of the old Hindi (a.k.a. Hindavi).
^abKesavan, B. S. (1997).History Of Printing And Publishing In India. National Book Trust, India. p. 31.ISBN978-81-237-2120-0.It might be useful to recall here that Old Hindi or Hindavi, which was a naturally Persian- mixed language in the largest measure, has played this role before, as we have seen, for five or six centuries.
^Hans Henrich Hock (1991).Principles of Historical Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. p. 475.ISBN978-3-11-012962-5.During the time of British rule, Hindi (in its religiously neutral, 'Hindustani' variety) increasingly came to be the symbol of national unity over against the English of the foreign oppressor. And Hindustani was learned widely throughout India, even in Bengal and the Dravidian south. ... Independence had been accompanied by the division of former British India into two countries, Pakistan and India. The former had been established as a Muslim state and had made Urdu, the Muslim variety of Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani, its national language.
^Masica, Colin P. (1993).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 430 (Appendix I).ISBN978-0-521-29944-2.Hindustani - term referring to common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India, much in vogue during Independence movement as expression of national unity; after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it their mother tongue (the majority of HINDI speakers and many URDU speakers had done so in previous censuses); trend continued in subsequent censuses: only 11,053 returned it in 1971...mostly from S India; [see Khubchandani 1983: 90-1].
^abcAshmore, Harry S. (1961).Encyclopaedia Britannica: a new survey of universal knowledge, Volume 11.Encyclopædia Britannica. p. 579.The everyday speech of well over 50,000,000 persons of all communities in the north of India and in West Pakistan is the expression of a common language, Hindustani.
^abHiro, Dilip (2015).The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan.PublicAffairs. p. 398.ISBN978-1-56858-503-1.Spoken Hindi is akin to spoken Urdu, and that language is often called Hindustani. Bollywood's screenplays are written in Hindustani.
^abcdefDelacy, Richard; Ahmed, Shahara (2005).Hindi, Urdu & Bengali. Lonely Planet. pp. 11–12.Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. That means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets (and watch the same Bollywood films) have no problems understanding each other.
^"Ties between Urdu & Sanskrit deeply rooted: Scholar".The Times of India. 12 March 2024. Retrieved8 May 2024.The linguistic and cultural ties between Sanskrit and Urdu are deeply rooted and significant, said Ishtiaque Ahmed, registrar, Maula Azad National Urdu University during a two-day workshop titled "Introduction to Sanskrit for Urdu medium students". Ahmed said a substantial portion of Urdu's vocabulary and cultural capital, as well as its syntactic structure, is derived from Sanskrit.
^abcKuiper, Kathleen (2010).The Culture of India.Rosen Publishing.ISBN978-1-61530-149-2.Urdu is closely related to Hindi, a language that originated and developed in the Indian subcontinent. They share the same Indic base and are so similar in phonology and grammar that they appear to be one language.
^abChatterji, Suniti Kumar; Siṃha, Udaẏa Nārāẏana; Padikkal, Shivarama (1997).Suniti Kumar Chatterji: a centenary tribute. Sahitya Akademi.ISBN978-81-260-0353-2.High Hindi written in Devanagari, having identical grammar with Urdu, employing the native Hindi or Hindustani (Prakrit) elements to the fullest, but for words of high culture, going to Sanskrit. Hindustani proper that represents the basic Khari Boli with vocabulary holding a balance between Urdu and High Hindi.
^abDraper, Allison Stark (2003).India: A Primary Source Cultural Guide.Rosen Publishing Group.ISBN978-0-8239-3838-4.People in Delhi spoke Khari Boli, a language the British called Hindustani. It used an Indo-Aryan grammatical structure and numerous Persian "loan-words."
^Ahmad, Aijaz (2002).Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Contemporary South Asia. Verso. p. 113.ISBN9781859843581.On this there are far more reliable statistics than those on population.Farhang-e-Asafiya is by general agreement the most reliable Urdu dictionary. It twas compiled in the late nineteenth century by an Indian scholar little exposed to British or Orientalist scholarship. The lexicographer in question, Syed Ahmed Dehlavi, had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Farsi, as is evident even from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55,000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are derived from these sources. What distinguishes Urdu from a great many other Indian languauges ... is that is draws almost a quarter of its vocabulary from language communities to the west of India, such as Farsi, Turkish, and Tajik. Most of the little it takes from Arabic has not come directly but through Farsi.
^Dalmia, Vasudha (31 July 2017).Hindu Pasts: Women, Religion, Histories.SUNY Press. p. 310.ISBN9781438468075.On the issue of vocabulary, Ahmad goes on to cite Syed Ahmad Dehlavi as he set about to compile the Farhang-e-Asafiya, an Urdu dictionary, in the late nineteenth century. Syed Ahmad 'had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Farsi, as is evident from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55.000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are from these sources' (2000: 112-13). As Ahmad points out, Syed Ahmad, as a member of Delhi's aristocratic elite, had a clear bias towards Persian and Arabic. His estimate of the percentage of Prakitic words in Urdu should therefore be considered more conservative than not. The actual proportion of Prakitic words in everyday language would clearly be much higher.
^Gambhir, Vijay (1995).The Teaching and Acquisition of South Asian Languages.University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN978-0-8122-3328-5.The position of Hindi–Urdu among the languages of the world is anomalous. The number of its proficient speakers, over three hundred million, places it in third of fourth place after Mandarin, English, and perhaps Spanish.
^abcdStudents' Britannica India.Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2000. p. 299.Hindustani developed as lingua franca in the medieval ages in and around Delhi, Meerut and Saharanpur because of the interaction between the speakers ofKhariboli (a dialect developed in this region out of Shauraseni Prakrit) and the speakers of Persian, Turkish, and various dialects of Arabic who migrated to North India. Initially it was known by various names such asRekhta (mixed),Urdu (language of the camp) andHindvi orHindustani (language of Hindustan). ThoughKhariboli supplied its basic vocabulary and grammar, it borrowed quite a lot of words from Persian and Arabic
^Kathleen Kuiper, ed. (2011).The Culture of India.Rosen Publishing. p. 80.ISBN9781615301492.Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century AD in and around the Indian cities of Dehli and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony.
^Keith Brown; Sarah Ogilvie (2008),Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, Elsevier,ISBN978-0-08-087774-7,Apabhramsha seemed to be in a state of transition from Middle Indo-Aryan to the New Indo-Aryan stage. Some elements of Hindustani appear ... the distinct form of the lingua franca Hindustani appears in the writings of Amir Khusro (1253–1325), who called it Hindwi[.]
^Prakāśaṃ, Vennelakaṇṭi (2008).Encyclopaedia of the Linguistic Sciences: Issues and Theories. Allied Publishers. p. 186.ISBN9788184242799.In Deccan the dialect developed and flourished independently. It is here that it received, among others, the name Dakkhni. The kings of many independent kingdoms such as Bahmani, Ādil Shahi and Qutb Shahi that came into being in Deccan patronized the dialect. It was elevated as the official language.
^Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier. 2010. p. 497.ISBN978-0-08-087775-4.Hindustani is a Central Indo-Aryan language based on Khari Boli (Khaṛi Boli). Its origin, development, and function reflect the dynamics of the sociolinguistic contact situation from which it emerged as a colloquial speech. It is inextricably linked with the emergence and standardisation of Urdu and Hindi.
^Williams, Tyler; Malhotra, Anshu; Hawley, John S. (3 January 2018).Text and Tradition in Early Modern North India. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-909167-6.These traditions intensively fed into each other and can be perceived as forming a 'super-tradition', which with a modern, heuristic term is called Old Hindi.
^Zahir ud-Din Mohammad (10 September 2002), Thackston, Wheeler M. (ed.),The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, Modern Library Classics,ISBN978-0-375-76137-9,Note:Gurkānī is the Persianized form of the Mongolian word "kürügän" ("son-in-law"), the title given to the dynasty's founder after his marriage intoGenghis Khan's family.
^Encyclopædia Britannica, "Timurid Dynasty", Online Academic Edition, 2007. (Quotation: "Turkic dynasty descended from the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), renowned for its brilliant revival of artistic and intellectual life in Iran and Central Asia. ... Trading and artistic communities were brought into the capital city of Herat, where a library was founded, and the capital became the centre of a renewed and artistically brilliant Persian culture.")
^abStrnad, Jaroslav (2013).Morphology and Syntax of Old Hindī: Edition and Analysis of One Hundred Kabīr vānī Poems from Rājasthān.Brill Academic Publishers.ISBN978-90-04-25489-3.Quite different group of nouns occurring with the ending-a in the dir. plural consists of words of Arabic or Persian origin borrowed by the Old Hindi with their Persian plural endings.
^Grajcar, Rhône (6 February 2024)."In Delhi, an Urdu Wala, and a 'Dying' Language's Quiet, Vibrant Life". Mangoprism. Retrieved15 October 2024.But those who make this claim focus more on the fate of Urdu in its place of origin, the Doab plains between the Ganga and Jamuna rivers of Northern India.
^Farooqi, M. (2012).Urdu Literary Culture: Vernacular Modernity in the Writing of Muhammad Hasan Askari.Springer.ISBN978-1-137-02692-7.Historically speaking, Urdu grew out of interaction between Hindus and Muslims.
^Nijhawan, S. 2016. "Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani? Revisiting 'National Language' Debates through Radio Broadcasting in Late Colonial India."South Asia Research 36(1):80–97.doi:10.1177/0262728015615486.
^Khalid, Kanwal. "Lahore During the Ghanavid Period".
^Masica, Colin (1991).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 430.after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it [Hindustani] fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it as their mother language
^Coleman, Julie (10 January 2014).Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives. Routledge. p. 130.ISBN978-1-317-93476-9.Within India, however, other regional forms exist, all denoting a mixing of English with indigenous languages.Bonglish (derived from the slang termBong 'a Bengali') orBenglish refers to 'a mixture of Bengali and English',Gunglish orGujlish 'Gujarati + English',Kanglish 'Kannada + English',Manglish 'Malayalam + English',Marlish 'Marathi + English',Tamlish orTanglish 'Tamil + English' andUrdish 'Urdu + English'. These terms are found in texts on regional variations of Indian English, usually in complaint-tradition discussions of failing standards of language purity.
^abPeter-Dass, Rakesh (2019).Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India.Routledge.ISBN978-1-00-070224-8.Two forms of the same language, Nagarai Hindi and Persianized Hindi (Urdu) had identical grammar, shared common words and roots, and employed different scripts.
^abJain, Danesh; Cardona, George (2007).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge.ISBN978-1-135-79711-9.The primary sources of non-IA loans into MSH are Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Turkic and English. Conversational registers of Hindi/Urdu (not to mentioned formal registers of Urdu) employ large numbers of Persian and Arabic loanwords, although in Sanskritized registers many of these words are replaced bytatsama forms from Sanskrit. The Persian and Arabic lexical elements in Hindi result from the effects of centuries of Islamic administrative rule over much of north India in the centuries before the establishment of British rule in India. Although it is conventional to differentiate among Persian and Arabic loan elements into Hindi/Urdu, in practice it is often difficult to separate these strands from one another. The Arabic (and also Turkic) lexemes borrowed into Hindi frequently were mediated through Persian, as a result of which a throrough intertwining of Persian and Arabic elements took place, as manifest by such phenomena as hybrid compounds and compound words. Moreover, although the dominant trajectory of lexical borrowing was from Arabic into Persian, and thence into Hindi/Urdu, examples can be found of words that in origin are actually Persian loanwords into both Arabic and Hindi/Urdu.
^Agnihotri, Rama Kant (2007).Hindi: an essential grammar. Essential grammars (1. publ ed.). London: Routledge. p. 05.ISBN978-0-415-35671-8.
^Shackle, C.; Snell, Rupert (1990).Hindi and Urdu since 1800: a common reader (in English, Hindi, and Urdu). New Delhi, India: Heritage Publishers. p. 09.ISBN978-81-7026-162-9.
^Smith, Ian (2008). "Pidgins, Creoles, and Bazaar Hindi". In Kachru, Braj B; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S.N (eds.).Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 254.ISBN1139465503
^Hakala, Walter N. (2012)."Languages as a Key to Understanding Afghanistan's Cultures"(PDF).National Geographic. Retrieved13 March 2018.In the 1980s and '90s, at least three million Afghans--mostly Pashtun--fled to Pakistan, where a substantial number spent several years being exposed to Hindi- and Urdu-language media, especially Bollywood films and songs, and being educated in Urdu-language schools, both of which contributed to the decline of Dari, even among urban Pashtuns.
^Krishnamurthy, Rajeshwari (28 June 2013)."Kabul Diary: Discovering the Indian connection". Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. Retrieved13 March 2018.Most Afghans in Kabul understand and/or speak Hindi, thanks to the popularity of Indian cinema in the country.
^Kuczkiewicz-Fraś, Agnieszka (2008).Perso-Arabic Loanwords in Hindustani. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka. p. x.ISBN978-83-7188-161-9.
Asher, R. E. 1994. "Hindi." Pp. 1547–49 inThe Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, edited by R. E. Asher. Oxford: Pergamon Press.ISBN0-08-035943-4.
Bailey, Thomas G. 1950.Teach yourself Hindustani. London: English Universities Press.
Chatterji, Suniti K. 1960.Indo-Aryan and Hindi (rev. 2nd ed.). Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay.
Dua, Hans R. 1992. "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language." InPluricentric languages: Differing norms in different nations, edited by M. G. Clyne. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.ISBN3-11-012855-1.
Dua, Hans R. 1994a. "Hindustani." Pp. 1554 inThe Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, edited by R. E. Asher. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Mustafa, K.S (2008),"Dakkhni", in Prakāśaṃ, Vennelakaṇṭi (ed.),Encyclopaedia of the Linguistic Sciences: Issues and Theories, Allied Publishers, pp. 185–186,ISBN978-1139465502
—— 1994b. "Urdu." Pp. 4863–64 inThe Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, edited by R. E. Asher. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Rai, Amrit. 1984.A house divided: The origin and development of Hindi-Hindustani. Delhi: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-561643-X
John Thompson Platts (1874).A grammar of the Hindūstānī or Urdū language. Vol. 6423 of Harvard College Library preservation microfilm program. London: W.H. Allen. p. 399. Retrieved6 July 2011.Oxford University
Shakespear, John.A Dictionary, Hindustani and English. 3rd ed., much enl. London: Printed for the author by J.L. Cox and Son: Sold by Parbury, Allen, & Co., 1834.
Taylor, Joseph.A dictionary, Hindoostanee and English. Available atHathi Trust. (A dictionary, Hindoostanee and English / abridged from the quarto edition of Major Joseph Taylor; as edited by the late W. Hunter; by William Carmichael Smyth.)
