| Hindi | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
South Asia |
| Linguistic classification: | Indo-European
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| Subdivisions: |
Eastern Hindi (partial)
Bihari (partial)
Pahari (partial)
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The Hindi belt
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Hindi (in the broad sense) is a subset of the Indo-Aryan language family in the northern plains of India, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati and Marathi; on the east by Maithili and Bengali; and on the north by Nepali. As defined by the 1991 Indian census, Hindi covers a number of Central, East-Central, Eastern, and Northern Zone languages, including the Bihari languages excepting Maithili, the Rajasthani languages, and the Pahari languages excepting Dogri and Nepali. However, they do not form a natural clade, as which varieties are considered Hindi, and which not, are determined by social convention rather than by anything intrinsic. Moreover, according to linguists like George Abraham Grierson, Rajasthani language is a distinct language and not a dialect of Hindi. Today Sahitya Akademi, National Academy of Letters and University Grants Commission recognize it as a distinct language. The Central Zone languages, or Hindi proper, are conventionally divided into Western and Eastern Hindi.
"Hindi" in the narrow sense of Standard Hindi is a standardized register of one of the Central Zone dialects variously called Khari boli, Hindustani, Hindawi, or Urdu.
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The Hindi languages predominate in the Indian states and union territories of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.[1]
Distinctive non-standard varieties of Hindi are spoken in large, urban areas outside of the Hindi belt. Most notable of these are those spoken in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. Overseas forms of Hindi are found in Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Recent immigration to the West – Europe, USA, etc. – has resulted in the establishment of Hindi-speaking communities there as well.[1]
Population data from the 16th (2009) edition of Ethnologue is as follows, counting languages with two million or more speakers:
According to the 2001 Indian census,[2] 258 million people in India (25% of the population) regarded their native language to be "Hindi". The government, however, counted 422 million Hindi speakers (41% of the population) by including people who identified their language as Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhojpuri (Bihari), Bundeli, Chhattisgarhi, Garhwali, Harauti, Haryanvi, Khortha (Khotta), Kumauni, Lamani (Lambadi), Magadhi (Bihari), Malvi, Marwari, Mewari, Nimadi, Pahari, Rajasthani, and Sadan (Sadri), as well as numerous other languages with fewer than 2 million self-indentified speakers. Note that these figures do not count 52 million Indians who considered their mother tongue to be "Urdu". The numbers are also not directly comparable to the table above; for example, while independent estimates in 2001 counted 37 million speakers of Awadhi,[3] in the 2001 census only 2½ million of these identified their language as "Awadhi" rather than as "Hindi".
Much of the Hindi spoken outside of the subcontinent is quite distinct from the India-Pakistan standard language. In addition, the language of Muslims is commonly called "Hindi" or "Hindustani" rather than "Urdu".
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