Hindi Language
Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, after Chinese. About 500 million people speak Hindi, in India and abroad, and the total number of people who can understand the language may be 800 million.
History of the language
Hindi originates from a language called by linguists Indo-European parent language, which is thought to have been spoken in Central Asia around 5, 0000 BC. Also English belongs to this ancestral language, this is why many words in Hindi are similar to they English equivalent and in English we find many words of Hindi origin (cot, loot). Apart from this small similarity to English, the majority of Hindi vocabulary comes from the Classical Sanskrit. What is more, when India still was a united State, Hindi was virtually identical to spoken Urdu. The two languages separated when India was divided into India and Pakistan. The standardisation of Hindi begun when the Nation was a colony of Britain and it was completed after the independence thanks to a set of rules (concerning, for instance, grammar and spelling) established by the Government. Finally, Hindi was declared official language of India in 1965.
Dialects of Hindi
Hindi is only one of the 18 officially recognised Indian languages and as it is for the other languages, also Hindi includes many dialects . Hindi counts with around ten variations, among which we find the formal Khariboli, used in literature, and the more colourful Bambayina, spoken in the streets of Bombay and used in Indian films to identify broody characters.
Grammar and useful phrases
A peculiarity of Hindi grammar is that it is SOV-oriented. This means that the verb always comes at the end of the sentence, being this a question, a statement or an imperative. For instance, Hindi says "I Hindi learn" instead of "I learn Hindi", or "Here now come" instead of "Come here now". As for verbs, apart from the inflection with respect to number, gender and tense, as it is for other languages, it's worth saying that Hindi distinguished between the type of action (perfect, imperfect or continuous) and the degree of respect (intimate, familiar, respect, depending on our relation with the speaker).
Apart from classical grammar, if you want to chat with youngsters, it's worth having a brief look at Hindi slang. If you want to say that something is really cool, use "fundoo" or "gazab". If you want to ask how someone is, you should make a distinction: if you are talking to a woman, use "aap kaisii hain?", while if you are addressing a man the proper phrase is "aap kaise hain?".
top ^
top ^
