LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hindi: Standard Hindi
built 614 days ago
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 linguistsâ€"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.[2], 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 ... 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 Comrie (1998 data)http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm, Hindi-Urdu is the second most spoken language in the world, with 333 million native speakers.
Source:
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 Urdu is ... 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.
Source:
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 ... 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.
Source:
Hindi uses the Devanagari alphabet, a descendant of the earlier Brahmi alphabet which ... gave rise to Khmer and Tibetan. Devanagari first appeared sometime in the early 13th century, and became widely used not long after. After Indian independence on 15 August 1947, the Devanagari script was fully standardized and diacritic marks were added to help write words from other languages in the Hindi script. While Hindi is one of the official languages of India -- alongside English -- many people have commented on the distinct lack of social status the language holds. English-speaking is still seen widely as a prestige marker in Indian culture, and therefore much business and media is conducted in English.
Source:
Hindi has spread throughout North India as a contemporary lingua franca. Its speakers range from illiterate workers in large cities to highly educated civil servants. Many city dwellers learn Hindi as a second or third language even if they speak another regional language, such as Marathi, Bengali, or Gujarati. As professionals have become increasingly mobile, they rely more heavily on Hindi as a means of communication; those aspiring to career advancement need to learn standard Hindi. Speakers of other Indo-Aryan languages tend to chose Hindi for their third language in school because of similarities in grammar, vocabulary, or script with their own mother tongue and because it has a wider use than another regional language.
Source:
Hindi is contrasted with Urdu in the way both are written, and the use of Sanskrit vocabulary in higher registers. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and ... an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are the way Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws its "vocabulary" with words from (Indo-Aryan) Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Urdu script, a variant of the (Semitic) Perso-Arabic script, and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic "vocabulary." Vocabulary is in quotes here since it is mostly the literary vocabulary that shows this visible distinction with the everyday vocabulary being essentially common between the two. To a common unbiased person, both Hindi and Urdu are same (Hindustani) though politics of religion and ethnicity portrays them as two separate languages since they are written in two entirely different scripts Hindi-Urdu controversy. Interestingly, if Urdu is written in Devanagiri script, it will be assumed as Hindi and vice versa.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Standard Hindi