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Welcome to
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-- Hindi is spoken as a first language by over 337 million people (approximately one third of India's population) and learned as a second language by millions more. It is the official language of Indian government communications and is supposed to be taught in all Indian schools where it is not the dominant language. Hindi is descended from the ancient Sanskrit language. As such, it is a member of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.
   N.B. - This site is designed for educators and students of Hindi and the culture of India. Many sites link to others. If you know of useful sites for this page, please send them on to me at my main multi-language homepage at the bottom of this site. |
 Webmaster / Professor Emeritus University of Northern Iowa  --> 1 May, 2008 |
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Jim's Multilanguage Homepage
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  Check out this Hindi site... it is very rich A Door Into HindiA good starter for learning the language  |
 Let's Learn Hindi LinksYour Hindi Language CenterPhotos of India, lessons in Hindi, and facts about this magnificent and ancient language |
Welcome to NetTVDB the Internet TV database
Watch Live broadcasts and pre recorded programmes available from India.
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Nice List of Hindi Language Links
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Hindi is a language spoken throughout most of India, except for the east, and Pakistan. It may be used to describe either the language known as standard Hindi, spoken mostly in India, or increasingly, to describe the combined language of Hindustani, which also includes a standard form known as Urdu. The main distinction between standard Hindi and Urdu are their writing systems, and most people consider the two to be different registers of the same language.
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Some hints for learning Hindi:
The differing definitions of what does or does not constitute Hindi, as opposed to Hindustani, and whether some speech patterns constitute a dialect or an entirely different language, make pinpointing the exact number of Hindi speakers difficult. Estimates range as high as 800 million speakers worldwide, making it the second-most spoken language on Earth. Even conservative estimates place the number of total speakers at over 500 million. Hindi is part of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, along with languages such as Punjabi, Bengali, and Nepali. It is often known as the language of songs, because of the many epic poems and songs in Hindi.
Hindi uses the Devanagari alphabet, a descendant of the earlier Brahmi alphabet which also 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.
To learn Hindi is to learn one of the most widely spoken languages of the world. Also called Hindustani, it is essentially the same language as Urdu. Hindi is spoken in India, and is an official language along with English, while Urdu is spoken in Pakistan. Together they are spoken by 600 million people in South Asia and in pockets of South Asian communities in cities around the world.
Hindustani is written in the Devanagari script and is written from left to right, and in this differs from Urdu which uses the Arabic script. Hindi is a descendant of the great literary and religious language Sanskrit. It is distantly related to Greek, Latin and most of the European languages. As such, it has some characteristics of European languages which may be familiar to native English speakers, or those who have studied a European language.
This is where the similarities end, however. The pronunciation and sounds of the Hindi language are very different from European languages. Combined with the different writing system, it makes for an interesting challenge to learn Hindi. And unlike the major European languages, or the other major languages of Asia, there are relatively few resources for learning Hindi.
http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/learn-hindi.html