Hindi-Urdu

Hindi-Urdu, हिंदी उर्दू, هندی اردو, is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan. It is also known as Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی, Hindustānī, IPA: [ɦɪnd̪ʊst̪aːni], literally: 'of Hindustan'), Hindavi, and Rekhta. It derives primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, western Uttar Pradesh and southern Uttarakhand region, and incorporates a large vocabulary from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Turkic. It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu, which are standardized registers of it. However, colloquial Hindi and Urdu are all but indistinguishable, and even the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, though they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit. Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today. The term 'Hindustani' is also used for several divergent dialects of the Hindi languages spoken outside of the Subcontinent, including Fijian Hindustani and the Caribbean Hindustani of Suriname and Trinidad.

Official status

Urdu, the original standardized register of Hindustani, is the national language of Pakistan, where it shares official language status with English. Although English is used in most elite circles, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers, Urdu is the lingua franca and is expected to prevail. Urdu is also one of the official languages of India, and in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh, Urdu has official language status. While the government school system in most other states emphasises Modern Standard Hindi, at universities in cities such as Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad, Urdu is spoken and learned and is regarded as a language of prestige.

Hindi, the other standardized register of Hindustani, is declared by the Constitution of India as the "official language (rājabhāshā) of the Union" (Art. 343(1)) (In this context, 'Union' means the Federal Government and not the entire country - India has 23 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. At the state level, Hindi is an official language in ten out of the 28 Indian states and three Union Territories (namely Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Arunanchal Pradesh, and Haryana and UTs are Delhi, Chandigarh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands). In the remaining states Hindi is not an official language. In the state of Tamil Nadu 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.

Hindustani was the official language of the British Raj up until the partition of India in 1947; the term was a synonym for Urdu.

Modern Standard Hindi

Standard Hindi, the official language of India, is based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region and differs from Urdu in that it is usually written in the indigenous Devanagari script of India and exhibits less Persian influence than Urdu. Many scholars today employ a Sanskritized form of Hindi developed primarily in Varanasi, the Hindu holy city, which is based on the Eastern Hindi dialect of that region and thus a separate language from official Standard Hindi.[citation needed] It has a literature of 500 years, with prose, poetry, religion & philosophy, under the Bahmani Kings and later on Khutab Shahi Adil Shahi etc. It is a living language, still prevalent all over the Deccan Plateau. Note that the term "Hindustani" has generally fallen out of common usage in modern India, except to refer to a style of Indian classical music prevalent in northern India. The term used to refer to the language is "Hindi", regardless of the mix of Persian or Sanskrit words used by the speaker. One could conceive of a wide spectrum of dialects, with the highly Persianized Urdu at one end of the spectrum and a heavily Sanskrit-based dialect, spoken in the region around Varanasi, at the other end of the spectrum. In common usage in India, the term "Hindi" includes all these dialects except those at the Urdu end of the spectrum. Thus, the different meanings of the word "Hindi" include, among others:

standardized Hindi as taught in schools throughout India,

formal or official Hindi advocated by Purushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,

the vernacular dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu as spoken throughout India,

the neutralized form of the language used in popular television and films, or

the more formal neutralized form of the language used in broadcast and print news reports.

Hindi and Urdu

While, at the spoken level, Urdu and Hindi are considered registers of a single language, they differ vastly in literary and formal vocabulary; where literary Urdu draws heavily on Persian and Arabic, literary Hindi draws heavily on Sanskrit and to a lesser extent Prakrit. The grammar and base vocabulary (most pronouns, verbs, adpositions, etc.) of both Urdu and Hindi, however, are the same and derive from a Prakritic base, and both have a heavy Persian influence.

The associated registers of Urdu and Hindi are known as "Hindustani". It is perhaps the lingua franca of the west and north of the Indian subcontinent, though it is understood fairly well in other regions also, especially in the urban areas. A common vernacular sharing characteristics with Urdu, Sanskritized Hindi, and regional Hindi, Hindustani is more commonly used as a vernacular than highly Arabicized/Persianized Urdu or highly Sanskritized Hindi.

This can be seen in the popular culture of Bollywood or, more generally, the vernacular of Pakistanis and Indians which generally employs a lexicon common to both "Urdu" and "Hindi" speakers. 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 language spoken in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (known for its beautiful usage of Urdu) and Varanasi (a holy city for Hindus and thus using highly Sanskritized Hindi) is somewhat different.

Hindustani, if both Hindi and Urdu are counted, is the third or second most widely spoken language in the world after Mandarin and possibly English.

Hindustani and Bollywood

The Indian film industry, Bollywood, located in Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, uses dialects of Hindi-Urdu, Awadhi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, and quite often Bambaiya Hindi (along with many English words) for the dialogues and songs in the movies produced. These movies are full of songs and dances—songs, some of them in the Urdu Shayari style.

Generally the name of the movie is shown in three scripts Roman script, Devanagari (used for Hindi) and Perso-Arabic (script of Urdu). Many lyrics are in Urdu for songs. Movies based on Delhi Sultanate period or on the Mughal Empire are full of Urdu words. Movies like Mughal-e-Azam have used purely Urdu dialogues. Hindu mythological movies generally contain more Sankskrit vocabulary which does not exist in Urdu.

Urdu films and Lollywood

The Pakistani film industry, centred historically in Lahore has seen a rise in Punjabi movies lately. Urdu languages have seen a surge throughout Pakistan specifically Karachi, with new age films and to a lesser extent in Islamabad and Lahore.