An Indo-Aryan language written in Devanagari and one of India's two official languages — the standardized form of a dialect continuum spoken across the Hindi Belt of northern India.
Where it’s spoken
Hindi is the most-spoken language in India and one of two official languages of the central government (alongside English). Its core territory is the Hindi Belt — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and surrounding states — but it functions as a lingua franca well beyond that range. Hindi and Urdu share a colloquial register called Hindustani.
What it sounds like
Hindi distinguishes aspirated and unaspirated consonants (k/kh, p/ph, t/th) as well as dental and retroflex consonants — a feature shared with Sanskrit. Nasal vowels and a phonemic schwa-deletion rule shape its rhythm.
How it’s written
Hindi uses Devanagari, an abugida where each consonant carries an inherent “a” vowel modified by diacritics. The script reads left to right with a horizontal line connecting letters of a word. Sanskrit loanwords dominate formal registers, while Persian and Arabic vocabulary mark Hindustani speech.
History
Hindi crystallized as a literary language during the 19th century, drawing on Sanskrit to distance itself from Persianized Urdu after the British Raj politicized the script question.
Find more languages by letter
Hindi starts with H and ends with I. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Hindi":