Widely spoken in India*. In the newly independent countries of Mauritius and Fiji, it is spoken by about a third of the population. There are also sizable bodies of speakers in Trinidad, Guyana, USA, UAE, Yemen, South Africa, Singapore, Uganda, Nepal, Germany, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Surinam.

A 1997 survey found that 66% of all Indians can speak Hindi, and 77% of the Indians regard Hindi as "one language across the nation".

Dialects of Hindi include: Marwari, Braj, Bundeli, Kanauji, Chattisgarhi, Bagheli, Avadhi and Bhojpuri. There has been considerable controversy over the status of Punjabi and Maithili. Sometimes, they are regarded to be independent languages and other times, dialects of Hindi.

The Hindi alphabet consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants.

Hindi inherited its writing system from Sanskrit. The script, Devanagari, is closely related to other Indian scripts such as Gujarati and Bengali.

The general appearance of the Devanagari script is that of letters 'hanging from a line'. This 'line', also found in many other South Asian scripts, is actually a part of most of the letters and is drawn as the writing proceeds. The script has no capital letters.

Amongst its interesting features is a three-tier level of honorifics, allowing great subtlety in adjusting the level of communication to suit 'formal', 'familiar' and 'intimate' conversational contexts. Thus, the polite communicating of gratitude, etc, is an intrinsic part of the language itself and does not rely solely on separate words for 'please' and 'thank you'.


Languages of India

Many widely divergent languages with varied dialects in a multi-hued cultural set-up are part of the kaleidoscope of India. In a country with so much regional variation, where in several cases state boundaries have been drawn on linguistic lines, it is but inevitable that fifteen national languages are recognized by the Indian constitution. These are spoken in over 1600 dialects.

While India's official language is Hindi in the Devanagari script, English continues to be the official working language. Most Indians living in urban and semi-urban towns are multi-lingual. For many in the metro cities of India, English is virtually their first language, and for many more, it is the second language. Sanskrit, one of the oldest languages of the world, is the language in which the great Indian epics and classical literature have been written.

Hindi is spoken as a mother tongue by about 40 percent of the population, mainly in the area known as the Hindi belt. It is the official language of the Indian Union and of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh. Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Assamese is the state language of Assam and is spoken by nearly 60 percent of the State's population. The origin of this language dates back to the 13th century. Bengali, also developed in the 13th century, is the official state language of West Bengal. It is spoken by nearly 200 million people worldwide, and is alsoused in neighbouring Bangladesh. Oriya, the state language of Orissa is spoken by nearly 87 percent of its population.

In the south, Kannada is the State language of Karnataka and is spoken by 65 percent of the state's population. Malayalam, spoken in Kerala, is an ancient Dravidian language with its origin dating back thousands of years. Tamil, an ancient Dravidian language at least 2000 years old, is the state language of Tamil Nadu and is spoken by at least 65 million people. Telugu, also a Dravidian language, is spoken by the people of Andhra Pradesh.

Marathi is an Indic language dating back to the 13th century and is the official language of the western state of Maharashtra. Gujarati, Indic in origin, is the state language of Gujarat and is spoken by 70 percent of the State's population. Konkani, principally based on classical Sanskrit, belongs to the southwestern branch of Indo-Aryan languages and is spoken in the Konkan region covering Goa and parts of the coastal regions of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra.

Urdu is the state language of Jammu and Kashmi. It is also the language used by the majority of Muslims in India. Written in the Persio-Arabic script, it contains many words from Persian. Kashmiri is a language written in both Persio-Arabic and Devanagari script and is spoken by 55 percent of the population of Jammu and Kashmir. Sindhi is spoken by many in the North-west frontier of the Indian sub-continent comprising both India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, the language is written in the Persio-Arabic script, while in India the Devanagari script is used. Punjabi is an Indic language spoken in the state of Punjab. Although based on the Devanagari script, it is written in Gurmukhi, a script created by the Sikh Guru, Angad in the 16th century.