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. It is very closely related to Urdu, which is spoken in Pakistan, although Hindi and Urdu use different alphabets to represent their sounds.
Hindi is written in the Devanagari alphabet (also spelled Devanāgarī). The letters in the alphabet appear very different from the letters in the Latin alphabet used by English. The first three consonants of the Devanagari alphabet are shown below as examples:
All Hindi letters have at least a partial bar at the top, which connects to the other letters in a word. There are no uppercase or lowercase forms for Hindi letters. The Hindi language is written from left to right, like English.
Hindi grammar differs from English grammar in various ways. For example, Hindi has grammatical gender: all Hindi nouns are masculine or feminine. Many (though not all) Hindi adjectives change according to the gender of the noun they modify, while Hindi verbs change to indicate the gender of their subjects. It's also interesting to note that Hindi uses postpositions (which come after nouns), rather than prepositions (which come before nouns).
English speakers will also notice that there are no definite or indefinite articles in the Hindi language.
English words of Hindi origin include "cot", "thug", "bandana", "dungaree", and "juggernaut".
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Hindi well, and that's why Transparent Language's
Hindi software programs are a great way to learn Hindi. We wish you the best of luck in your Hindi learning endeavors!
