The study of Hindi today grants entry to one of the world's
oldest and greatest civilizations. Knowledge of Hindi
provides a fascinating alternative perspective, quite apart
from that afforded by the English language, on the
re-emergence of India during the last two centuries, and
serves as an important key to understanding the unique
elements of Indian civilization.
Family: Indo-European
Branch: Indic
Continent of Origin: Asia
Country of Origin: India
Countries where Official: India
Number of Native Speakers: 366,000,000
Number of Total Speakers: 487,000,000
Students who feel that Hindi is too far removed from their
modern everyday concerns may wish to note that Hindi is a
distant relative of English. Where do you think the words
'juggernaut', 'dungarees' and 'sherbet' originate?
Some Interesting Facts and Figures
·
The
Hindi alphabet consists of 11 vowels and 33 consonants.
·
The
Devanagari script used for Hindi is derived from the ancient
Brahmi and is closely related to other Indian scripts such
as Gujarati and Bengali.
·
Hindi was originally a variety of Hindustani spoken in the
area of New Delhi.
·
There are hundreds of Hindi dialects.
·
The
Hindi language has been enriched by Persian, Turkish, Farsi,
Arabic, Portuguese, and English.
·
Today, Hindi is widely spoken in South Asia (India,
Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan), South Africa, Mauritius, the
USA, Canada, Trinidad, Fiji, Surinam, Guyana, Yemen, Uganda,
Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Today the internet provides significant
opportunities to people to learn Hindi, whereever you are.
Some of the major Web Sites are:
