Hindi

Modern Standard Hindi (आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and is the lingua franca of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of Hindustani. Hindustani itself developed from Old Hindi and was spoken in Delhi and neighbouring areas. It incorporated a significant number of Persian loanwords.

Hindi is an official language in twelve states (Bihar, Gujarat , Mizoram , Maharashtra ,Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu , Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir) and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Hindi is also one of Fiji's three official languages.

Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, Modern Standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu, which is another recognised register of Hindustani, as both Hindi and Urdu share a core vocabulary base derived from Shauraseni Prakrit. Hindi is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several other languages are recognised officially as "Hindi" but do not refer to the Standard Hindi language described here and instead descend from other nearby languages, such as Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Examples of this are the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji Hindi, spoken in Fiji, and Caribbean Hindustani, which is spoken in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.

Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English. When counted together with the mutually intelligible Urdu, it is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. According to reports of Ethnologue (2022, 25th edition), Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when including first and second language speakers.

Hindi is the fastest-growing language of India, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei, Gujarati and Bengali, according to the 2011 census of India.