ഹിന്ദുസ്ഥാനി
हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانیHindustānī
Native toIndia and Pakistan. Also United Arab Emirates[അവലംബം ആവശ്യമാണ്]
RegionSouth Asia
Native speakers
Native: 240 million (1991-1997)[1]
Second language: 165 million (1999)[2]
Total: 490 million (2006)[3]
Standard forms
Dialects
Devanagari script,
Perso-Arabic script
Official status
Official language in
 ഇന്ത്യ (as Hindi and Urdu)
 പാകിസ്താൻ (as Urdu)
Regulated byCentral Hindi Directorate (Hindi, India),[4]
National Language Authority, (Urdu, Pakistan);
National Council for Promotion of Urdu language (Urdu, India)[5]
Language codes
ISO 639-1hi,ur
ISO 639-2hin,urd
ISO 639-3Either:
hin – Hindi
urd – Urdu

ഹിന്ദുസ്ഥാനി Hindi-Urdu (هندی اردو‬, हिंदी उर्दू) is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan.[6][7] It is also known as Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी, ہندوستانی, Hindustānī, IPA: [ɦɪnd̪ʊst̪aːni], literally: 'of Hindustan'),[8] Hindavi, and Rekhta. It derives primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, and incorporates a large vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Sanskrit.[9][10] It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu,[11] which are standardized registers of it. However, colloquial Hindi and Urdu are all but indistinguishable, and even the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, though they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit.[12][13] Before the Partition of British India, the terms Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today.[14] The term 'Hindustani' is also used for several divergent dialects of the Hindi languages spoken outside of the Subcontinent, including Fijian Hindustani and the Caribbean Hindustani of Suriname and Trinidad.


  1. Standard Hindi: 180 million India (1991). Urdu: 48 million India (1997), 11 million Pakistan (1993). Ethnologue 16.
  2. 120 million Standard Hindi (1999), 45 million Urdu (1999). Ethnologue 16.
  3. BBC: A Guide to Urdu
  4. The Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
  5. National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language
  6. Mohammad Tahsin Siddiqi (1994), Hindustani-English code-mixing in modern literary texts, University of Wisconsin, ... Hindustani is the lingua franca of both India and Pakistan ...
  7. Lydia Mihelič Pulsipher, Alex Pulsipher, Holly M. Hapke (2005), World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives, Macmillan, ISBN 0716719045, ... By the time of British colonialism, Hindustani was the lingua franca of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan ...{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. "About Hindi-Urdu". North Carolina State University. Retrieved 2009–08–09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. Michael Huxley (editor) (1935), The Geographical magazine, Volume 2, Geographical Press, ... For new terms it can draw at will upon the Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Sanskrit dictionaries ... {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  10. Britain), Royal Society of Arts (Great (1948), Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Volume 97, ... it would be very unwise to restrict it to a vocabulary mainly dependent upon Sanskrit, or mainly dependent upon Persian. If a language is to be strong and virile it must draw on both sources, just as English has drawn on Latin and Teutonic sources ...
  11. Robert E. Nunley, Severin M. Roberts, George W. Wubrick, Daniel L. Roy (1999), The Cultural Landscape an Introduction to Human Geography, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0130801801, ... Hindustani is the basis for both languages ...{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. Hindi by Yamuna Kachru
  13. Students' Britannica: India: Select essays by Dale Hoiberg, Indu Ramchandani page 175
  14. The Oxford English Dictionary[പേജ് ആവശ്യമുണ്ട്]


  ഭാരതത്തിലെ ഔദ്യോഗിക ഭാഷകൾ
ഫെഡറൽതല ഔദ്യോഗിക ഭാഷകൾ
ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്ഹിന്ദി
സംസ്ഥാനതല ഔദ്യോഗിക ഭാഷകൾ
ആസ്സാമീസ്ബംഗാളിബോഡോദോഗ്രിഗോണ്ടിഗുജറാത്തിഹിന്ദികന്നഡകശ്മീരികൊങ്കണിമലയാളംമൈഥിലിമണിപ്പൂരിമറാഠിനേപ്പാളി ഒറിയപഞ്ചാബിസംസ്കൃതംസന്താലിസിന്ധിതമിഴ്തെലുങ്ക്ഉർദു