What Does “Hindi” Really Mean?

By Sarah-Claire Jordan

For those who aren’t part of a Hindi-speaking community, Hindi tends to have a sort of shroud of mystery around it as one of the many languages spoken in India. Generally, the investigation of of what Hindi is exactly doesn’t go much further than that. However, after reading a bit about it you will probably come to the conclusion that Hindi doesn’t just refer to one of the official languages of India and the language of Bollywood movies. The following are just a few different ways “Hindi” can be defined.

Modern Standard Hindi

This is a dialect of Hindi and is based on the dialect spoken in the region of Delhi, called Khariboli. It is actually extremely similar to Modern Standard Urdu, which is the official language of Pakistan. Colloquially, the two dialects are practically the same, but the official versions of them differ in terms of some types of vocabulary (like academic and technical), with Urdu borrowing more from Persian, Turkish, and Arabic and Hindi from Sanskrit. Modern Standard Hindi is often referred to just as “Hindi”, and is used for official and government purposes as well as educational purposes when written in Devanagari script.

The Dialect Continuum

The formal version of the official language of a country isn’t always the version spoken by the population of said country. By definition, the formal version would be reserved for formal settings and situations. The rest of the time, in the case of Hindi, most people in India call themselves speakers of Hindi, or at least a local or regional variation of it. All of these varieties, or maybe dialects, have their own names, so someone might not outright say that they speak Hindi. This definition of Hindi includes most of the Bihari languages which are spoken in the state of Bihar and surrounding areas, most of the Pahari languages spoken in many other states, and all of the Rajasthani languages spoken mostly in the state of Rajasthan.

Neutralized Hindi in Film, TV, and Radio

Since Modern Standard Hindi is far too formal for radio broadcasts, TV shows, and films, and the dialect continuum that people refer to sometimes when they say “Hindi” is far too broad, a version of Hindi had to be created in a sense for these forms of media and entertainment. In Bollywood movies, for example, the script is generally written in a neutral Hindi that is pretty simple compared to some regional dialects. This is done so that the largest possible portion of the audience can easily understand the movie. Sometimes regional Hindi dialects are used, but usually only to add a touch of authenticity to a village scene. Urdu, with its Persian influences, is used as well to give an old-fashioned flavor to a film. Nowadays, it’s very common for a Bollywood film to throw in words and phrases from other languages, especially English.

In terms of radio and TV, the Hindi used is neutral and simple but generally doesn’t add in any words or phrases from other languages or dialects, as the point is to get the message out and understood.

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Tags: persian

Category: Foreign Language