Hindustani, also known as Hindi-Urdu, like all

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...

, has a core base of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

-derived vocabulary, which it gained through

Prakrit The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...

. As such the standardized registers of the

Hindustani language Hindustani (; Devanagari: , * * * * ; Perso-Arabic: , , ) is the '' lingua franca'' of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, the lang ...

(Hindi-Urdu) share a common vocabulary, especially on the colloquial level. However, in formal speech,

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

tends to draw on Sanskrit, while

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and sometimes

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

. This difference lies in the

history of Hindustani Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi: हिंदुस्तानी, Urdu: ) is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu. It is widely spoken and ...

, in which the '' lingua franca'' started to gain more Persian words in urban areas (such as

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

and

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...

), under the Delhi Sultanate; this dialect came to be termed Urdu. The original Hindi dialects continued to develop alongside Urdu and according to Professor Afroz Taj, "the distinction between Hindi and Urdu was chiefly a question of style. A poet could draw upon Urdu's lexical richness to create an aura of elegant sophistication, or could use the simple rustic vocabulary of dialect Hindi to evoke the folk life of the village. Somewhere in the middle lay the day to day language spoken by the great majority of people. This day to day language was often referred to by the all-encompassing term ''Hindustani''." In Colonial India, Hindi-Urdu acquired vocabulary introduced by Christian missionaries from the Germanic and

Romanic languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fa ...

, e.g. ''pādrī'' (Devanagari: पादरी, Nastaleeq: پادری) from ''

padre __NOTOC__ Padre means father in many Romance languages, and it may also refer to: Music * "Padre" (song) People * A military chaplain * A Latin Catholic priest * A member of the San Diego Padres baseball team Places * Padre Island, a barrier ...

'', meaning

pastor A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...

. When describing the state of Hindi-Urdu under the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

, Professor Śekhara Bandyopādhyāẏa stated that "Truly speaking, Hindi and Urdu, spoken by a great majority of people in north India, were the same language written in two scripts; Hindi was written in Devanagari script and therefore had a greater sprinkling of Sanskrit words, while Urdu was written in Persian script and thus had more Persian and Arabic words in it. At the more colloquial level, however, the two languages were mutually intelligible." After the partition of India, political forces within

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

tried to further Sanskritize Hindi, while political forces in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

campaigned to remove Prakit/Sanskrit derived words from Urdu and supplant them with Persian and Arabic words. Despite these government efforts, the film industry,

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

continues to release its films in the original Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) language, easily understood and enjoyed by speakers of both registers; in addition, many of the same television channels are viewed across the border.

Linguistic classification

(हिन्दी ''Hindi'') is one of the

of the

Indo-European language family The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

. The core of Hindi vocabulary is thus

etymologically Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words an ...

Indo-European. However, centuries of borrowing has led to the adoption of a wide range of words with foreign origins.

Examples of borrowed words

Due to centuries of contact with

European European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...

Turkic peoples The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...

Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

ns, and

East Asians East Asian people (East Asians) are the people from East Asia, which consists of China, Taiwan, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, and South Korea. The total population of all countries within this region is estimated to be 1.677 billion and 21% of t ...

, Hindi-Urdu has absorbed countless words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from other Indian languages,

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

, Burmese, and several indigenous

Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

of North India. After centuries of invasions from

and the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

, particularly under the

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, numerous Turkish,

, and

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

words were absorbed and fully integrated into the lexicon. Later,

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...

brought words from

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, French,

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

, and most significantly

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. Some very common borrowings are shown below.

Borrowings from neighboring languages

Austroasiatic languages ( देशज دیشج ''Deshaj'')

Chinese ( चीनी چینی ''Chīnī'')

Borrowings from the Mughal era

Arabic (अरबी عربی ''Arbī'')

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
(फ़ारसी فارسی)

Turkish (तुर्की ترکی ''Turkī'')

Borrowings from the Colonial Era

Portuguese (पुर्तगाली پرتگالی ''Purtugālī'')

Portuguese borrowings mostly describe household items, fruits, and religious concepts dealing with

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

: ''Household'' ''Food'' ''Religion'' ''Other''

French (फ़्रान्सीसी فرانسیسی ''Fransisi'')

Only a handful of French borrowings are still used in Hindi today.

English (अंग्रेज़ी انگریزی ''Aṅgrezī'')

Most borrowed words of European origin in Hindi-Urdu were imported through English and involve civic and household concepts: ''Civic Life'' ''Household''

Linguistic classification

Examples of borrowed words

Borrowings from neighboring languages

Austroasiatic languages ( देशज دیشج ''Deshaj'')

Chinese ( चीनी چینی ''Chīnī'')

Borrowings from the Mughal era

Arabic (अरबी عربی ''Arbī'')

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
(फ़ारसी فارسی)

Turkish (तुर्की ترکی ''Turkī'')

Borrowings from the Colonial Era

Portuguese (पुर्तगाली پرتگالی ''Purtugālī'')

French (फ़्रान्सीसी فرانسیسی ''Fransisi'')

English (अंग्रेज़ी انگریزی ''Aṅgrezī'')

References

See also

Linguistic classification

Examples of borrowed words

Borrowings from neighboring languages

Austroasiatic languages ( देशज دیشج ''Deshaj'')

Chinese ( चीनी چینی ''Chīnī'')

Borrowings from the Mughal era

Arabic (अरबी عربی ''Arbī'')

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ... (फ़ारसी فارسی)

Turkish (तुर्की ترکی ''Turkī'')

Borrowings from the Colonial Era

Portuguese (पुर्तगाली پرتگالی ''Purtugālī'')

French (फ़्रान्सीसी فرانسیسی ''Fransisi'')

English (अंग्रेज़ी انگریزی ''Aṅgrezī'')

References

See also

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
(फ़ारसी فارسی)