Hindustani
| Hindustani ( हिंदुस्तानी , ہندوستانی) | ||
|---|---|---|
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Spoken in |
India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , Fiji and other countries | |
| speaker | 541 million (as mother tongue), 904 million (total) | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in |
 Fiji (as Fiji-Hindustani ) India (as Hindi ) Pakistan (as Urdu )
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Hindustani is the name of a North Indian language from which the standard languages Hindi , Urdu and Fiji-Hindustani have developed. The word hindustānī is feminine in this language , spellings: हिंदुस्तानी (in Hindi) orہندوستانی(in Urdu). The name comes from Persian and means "Indian" (actually: "coming from the Indus country").
Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language and was understood in much of the north and center of the Indian subcontinent. Today is meant by the Hindustani common in informal everyday situations oral balancing language of Northern India (and Pakistan), the other follows as Hindi and Urdu no fixed, nationally binding rules. Hindustani is therefore not a standard language.
The term Hindustani
The term Hindustani has seen some changes in meaning over the centuries. For the Persian-speaking conquerors of India, Hindustani was initially an umbrella term for the native languages of northern India, as opposed to Persian. When the regional language Khari Boli , which was the predominant idiom in and around Delhi, became the lingua franca for large parts of the subcontinent, it was referred to as Hindustani, among other things. Other names for the language were Hindi, Hindavi, Hindui, Bhakha, and Rekhta.
The British, who forcibly took control of large parts of South Asia from the middle of the 18th century, understood Hindustani to be the form of the Khari Boli, which we call today, mainly from Persian and Arabic loanwords, and written in the Nastaliq style of the Arabic script know the name Urdu .
Only since the beginning of the 20th century and through the influence of Mahatma Gandhi has been understood by Hindustani as the “healthy middle” of the Hindi-Urdu language continuum.
Hindustani as a compromise variety
Urdu began to establish itself as a literary expression in poetry at a time when Persian was the language of education and the lingua franca of the masses. Examples are songs (see Ghazel ). Hindustani served as a balancing variety between Hindi, Urdu and other closely related Indo-Aryan languages in northern India. This transitional form was based on the spoken language around Delhi, the knowledge of which was widespread beyond its traditional area due to the Mughal rule.
Mahatma Gandhi attached great importance to the cultivation of Hindustani as a connecting language of equality. Today it is still the military language of India (mostly even written in Latin script). In addition, an inflectionless, pidgin-like variety is common in the major cities of northern India under the name "Basar Hindustani" as the lingua franca.
Differences between Hindi and Urdu
Hindi and Urdu are varieties of the same single language . From an ethno-political point of view, the twin language Hindi-Urdu is viewed as two different extension languages . The main difference is the use of different alphabets. Hindi is written in Devanagari , Urdu in Perso-Arabic .
While the vocabulary of the written language differs (e.g. technical terms and religious terms), the grammar is the same and the pronunciation is very similar, so that speakers can communicate effortlessly in everyday life.