Hindi Language History
A historical perspective on Hindi is very useful to those who are thinking of learning the Hindi language.
A number of English words are derived from Hindi, like juggernaut, so it is not an ancient language that is unrelated to English. While we all know that Hindi is India’s official language. Countries like Nepal and Pakistan use Hindi broadly, as do a number of other countries or areas in South Asia. It is also the second language in many countries, such as Surinam, Fiji, Mauritius, and Trinidad, as a result of many migrant workers being imported to those countries during a period of the British Empire, and then staying to form communities.
Fiji has had many coups in its history, but the second to last coup was as a result of indigenous Fijians revolting against the first Indian prime minister to be elected. And the most recent military-led coup claims to have as its motivation a desire for a fairer constitution which recognizes as equals the large Hindi-speaking population of Fiji, who ironically have contributed to the wealth of those who revolted against them. I will, however, stay away from the political commentary.
Hindi is a very widely spoken language, overtaken only by Mandarin and English. Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, and in terms of writing script, it is extremely logical and easy to learn. Hindi script is unusual to us, as it contains no capital letters. Alphabetically, there are 33 consonants and 11 vowels in Hindi. Unusually, Hindi has three greeting levels – formal, familiar, and intimate, which makes it different to many other languages.
Hindi has been enriched by Persian, Turkish, Farsi, English and Portuguese.
The Hindi language is broadly similar to Urdu, the official language of Pakistan. The language was assembled mainly from Sanskrit words that had been softened for general speech use. Classical works of literature about in this epic rich language.
Learning Hindi is essential as a gateway to one of the oldest civilizations. It is very difficult to comprehend some of the core aspect of Indian civilization without learning Hindi or studying the Hindi language.
While Hindi is viewed as an ancient language, it was as recently as 1949 that it was made mandatory for Indian Government use and 1950 when it was written into the constitution of India as the official language.
Who has not heard of Bollywood? – Hindi movies are huge.
In conclusion, for those seeking to understand Indian culture, and to study a language steeped in epic and classical literature works, Hindi is the correct choice. Hindi is useful from a business perspective also, as the Indian economy has opened up, and many companies, from call centers to software development houses, have operations based in or outsourced to India.
The author operates a Language website. You are invited to view his Learning Hindi Language Recommendations.
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