The World of Languages · Indo-European
Hindi · हिन्दी
One of the official languages of India's central government and the heart of Bollywood. It is written in Devanagari and is close to Urdu when spoken.
- 347 million native speakers
- 611 million speakers in total
- Devanagari script
- FSI Category III · 44 weeks
- Official in 1 country
Where Hindi is spoken
Tap or hover over a country. Colours show the language's status, based on Unicode CLDR territory data (population estimates mix sources and years).
Top countries by speakers
- India · भारतOfficial language · 578M (41%)
- South Africa · दक्षिण अफ़्रीकाWidely spoken · 1.2M (2%)
- Fiji · फ़िजीWidely spoken · 419k (44%)
Key numbers
- Native (L1) speakers
- 347 million
- Second-language (L2) speakers
- 264 million
- Total speakers
- 611 million
- Source
- Ethnologue (2026), via Wikipedia
Hindi at a glance
Modern Standard Hindi (Hindi: आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, romanised: Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), commonly referred to as Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India and, alongside English, serves as a lingua franca across much of northern, central, eastern, western, and northeastern India, with South India being the main exception.
Hindi is an official language in ten states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand), and six union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir) and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal.. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
From the Wikipedia article Hindi (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Name in Hindi
- हिन्दी
- Family
- Indo-EuropeanClassical Indo-EuropeanIndo-IranianIndo-AryanMiddle-Modern Indo-AryanContinental Indo-AryanMidlands Indo-AryanShaurasenicIndo-Aryan Central zoneWestern HindiHindustani
- Writing system
- Devanagari (an abugida: consonants carry an inherent vowel)
- Direction
- Left to right
- Official in
- India
- Codes
- ISO 639-3
hin· Glottologhind1269· Q1568 - Writing sample
सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अधिकारों के मामले में जन्मजात स्वतन्त्रता और समानता प्राप्त है । उन्हें बुद्धि और अन्तरात्मा की देन प्राप्त है और परस्पर उन्हें भाईचारे के भाव से बर्ताव करना चाहिए ।
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…”
Linguistic profile
How hard is Hindi for English speakers?
The US Foreign Service Institute puts Hindi in Category III: about 44 weeks (1100 class hours) of full-time study to reach professional working proficiency.
Source: FSI language learning timelines. See all languages ranked: hardest · easiest.
Feature values from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS Online, CC BY 4.0).
The Hindi script
Devanagari (an abugida: consonants carry an inherent vowel). Tap a character to hear it (your device reads the letter name or sound).
Standard letters from Unicode CLDR exemplar characters.
Useful Hindi phrases with pronunciation
Numbers 1–10
- एक ek
- दो do
- तीन tīn
- चार cār
- पाँच pā̃c
- छह chah
- सात sāt
- आठ āṭh
- नौ nau
- दस das
Days of the week
- Mon सोमवार
- Tue मंगलवार
- Wed बुधवार
- Thu गुरुवार
- Fri शुक्रवार
- Sat शनिवार
- Sun रविवार
Everyday words
- water पानी pānī
- cat बिल्ली billī
- dog कुत्ता kuttā
- coffee कॉफ़ी kŏfī
- beer बियर biyar
- bread रोटी roṭī
- book पुस्तक pustak
Phrases and words checked against Wiktionary; days and months from Unicode CLDR. Audio uses your browser's built-in Hindi voice when available.
Dialects and varieties
Standard Hindi (Khariboli base)
Delhi and the north
The standard language is based on Khariboli, the speech of the Delhi region.
Hindustani and Urdu
India and Pakistan
Everyday Hindi and Urdu are largely mutually intelligible. Formal Hindi borrows from Sanskrit and Urdu from Persian and Arabic, and they use different scripts.
Bambaiya Hindi
Mumbai
Mumbai street Hindi, famous from Bollywood films, mixes in Marathi, Gujarati and English.
Awadhi and Bhojpuri
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
Often grouped under “Hindi” in the census but treated by linguists as separate languages; Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi.
Hear the dialects
Fun words, untranslatables
जुगाड़
jugāṛ
A clever, cheap, improvised fix: making something work with whatever you have.
अच्छा
acchā
“Good”, but also “okay”, “really?” or “I see”, depending on tone.
Curious facts
- Hindi and Urdu are often described as two registers of one spoken language, Hindustani.
- Devanagari letters hang from a horizontal line at the top called the shirorekha.
- Hindi verbs agree with gender: a man says “maĩ jātā hū̃” and a woman says “maĩ jātī hū̃” (I go).
- Many English words come from Hindi or Hindustani, including shampoo, jungle, bungalow and pyjamas.
- Hindi has two grammatical genders. Even objects are masculine or feminine.
Famous Hindi-speaking voices
Singers & musicians
Writers & poets
Film & TV
Other famous figures
Descriptions from Wikidata; photos from Wikimedia Commons under the licences shown.
Hindi culture now
Hindi cinema
Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Sholay
1975 Indian film by Ramesh Sippy
3 Idiots
2009 Indian film by Rajkumar Hirani
Dangal (2016 film)
2016 Indian film by Nitesh Tiwari
Sacred Games (TV series)
Indian crime thriller television series
Hindi film music
Songs featuring in Hindi films
Learn Hindi on YouTube
Free lessons from teachers and channels with Hindi courses. Videos load only when you press play.
The story of the language
Quick quiz: how well do you know Hindi?
Where to learn Hindi
Hindi Content Portal
Hindi videos, with smooth progress from teachers' channels to native content.
LangMagicThe Endless Book
Read text you can understand, in the style of your favourite author and genre. About 30 languages.
LangMagicLangMagic Speak
Speaking lessons built around your topics, from materials you choose.
LangMagicLangMagic Meet
A virtual meeting platform built for language lessons, with follow-up exercises.
FreeWikivoyage Hindi phrasebook
Free travel phrasebook with pronunciation guide
FreeWikibooks: Hindi
Free, open textbook
FreeOmniglot: Hindi
Script, pronunciation and useful phrases
FreeWiktionary: Hindi dictionary
Free multilingual dictionary
Sources
- Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2026), via Wikipedia.
- Countries, populations, alphabets, days and months: Unicode CLDR 46.
- Classification: Glottolog 5.3. Grammar features: WALS Online.
- Introduction: Wikipedia, Hindi (CC BY-SA 4.0). People and culture: Wikipedia and Wikidata. Images: Wikimedia Commons.
- Writing sample: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1, from the Unicode UDHR collection. Phrases and words: Wiktionary. Difficulty: US Foreign Service Institute.
- Map: Natural Earth via world-atlas (public domain).