hindi

IPA/ˈhɪndi/
KK[hˈɪndi]IPA/ˈhɪndi/

hindi — noun

1. a language spoken mainly in northern India that is one of the two official langu

1.nounA2
Definition

a language spoken mainly in northern India that is one of the two official languages of the country, used in government, education, and everyday communication by hundreds of millions of people

Example

Amira has been learning Hindi for two years and can now read street signs.

collocation: learn + Hindi

The film is in Hindi, but it has English subtitles at the bottom.

pattern: in + Hindi for language of media

Common collocations
  • speak Hindi
  • learn Hindi
  • in Hindi
  • Hindi speaker
  • Hindi language
  • translate into Hindi

Grammar Patterns

speak/learn/write + Hindi

in + Hindi

Usage Note

Hindi is a proper noun and does not take an article when referring to the language itself, though 'the Hindi language' is also acceptable.

Common Mistakes

I speak the Hindi.
I speak Hindi.
Language names in English do not take the definite article 'the'.

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Hindi and Urdu are very similar spoken languages that differ mainly in their writing systems — Hindi uses the Devanagari script while Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic script — and in some formal vocabulary, with Hindi drawing more from Sanskrit and Urdu from Persian and Arabic. The older term 'Hindustani' refers to the common spoken form that both Hindi and Urdu are based on, but it is rarely used in everyday conversation today. For example, a person from Delhi might say 'I speak Hindi' if they write in Devanagari, but a person from Lucknow might say 'I speak Urdu' even though the casual spoken conversation between them would be almost identical.

Hindi ↗UrduHindustani

Common collocations

Nouns

Verbs

Phrases

  • in Hindi
  • into Hindi
  • from Hindi

Prepositions

Etymology

SanskritOld PersianPersianEnglish

The word 'Hindi' comes from Persian 'Hindī' (meaning 'of or belonging to India'), which traces back through Old Persian 'Hinduš' to the Sanskrit 'Sindhu', the ancient name for the Indus River. The region around the Indus gave India its name, and the language spoken there came to be called Hindi.