Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and it is also the lingua franca of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of Hindustani, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas.
Hindi is an official language in nine states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and three union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh), and an additional official language in three other states - West Bengal, Nagaland, Mizoram. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with standard Urdu, which is another recognised register of Hindustani, as both Hindi and Urdu share a core vocabulary base derived from Shauraseni Prakrit (a descendant of Vedic Sanskrit). Hindi is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several other languages are recognised officially as "Hindi" but do not refer to the Standard Hindi language described here and instead descend from other nearby languages, such as Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Such languages include Fiji Hindi, which has an official status in Fiji, and Caribbean Hindustani, which is spoken in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.
Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English. When counted together with the mutually intelligible Urdu, it is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. According to reports of Ethnologue (2022, 25th edition), Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when including first and second language speakers.
Hindi is the fastest-growing language of India, followed by Kashmiri, Meitei, Gujarati and Bengali, according to the 2011 census of India.
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