Hindi (Devanāgarī Devanagari , also called Nagari (Nāgarī, the name of its parent writing system), is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, does not have distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together. Devanāgarī is the main script: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a popular transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ( listen)) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal , choose more formal words (e.g. train vs. choo-choo, sodium chloride vs spoken in northern North India is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from Tibet and Central Asia. North India has been the historical center of the Maurya, Gupta, Maratha, and central The Central India Agency was a political unit of British India, which covered the northern half of present-day Madhya Pradesh state. The Central India Agency was made up entirely of princely states, which were under native rulers. The agency was bordered by the Central Provinces and Berar to the south; the Chota Nagpur princely states to the east, India India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the,^[1] Pakistan Pakistan (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪsˈtaːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریہ پاکِستان), is a country in South Asia. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, and India in the, Fiji Fiji /ˈfiːdʒiː/ (Fijian: Matanitu ko Viti; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी), officially the Republic of the Fiji Islands (Fijian: Matanitu Tu-Vaka-i-koya ko Viti; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी द्वीप समूह गणराज्य,[citation needed] fiji dvip samooh ganarajya), is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean, Mauritius Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius (French: République de Maurice) is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about 900 kilometres (560 mi) east of Madagascar. In addition to the island of Mauritius, the Republic includes the islands of Cargados Carajos, Rodrigues and the, and Surinam Suriname (pronounced /ˈsʊɹɪnɑm/ , Dutch: Suriname; Sarnami: शर्नम् Sarnam, Sranan Tongo: Sranangron or Sranankondre), officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America.

Conceptions of Hindi

In the broadest sense of the word, "Hindi" is the Hindi languages Hindi is a dialect continuum[citation needed] of the Indic language family in the northern plains of India, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati and Marathi; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by Nepali. As defined by the 1991 Indian census, Hindi covers a number of Central, East-Central, Eastern, and Northern Zone, a culturally defined part of a dialect continuum A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible. The that covers the "Hindi belt" of northern India, and includes Bhojpuri Bhojpuri ( pronunciation ) is a regional language spoken in parts of north-central and eastern India. It is spoken in the western part of state of Bihar, the northwestern part of Jharkhand, and the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, as well as an adjoining area of southern plains of Nepal. Bhojpuri is also spoken in Guyana, Suriname, Fiji,, an important language not only of India but which is the Hindi (or Hindustani) of Suriname and Mauritius; and Awadhi, a medieval literary standard and the Hindi of Fiji Fiji Hindi, also known as Fijian Hindi or Fiji Hindustani, is a language which is spoken in Fiji by most Fijian citizens of Indian descent. It is derived mainly from the Awadhi and Bhojpuri language or dialects of Hindi and also contains words from other Indian languages. It has also borrowed a large number of words from Fijian and English. The. Rajasthani Rajasthani is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 36 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide. It is one of the languages developed from an ancestor language called Old Gujarati or Maru-Gujar, the other language being is variously seen as a dialect of Hindi or as a separate language, though the lack of a dominant dialect as the basis for standardization has impeded its recognition. Three other varieties, Maithili, Chhattisgarhi, and Dogri Dogri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about two million people in India and Pakistan, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, but also in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, other parts of Kashmir, and elsewhere. Dogri speakers are called Dogras, and the Dogri-speaking region is called Duggar. Dogri is a member of the Western Pahari ("Pahari"), have recently been accorded status as official languages of their respective states India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on, and so are now generally considered separate languages. Despite the fact that it is in many ways indistinguishable from Hindi, Urdu Urdu (Urdu: اردو, IPA: [ˈʊrduː] ) is a standardised register of Hindustani. It is the national language and one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and one of 22 scheduled languages of India, as an official language of five Indian states. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Turkic, and Pashto[citation, as the principal language of India's large Muslim A Muslim or Moslem is an adherent of the religion of Islam. Literally, the word means "one who submits (to God)". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. All Muslims observe Sunnah, but differences in the definition of what is and what is not Sunnah has led to the emergence of sectarian movements.[ population and an official language of Pakistan, is often excluded from the purview of the label "Hindi" in India and Pakistan, though Muslims may be included in other countries where Hindi (or "Hindustani") is spoken. As the official language of a separate country, Nepali Nepali is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family has always been excluded from this conception of Hindi, despite the fact that it is one of the Pahari languages which were otherwise included.

A narrower conception of Hindi, excluding all of specific varieties mentioned above, may be disambiguated as Western Hindi. This includes Braj Bhasha, a medieval Hindu literary standard. The current prestige dialect In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society. Generally, there is positive prestige associated with the language or of Western Hindi, Khariboli Khariboli (also Khadiboli, Khadi-Boli, or Khari dialect, also known as Kauravi ; identified as Hindi by SIL Ethnologue), (/ kʰəɽiː boːliː /; Hindi: खड़ी बोली, Urdu: کھڑی بولی, khaṛī bolī; lit. 'standing dialect'), native to western Uttar Pradesh and the Delhi region in India, is the prestige dialect of the Hindi-, had been a language of the Moghul court, of the British administration Provinces of India, earlier Presidencies of British India, still earlier, Presidency towns, and collectively British India, were the administrative units of the territories of India under the tenancy or the sovereignty of either the English East India Company or the British Crown between 1612 and 1947, and is the basis of the modern national standards of South Asia, Standard Hindi Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government. Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khari boli dialect. By contrast, the spoken Hindi and Urdu Urdu (Urdu: اردو, IPA: [ˈʊrduː] ) is a standardised register of Hindustani. It is the national language and one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and one of 22 scheduled languages of India, as an official language of five Indian states. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Turkic, and Pashto[citation. Indeed, Khari boli is sometimes used as an alternate term for Hindi. Again, Urdu is sometimes excluded, despite being one of the Western Hindi languages. The colonial term Hindustani, though somewhat dated, is still used to specifically include Urdu alongside Hindi as spoken by Hindus A Hindu ( pronunciation , Devanagari: हिन्दु) is an adherent of Hinduism, a set of religious, philosophical and cultural systems that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The vast body of Hindu scriptures, divided into Śruti ("revealed") and Smriti ("remembered"), lay the foundation of Hindu beliefs, which.

In its narrowest conception, "Hindi" means Standard Hindi Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government. Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khari boli dialect. By contrast, the spoken Hindi, a Sanskritised Sanskritisation is a particular form of social change found in India. The term was popularized by Indian sociologist M N Srinivas, to denote the process by which castes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek upward mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the upper or dominant castes. It is a process similar to passing in form of Khariboli purged of some of the Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically influence it picked up during Moghul rule. The Constitution of India Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishing the structure, procedures, powers and duties, of the government and spells out the fundamental rights, directive principles and duties of citizens. Passed by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, it came accords Hindi in the Devanagari script status as the official language of India,^[5] with Urdu, retaining the Perso-Arabic script, and the three other varieties of broad Hindi mentioned above among the 22 scheduled languages of India.^[6] Standard Hindi, along with English, is used for the administration of the central government, and Standard Hindi is used, often alongside scheduled languages, for the administration of ten Indian states.^[7][8] However, despite divergence of vocabulary in the academic registers of Standard Hindi and Urdu and the use of distinct scripts, common speech remains Persianised and is largely indistinguishable whether it is called "Hindi" or "Urdu". Much of Hindi cinema, for example, might be described as Urdu, and is extremely popular in Urdu-speaking Pakistan despite language politics.

Thus the conception of Hindi is informed not just by external criteria of mutual intelligibility, but by ethnicity, history, literacy, nationalism, and religion. These issues are especially acute when differentiating Hindi from Urdu, which are generally considered independent languages by their speakers but different formal registers of a single dialect by linguists. However, such issues also arise in debates over whether Rajasthani, Maithili, and other members of the continuum are "languages" in their own right, or "dialects" of Hindi.

Speakers

Native speakers of the Hindi languages, excluding Urdu, between them account for 41% of the Indian population (2001 Indian census).^{[clarification needed][which "Hindi" languages are included and excluded from this count?]} .

History

Hindi evolved from the Sauraseni Prakrit.^[9] Though there is no consensus for a specific time, Hindi originated as local dialects such as Braj, Awadhi, and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century (these local dialects are still spoken, each by large populations).^[10] During the reigns of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which used Persian as their official language, Khari Boli adopted many Persian and Arabic words. As for the ultimately Arabic words, since almost every one of them came via Persian, their form in Hindi-Urdu does not preserve the original phonology of Arabic.

Current use

Standard Hindi is the most widely spoken of India's official languages. It is spoken mainly in northern states of Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. It is the second major language in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and it is also spoken alongside regional languages like Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi or Bengali throughout north and central India. Standard Hindi is also understood in a few other parts of India as well as in the neighbouring countries of Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Hindustani is spoken by all persons of Indian descent in Fiji. In Western Viti Levu and Northern Vanua Levu, it is a common spoken language and a link language spoken between Fijians of Indian descent and native Fijians. The latter are also the only ethnic group in the world of non Indian descent that includes majority Hindi speakers. Native speakers of Hindi dialects account for 48% of the Fiji population. This includes all people of Indian ancestry including those whose forefathers emigrated from regions in India where Hindi was not generally spoken. As defined in the Constitution of Fiji (Constitution Amendment Act 1997 (Act No. 13 of 1997), Section 4(1), Hindi is one of the three official languages of communication (English and Fijian being the others). Section 4(4)(a)(b)(c)(d) also states that 4) Every person who transacts business with: (a) a department; (b) an office in a state service; or (c) a local authority; has the right to do so in English, Fijian, or Hindustani, either directly or through a competent interpreter.

Standard Hindi and Urdu

Standard Hindi and Urdu are understood from a linguistic perspective to indicate two or more specific dialects in a continuum of dialects that makeup the Hindustani language (also known as "Hindi-Urdu"). The terms "Hindi" and "Urdu" themselves can be used with multiple meanings, but when referring to standardized dialects of Hindustani, they are the two points in a diasystem.

The term Urdu arose as far back as the 12th century and gradually merged together with kharhiboli (the spoken dialect). The term Hindawi was used in a general sense for the dialects of central and northern India. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and is also an official language in some parts of India.

Linguistically, there is no dispute that Hindi and Urdu are dialects of a single language, Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu. However, from a political perspective, there are pressures to classify them as separate languages. Those advocating this view point to the main differences between standard Urdu and standard Hindi:

• the source of borrowed vocabulary;
• the script used to write them (for Urdu, an adaptation of the Perso-Arabic script written in Nasta'liq style; for Hindi, an adaptation of the Devanagari script);
• Urdu's use of five consonants borrowed from Persian.

Such distinctions, however, are insufficient to classify Hindi and Urdu as separate languages from a linguistic perspective. For the most part, Hindi and Urdu have a common vocabulary, and this common vocabulary is heavily Persianised. Beyond this, Urdu contains even more Persian loanwords while Hindi resorts to borrowing from Sanskrit. (It is mostly the learned vocabulary that shows this visible distinction.)

Some nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. The tensions reached a peak in the Hindi–Urdu controversy in 1867 in the then United Provinces during the British Raj.

With regard to regional vernaculars spoken in north India, the distinction between Urdu and Hindi is insignificant, especially when little learned vocabulary is being used. Outside the Delhi dialect area, the term "Hindi" is used in reference to the local dialect, which may be different from both standard Hindi and standard Urdu. With regard to the comparison of standard Hindi and standard Urdu, the grammar (word structure and sentence structure) is identical.

The word Hindi has many different uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu. These uses include:

1. standardised Hindi as taught in schools in North India
2. formal or official Hindi advocated by Purushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,
3. the vernacular nonstandard dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu as spoken throughout much of India and Pakistan, as discussed above,
4. the neutralised form of the language used in popular television and films, or
5. the more formal neutralized form of the language used in broadcast and print news reports.

The rubric "Hindi" is often used as a catch-all for those idioms in the North Indian dialect continuum that are not recognised as languages separate from the language of the Delhi region. Punjabi, and Chhattisgarhi, while sometimes recognised as being distinct languages, are often considered dialects of Hindi. Many other local idioms, such as the Bhili languages, which do not have a distinct identity defined by an established literary tradition, are almost always considered dialects of Hindi. In other words, the boundaries of "Hindi" have little to do with mutual intelligibility, and instead depend on social perceptions of what constitutes a language.

The other use of the word "Hindi" is in reference to Standard Hindi, the Khari Boli register of the Delhi dialect of Hindi (generally called Hindustani) with its direct loanwords from Sanskrit. Standard Urdu is also a standardized form of Hindustani. Such a state of affairs, with two standardized forms of what is essentially one language, is known as a diasystem.

The term "Urdu" (which is cognate with the English word "horde") descends from the phrase Zabān-e-Urdū-e-Mu`Allah (زبانِ اردوِ معلہ, ज़बान-ए उर्दू-ए मुअल्लह), lit., the "Exalted Language of the [military] Camp". The terms "Hindi" and "Urdu" were used interchangeably even by Urdu poets like Mir and Mirza Ghalib of the early 19th century (more often, however, the terms Hindvi/Hindi were used); while British officials usually understood the term "Urdu" to refer solely to the writing system and not to a language at all. By 1850, there was growing use of the terms "Hindi" and "Urdu" to differentiate among different dialects of the Hindustani language. However, linguists such as Sir G. A. Grierson (1903) continued to recognize the close relationship between the emerging standard Urdu and the Western Hindi dialects of Hindustani. Before the Partition of India, Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad used to be the four literary centers of Urdu.

The colloquial language spoken by the people of Delhi is indistinguishable by ear, whether it is called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The only important distinction at this level is in the script: if written in the Perso-Arabic script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, and if written in Devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi. However, since independence the formal registers used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, Standard Urdu uses Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while Standard Hindi uses Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official languages being heavily Sanskritized or Persianized, and nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the other standard (as far as the formal vocabulary is concerned).

Writing system

Hindi is written in the Devanagari script. To represent sounds that are foreign to Indic phonology, additional letters have been coined by choosing an existing Devanagari letter representing a similar sound and adding a dot (called a 'nukta') beneath it. For example, the sound 'z', which was borrowed from Persian, is represented by ज़ , which is a modification of the letter which represents the sound 'j' ([ɟ] in IPA). The nukta is also used to represent native sounds, such as ड़ and ढ़, modifications of the characters ड and ढ respectively. These modify the voiced retroflex plosive characters ड and ढ to retroflex flap sounds.

Hindi phonology differs from exactly following Devanagari in some respects, the most important of which is the phenomenon called schwa syncope or schwa deletion.^[11] The schwa ('ə', sometimes rendered 'a') implicit in each consonant of the script is "obligatorily deleted" at the end of words and in certain other contexts.^[12] For instance, राम is Rām (incorrect: Rāma), रचना is Rachnā (incorrect: Rachanā), वेद is Véd (incorrect: Véda) and नमकीन is Namkeen (incorrect Namakeen).^[13][14]

Literature

The Hindi literature, is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional - Kabir, Raskhan); Shringar (beauty - Keshav, Bihari); Veer-Gatha (extolling brave warriors); and Adhunik (modern).

The medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and composition of long, epic poems, and written in Avadhi and Brij Bhasha dialects. During the British Raj, Khadiboli became the prestige dialect of Hindi. Khadiboli with heavily Sanskritized vocabulary or Sahityik Hindi (Literary Hindi) was popularized by the writings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bhartendu Harishchandra and others. The rising numbers of newspapers and magazines made Khadiboli popular among the educated people. Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi. The person who brought realism in the Hindi prose literature was Munshi Premchand, who is considered as the most revered figure in the world of Hindi fiction and progressive movement.

The Dwivedi Yug ("Age of Dwivedi") in Hindi literature lasted from 1900 to 1918. It is named after Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who played a major role in establishing modern Hindi language in poetry and broadening the acceptable subjects of Hindi poetry from the traditional ones of religion and romantic love.

In 20th century, Hindi literature saw a romantic upsurge. This is known as Chhayavaad (shadowism) and the literary figures belonging to this school are known as Chhayavaadi. Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chhayavaadi poets.

Uttar Adhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chhayavaadi movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.

Popular media

Hindi films play an important role in popular culture. The dialogues and songs of Hindi films use Khari Boli and Hindi-Urdu in general, but the intermittent use of various dialects such as Awadhi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, and quite often Bambaiya Hindi, as also of many English words, is common.

Alam Ara (1931), which ushered in the era of "talkie" films in India, was a Hindi film. This film had seven songs in it. Music soon became an integral part of Hindi cinema. It is a very important part of popular culture and now comprises an entire genre of popular music. So popular is film music that songs filmed even 50–60 years ago are a staple of radio/TV and are generally very familiar to an Indian.^{[citation needed]}

Hindi movies and songs are popular in many parts of Northern India, such as Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, that do not speak Hindi as a native language. Indeed, the Hindi film industry is largely based at Mumbai, in the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra. Hindi films are also popular abroad, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Iran and the UK. These days Hindi movies are released worldwide and have good viewership in the Americas, Europe and Middle Eastern countries.^{[citation needed]}

The role of radio and television in propagating Hindi beyond its native audience cannot be overstated. Television in India was introduced and controlled by the central government until the proliferation of satellite TV made regulation unenforceable. During the era of control, Hindi predominated on both radio and TV, enjoying maximum air-time than any other Indian language. After the advent of satellite TV, several private channels emerged to compete with the government's official TV channel. Today, a large number of satellite channels provide viewers with much variety in entertainment. These include soap operas, detective serials, horror shows, dramas, cartoons, comedies, Hindu mythology and documentaries.

See also

• Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu
• Complex text layout
• Hindi in Bihar
• Hindi Heartland
• Hindi languages
• Hindi literature
• Hinglish
• History of Hindustani
• Languages of India and Languages with official status in India
• List of languages by number of native speakers in India

References

Notes

1. ^ Shapiro (2003), p. 251
2. ^ 258 million "non-Urdu Khari Boli" and 400 million Hindi languages per 2001 Indian census data, plus 11 million Urdu in 1993 Pakistan, adjusted to population growth till 2008
3. ^ non-native speakers of Standard Hindi, and Standard Hindi plus Urdu, according to SIL Ethnologue.
4. ^ Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction
5. ^ Saeed Khan (2010-01-25). "There's no national language in India: Gujarat High Court - India - The Times of India". Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Theres-no-national-language-in-India-Gujarat-High-Court/articleshow/5496231.cms. Retrieved 2010-05-02.
6. ^ Constitution of India, Part XVII, Article 343.
7. ^ "The Union: Official Languages". India.gov.in. http://india.gov.in/knowindia/official_language.php. Retrieved 2010-05-02.
8. ^ PDF from india.gov.in containing Articles 343 which states so
9. ^ Alfred C. Woolner (1999). Introduction to Prakrit. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 5. ISBN 9788120801899.
10. ^ Shapiro, M: Hindi.
11. ^ Tej K. Bhatia (1987), A history of the Hindi grammatical tradition: Hindi-Hindustani grammar, grammarians, history and problems, BRILL, ISBN 9004079246, http://books.google.com/books?id=jJOXzRXsSK0C, "... Hindi literature fails as a reliable indicator of the actual pronunciation because it is written in the Devanagari script ... the schwa syncope rule which operates in Hindi ..."
12. ^ Larry M. Hyman, Victoria Fromkin, Charles N. Li (1988 (Volume 1988, Part 2)), Language, speech, and mind, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0415003113, http://books.google.com/books?id=R6IOAAAAQAAJ, "... The implicit /a/ is not read when the symbol appears in word-final position or in certain other contexts where it is obligatorily deleted (via the so-called schwa-deletion rule which plays a crucial role in Hindi word phonology ..."
13. ^ Monojit Choudhury, Anupam Basu and Sudeshna Sarkar (July 2004), "A Diachronic Approach for Schwa Deletion in Indo Aryan Languages", Proceedings of the Workshop of the ACL Special Interest Group on Computational Phonology (SIGPHON) (Association for Computations Linguistics), http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W04/W04-0103.pdf, "... schwa deletion is an important issue for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion of IAL, which in turn is required for a good Text-to-Speech synthesizer ..."
14. ^ Naim R. Tyson, Ila Nagar (2009 (12:15–25)), "Prosodic rules for schwa-deletion in hindi text-to-speech synthesis", International Journal of Speech Technology, http://www.springerlink.com/content/131xm66677g74418/fulltext.pdf, "... Without the appropriate deletion of schwas, any speech output would sound unnatural. Since the orthographical representation of Devanagari gives little indication of deletion sites, modern TTS systems for Hindi implemented schwa deletion rules based on the segmental context where schwa appears ..."

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• Snell, Rupert; Weightman, Simon (1989), Teach Yourself Hindi (2003 ed.), McGraw-Hill, ISBN 9780071420129 .
• Taj, Afroz (2002) A door into Hindi. Retrieved November 8, 2005.
• Tiwari, Bholanath ([1966] 2004) हिन्दी भाषा (Hindī Bhāshā), Kitāb Mahal, Allahabad, ISBN 81-225-0017-X.

Dictionaries

• McGregor, R.S. (1993), Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (2004 ed.), Oxford University Press, USA .
• Dasa, Syamasundara. Hindi sabdasagara. Navina samskarana. Kasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1965-1975.
• Mahendra Caturvedi. A practical Hindi-English dictionary. Delhi: National Publishing House, 1970.

Further reading

• Bhatia, Tej K A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition. Leiden, Netherlands & New York, NY : E.J. Brill, 1987. ISBN 978-90-04-07924-3

External links

Find more about Hindi on Wikipedia's sister projects:

• Hindi at the Open Directory Project
• The Union: Official Language
• Shabdkosh.com - Hindi To English Dictionary
• Shabdkosh.Raftaar.in - Hindi to English Dictionary, Hindi Thesaurus, English to Hindi Dictionary
• Hindi Online Web Application with 40 Interactive Free Lessons
• Web Hindi Resources
• Wikitravel Hindi Phrasebook
• Fiji Constitution Section 4 Languages
• Hindi Speaking Tree
• BBC HINDI
• Raftaar.in - Hindi Search Engine
• Daily Learn Hindi Podcast

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