ABSTRACT
Hindi is a New Indo-Aryan language spoken in the north of India. It belongs to the IndoIranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken by more than three hundred million people either as a first or second language in India, and by peoples of Indian origin in Trinidad, Guyana, Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa and many other countries. It is the official language of India, and English is the associate official language. In addition, Hindi is the state language of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarkhand (formerly, Uttaranchal) and Uttar Pradesh. Urdu, a language closely related to Hindi, is spoken by twenty-three million people
in India and approximately eight million people in Pakistan as a mother tongue. It is the official language of Pakistan. In India it is the state language of the states of Jammu and Kashmir, and in Uttar Pradesh, it shares that status with Hindi. Hindi and Urdu have a common form known as Hindustani which is essentially a col-
loquial language (Verma 1933), adopted by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress as a symbol of national identity during the struggle for freedom. It, however, never became a language of literature and high culture (see Bhatia 1987 and Rai 1984 for details of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani controversy).
