Hindi

About Hindi

Hindi is spoken as a first language by about 341 million people, mostly in northern and central India, and by many millions more as a second language. It is an official language of India's central government together with English. Everyday spoken Hindi is very close to Urdu, and speakers of the two understand each other easily in conversation, although they use different scripts and much of their formal vocabulary differs.

Hindi is written in Devanagari, which runs from left to right with a line along the top of each word. It has three words for "you". Āp is polite and safe with strangers and elders, tum is for friends and tū is for very close family and can sound rude to anyone else. In Latin spellings, letters followed by an h, such as kh and bh, are said with a puff of air.

FamilyIndo-European, Indo-Aryan
Native speakersabout 341 million (2019)
Second-language speakersabout 274 million (2016)
Official inIndia (with English, at national level)
ScriptDevanagari
Codeshi (ISO 639-1), hin (ISO 639-3)

Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2019 and 2016), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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