Hindi is a language of the Indo-Aryan family, a sub-group of the Indo-European family. Besides being an official language of India, it is spoken as a first or second language by an estimated six hundred million people worldwide, mainly in South Asia, Caribbean, and parts of Africa.

Hindi is descended from Sanskrit and is written in Devanagari (or simply Nagari) script, which is a modified version of Brahmi, an ancient script well established in India by the 5th century BC. The origins of modern Hindi can be traced to the 13th century, when it emerged as a patois in Delhi and surrounding areas due to the influence of successive waves of invaders from the west, including Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan. For the next five centuries, Hindi developed as a distinct language with a corpus of important works contributed by Hindus and Muslims alike. Along with the distinct style in architecture and painting that emerged from the fusion of Turco-Persian and Hindu Indian traditions, it formed one of the pivots of the ÔHindustaniÕ culture. The disintegration of Mughal empire and its replacement by the British rule marked the beginning of a new chapter in the status of Hindi. While the replacement of Persian as official language led to an increase in the status of Hindi, the profound socio-political changes triggered off by the British policies led increasingly to a communal outlook on language issues. The sectarian project to trace the roots of the composite Hindustani culture to mutually exclusive ethnicities culminated at the time of the partition in the adoption of Hindi as the official language of India and Urdu written in modified Arabic script as the national language of Pakistan.

In the last fifty years, the state patronization coupled with the tremendous spread of Indian diaspora has lead to a huge increase in the population using Hindi. The study of Hindi provides an important window to understanding the ways in which people in a globalized world, in the course of different identity constituting processes, relate to and reconfigure the linkages between nation-state and communities.

Courses offered :
HNDI 1001, HNDI 1002, HNDI 2001, HNDI 2002 (UGA Bulletin)