Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by hundreds of millions of people across the world, the vast majority of which live in India. Estimates of native speakers range from a conservative 180 million to 487 million; the latter figure is likely to include a variety of dialects besides Standard Hindi. Standard spoken Hindi is closely related to Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, although the writing systems are different. Hindi has a rich literary heritage, dating back to the medieval period and borrowing heavily from Ancient Sanskrit and Hindustani.
Modern Standard Hindi is now the set standard and taught widely in schools and universities. The Hindi alphabet known as “Devanagari” is the common standard and also used in Nepal. It is derived from Sanskrit and the letter order is based on phonetic principles with vowels, consonants and a wide ranging order of biconsonantal conjuncts. Hindi is among the worlds most widely adopted wiring and reading systems.
