Common Questions about Speaking Hindi
What language is spoken in India?
Hindi is the official language that is spoken in India, but there are 14 to 20 other languages and over 400 other dialects. Some of the other languages are: Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Oriya, Malay and many more. In some areas of the country, people speak French and Portuguese, too. For example, people speak French in Pondicherry and Portuguese in Goa. Native speakers of Hindi dialects account for 41% of the Indian population (according to the 2001 Indian census).
What about English? Is English spoken in India?
India’s constitution of 1950 provided that Hindi would be the official language but that government business would be conducted in English. In 1965, English was dropped as an official language and became an “associate” language. Official Hindi is often described as Standard Hindi, which along with English, is used for administration of India’s central government. Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived from the khari boli dialect. Hindi is written in Devanagari script.
I’ve also heard about the Urdu language. Which country speaks Urdu?
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, as well as one of the 24 national languages of India. Urdu is also a Persianised register of the khari boli dialect.
What is the best way to learn to speak Hindi?
There are a variety of ways to learn to speak Hindi. Probably the easiest way is to search the internet for training programs. One way to learn the language is to buy a program from Rosetta Stone. These programs are very expensive, but they are full immersion programs. This means that everything you see and do in the software will be said in Hindi!
A less expensive, but equally good training program is available from Rocket Hindi. Their training is conducted in both English and Hindi. I used Rocket Hindi to learn the language before my trip in the summer of 2009. When I arrived in India, I found the Rocket Hindi training really made me a confident traveller!
[...] learn it pretty fast if you apply yourself. Some of these options will make it possible for you to learn to speak Hindi online. If you have more time available, such as three months or more, you might consider taking a class [...]
[...] 2002 and 2006. Since India is growing as a global finance and cultural powerhouse, the interest in learning to speak Hindi will only increase in the future. And as foreign as Hindi might at first sound to English-speaking [...]