Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register[10] of Hindustani, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas.

[33] Another name Hindavī (हिन्दवी) or Hinduī (हिन्दुई) (from Persian هندوی 'of or belonging to the Hindu/Indian people') was often used in the past, for example by Amir Khusrau in his poetry.

[39] The sound changes that characterised the transition from Middle Indo-Aryan to Hindi are:[40] During the period of Delhi Sultanate in medieval India, which covered most of today's north India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and Bangladesh[41] and which resulted in the contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures, the Sanskrit and Prakrit base of Old Hindi became enriched with loanwords from Persian, evolving into the present form of Hindustani.

[42][43][44][45][46][47] Hindi achieved prominence in India after it became the official language of the imperial court during the reign of Shah Jahan.

Earliest examples could be found as Prēm Sāgar by Lallu Lal, Batiyāl Pachīsī of Sadal Misra, and Rānī Kētakī Kī Kahānī of Insha Allah Khan which were published in Devanagari script during the early 19th century.

[59] John Gilchrist was principally known for his study of the Hindustani language, which was adopted as the lingua franca of northern India (including what is now present-day Pakistan) by British colonists and indigenous people.

[64][65][66] To this end, several stalwarts rallied and lobbied pan-India in favour of Hindi, most notably Beohar Rajendra Simha along with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Seth Govind Das who even debated in Parliament on this issue.

As such, on the 50th birthday of Beohar Rajendra Simha on 14 September 1949, the efforts came to fruition following the adoption of Hindi as the official language.

However, widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in South India (such as those in Tamil Nadu) led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English indefinitely for all official purposes, although the constitutional directive for the Union Government to encourage the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced its policies.

[73] It acts as an additional official language of West Bengal in blocks and sub-divisions with more than 10% of the population speaking Hindi.

[74][75][76] Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of official language in the following Union Territories: Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

[7] As a result of this status, the Indian workforce in UAE can file their complaints to the labour courts in the country in their own mother-tongue.

[92] A sizeable population in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, can also speak and understand Hindi-Urdu due to the popularity and influence of Bollywood films, songs and actors in the region.

[56] Because of this, as well as the fact that the two registers share an identical grammar,[13][19][100] a consensus of linguists consider them to be two standardised forms of the same language, Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu.

[118] As a part of the process of Sanskritisation, new words are coined using Sanskrit components to be used as replacements for supposedly foreign vocabulary.

[56][38][page needed] Early borrowings, beginning in the mid-12th century, were specific to Islam (e.g. Muhammad, Islām) and so Persian was simply an intermediary for Arabic.

However, many Persian words (e.g. bas "enough", khud "self") have remained entrenched in Standard Hindi, and a larger amount are still used in Urdu poetry written in the Devanagari script.

Many words borrowed from Persian in turn were loanwords from Arabic (e.g. muśkil "difficult", havā "air", x(a)yāl "thought", kitāb "book").

Hindi also makes extensive use of loan translation (calqueing) and occasionally phono-semantic matching of English.

[123] Many Hindustani words were derived from Portuguese due to interaction with colonists and missionaries: Hindi literature is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti (devotional – Kabir, Raskhan); Śṛṇgār (beauty – Keshav, Bihari); Vīgāthā (epic); and Ādhunik (modern).

Medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and the composition of long, epic poems.

Chandrakanta, written by Devaki Nandan Khatri in 1888, is considered the first authentic work of prose in modern Hindi.

Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, are the four major Chāyāvādī poets.

Uttar Ādhunik is the post-modernist period of Hindi literature, marked by a questioning of early trends that copied the West as well as the excessive ornamentation of the Chāyāvādī movement, and by a return to simple language and natural themes.

In 2015, Google reported a 94% increase in Hindi-content consumption year-on-year, adding that 21% of users in India prefer content in Hindi.

The following is a sample text in High Hindi, of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):