Sanskritisation (linguistics)

Sanskritisation is the process of introducing features from Sanskrit, such as vocabulary and grammar, into other languages.

[14][15][16] During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in the northwestern subcontinent;[20] colonial-era education policies, religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences,[21] with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Sanskrit-associated Devanagari script for writing Hindi.

[22][23][24] Since the 1947 Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi,[25] considering it to be easier for Indians to learn,[26] and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh).

[31] Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be,[32][33] with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi,[34] opposing Urdu in part because it is a Muslim-associated language,[35] and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English in its movies.

[38] These attempts at "de-sanskritization" came to see the language having altered to remove a lot of the Sanskrit borrowing.