After going
through a lot of struggle, the language ‘Hindi’ written in Devanagiri script
managed to be an official language of
the country, India, in 1950. It is one of the most widely spoken languages of
the country. Hindi consists of a lot of words of other languages such as
Punjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit. The word ‘Hindi’ is actually the Urdu form of the
word ‘Hind’ which means India according to Google. Even the name hindi signifies it’s inter-linguistic nature!
A lot of literature such as stories,
poems, newspapers and movies have been written in this language. Some plays
such Aadhe-Adhure have been translated to other languages such as English
(Halfway House). There are specialized language courses both at the level of
school and higher education.
Often, hindi words are absorbed in other
languages. For instance, the song ‘Jai Ho’ by A.R. Rahman became so popular
that the term ‘Jai Ho’ became a part of the Oxford English Dictionary. In the
recent years, the mix of hindi and English language has developed and is called
Hinglish.
Unfortunately, because of the connection
that English has with the so-called ‘elite class’, hindi is considered to be an
inferior language most of the time. Every language is spoken by some or the
other person; is a medium of expression and communication and hence, cannot be
really looked down upon.
With the rapid globalization, hindi is a
language that has been taken to foreign lands. Often, Bollywood movies that are
in hindi are translated for viewership of foreign countries. Bollywood hindi
songs such as ‘Mera Joota hain Japani’ have been very popular among the
Russians.
Hindi is the mother-tongue of many
Indians and seems to be dying away because of the importance given to languages
such as Spanish, French, German and English. What will happen to the language
ultimately? Will there be further expansion of the language that will include
words of the other foreign languages like Japanese can only be revealed with
time.
-Kriti Malhotra
