National Hindi Divas 2021: Interesting Facts about Hindi

National Hindi Divas 2021: Interesting Facts about Hindi
National Hindi Divas 2021: Interesting Facts about Hindi

Introduction

The National Hindi Divas is celebrated to commemorate the adoption of Hindi as the language for official and government communication on 14th September 1949. Yes, we also use English to cater to wider demographics and our foreign partners; however, we always give the utmost importance to one of our most respected national languages.

We celebrate this on the 14th of this month every year to pay respect to this highly advanced language which came down from a language with roots that only lead to India. We could almost say that this is our proprietary language, with other globally accepted languages being passed down from various races and getting altered in the process.

Hindi, like many other Indian languages, represents our culture and traces of India’s own ancient language Sanskrit. As Indians (regardless of our mother tongue), we all have an enormous amount of love for this language and speak different dialects associated with this language.


Almost every Indian-born person can speak in Hindi, even if not too well, he/she can definitely understand it. Let us celebrate our National Hindi Divas with pride and joy by checking some interesting facts about this beautiful language.

What is the difference between National Hindi Divas and World Hindi Day?

There are a lot of people who confuse National Hindi Divas and World Hindi Day. Vishwa Hindi Divas is known as World Hindi Day in English and is different from National Hindi Day. National Hindi Day or simply Hindi Divas is more geared towards India’s citizens celebrating the official adoption of Hindi rather than being an International Hindi Day to promote the language on a global level.

World Hindi Day was first celebrated in 2006 for aiming to expose the world to Hindi. We celebrate World Hindi Day on the 10th of January, and this is the date when the first-ever World Hindi Conference was hosted by India in Nagpur in 1975. 122 delegates from 30 countries were present at this conference, making it a massive success.

While World Hindi Day is celebrated on a global stage and by government organisations, NGOs and all the Indian embassies in various countries, National Hindi Divas is celebrated all across the country by its citizens. Fundamentally, National Hindi Divas serves as a date to mark the adoption of Hindi’s Devanagari script as the official language of our country. 

Interesting Facts about Hindi

Here are some of the most interesting facts about this great language:

  • Hindi is the fourth most spoken language in the world, just after Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and English at the top. More than 545 million people speak in Hindi and 425 million people have Hindi as their first language. More than 120 million use Hindi as their second language.
  • 53.6% of the Indian population had declared that they could speak in Hindi in 2001. Among these people, 41% of them stated that Hindi is their mother tongue. There are over 300 million people whose mother tongue or native language is Hindi.
  • The word ‘Hindi’ has originated from ‘Hind’, a Persian word that refers to the land where the river Indus flows.
  • Hindi is the only official language other than English, to be used for official government communication and public matters.
  • Hindi is the regional language used for official communication in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan. Hindi is also used across every other state for matters of public and private interest (advertisements, labelling etc.).
  • Other than India, Hindi is spoken in Nepal, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, UAE, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, and Suriname. A huge number of Hindi speakers can also be found in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, and The United States of America.
  • Hindi has 183,175 recorded words according to the Hindi Wiktionary.
  • Hindi is officially written in Devanagari script which originates from Sanskrit.
  • Hindi shares a lot of similarities in its written script or spoken language with Bengali, Nepalese, Gujarati, and Urdu. Some words in Hindi can also be found to have taken inspiration from English, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and even South Indian languages. 

Hindi and Coding

On this National Hindi Divas, let us take a moment to wonder why we cannot code in Hindi. Yes, programming languages are based on English, and the syntax and variables that can be used are only associated with English. However, it is not unheard of that a programming language that is completely based on any other human language than English exists, for instance, the (易语言) or The Easy Programming Language, which is an object-oriented and structured programming language that features an environment, is in Chinese. It is a compiled visual multilingual proprietary programming that supports both Linux and Windows.

This programming language is one of the most common programming languages in China. With enough skilled minds for a project such as this, we can build a programming language that will allow us to code in Hindi. Yes, it will be hard, as a compiler that is compatible with Hindi needs to be first designed which will allow computers to understand Hindi.

blog banner 1

Since English has been always used as the basic coding language, we have to start from scratch where we must first convert all of Hindi’s alphabets into their binary form and slowly introduce Hindi statements and syntax with time. It’s a big project but it is certainly possible if we decide to give it enough thought and time. Otherwise, we can also introduce variant syntax or statements in Hindi during the localisation of languages capable of supporting Hindi.

Yes, huge sets of code must be manually written but it is absolutely possible. Perl, Ruby, Python, C#, and Java are some languages that are capable of supporting Hindi as long as the alphabet to Unicode conversion is taken care of. However, first, the syntax identifiers must accept these characters from Hindi with the help of a normalisation algorithm. Additionally, we can define aliases for particular keywords to make the process smoother.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the national language of India?

Hindi, along with the other 21 major languages, is the national language of India. All these are languages such as Bengali, Oriya, and Punjabi that are recognised as the official language across various states and used for official government communication as well.

When is World Hindi Day?

World Hindi Day is celebrated on 10th January.

When is National Hindi Divas?

The National Hindi Divas is on the 14th of September.

What are the official languages of India?

Hindi and English are the two official languages of India.

When was World Hindi Day first celebrated?

World Hindi Day was first celebrated in 2006 and has been celebrated ever since. For instance, we celebrated the day with a bang this year while World Hindi Day 2020 and World Hindi Day 2019 were celebrated with a blast as well by the government and Indian embassies.

How many people speak Hindi?

More than 545 million people speak Hindi either as their first or second language.

How many people have Hindi as their mother tongue?

Over 300 million people have Hindi as their mother tongue.

Is Hindi the most spoken language in the world?

No, Hindi is the fourth most spoken language in the world, following Mandarin and Spanish. English is the most spoken language in the world.

Where did Hindi come from?

Hindi came from Sanskrit and has drawn inspiration from the Devanagari script which it still follows officially to this date.

Key Takeaways

Hindi is the most popular language in India, especially with every Indian citizen having some memory of this language. It is also the language with which most of the world associates us Indians. Hindi is important to us and so is celebrating National Hindi Divas in order to ensure that our coming generations place the same importance on their mother tongue and the official language of India.

It’s great that we use English for business communication and in a professional environment; however, on this Hindi Day, let us remember our roots.