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Why Study Hindi?

As of 1999 there were 366 million first language speakers of Hindi.  If second-language speakers are included, the combined number of Hindi speakers rises to almost half a billion. Outside of India, it is spoken by substantial populations in Bangladesh, the UK, the US, and thirteen other nations. Hindi has been one of the two official languages of all of India (as opposed to the many official languages of individual states) since India’s independence in 1947. Its close linguistic relative, Urdu, is the official language of Pakistan.  Hindi is also related to Bengali and Punjabi and uses the same script and shares many elements of vocabulary with Sanskrit.  The literature of Hindi is now a well-developed tradition in both prose as well as verse. It is also the main language of the Bollywood film industry, which produces an astounding number of films every year, films that are not only popular in India and the Indian diaspora but also in the Middle East. In recent years Bollywood films and individual artists in that industry have gained substantial international recognition.