One reason to want to know how to learn Hindi is that it is spoken by so many millions of people. The Indian Constitution sets forth Hindi and English as the two official languages and is one of the 22 languages schedules on the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Consitution. Hindi is a member of the Indo-Aryan language family. Some linguists classify Hindi as a dialect continuum rather than a language. Over 40 percent of Indians speak a Hindi dialect as their native language. Hindi is spoken mostly in the northern states of India, including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana.
Hindi is also spoken outside of India. Urdu, a language that is mutually intelligible with Hindi in its spoken colloquial form, is the national language of Pakistan. Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu evolved from the Khari Boli dialect. Hindi is written in the Devanagari alphabet and borrows some of its literary vocabulary from Sanskrit. On the other hand, Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script and borrows some of its vocabulary from Persian. Hindi and Urdu grammar are identical. Spoken, colloquial Urdu and Hindi can generally be considered the same language.
A dialect of Hindi is also spoken in Fiji. Indentured servants who were sent to Fiji from India used Hindi as a lingua franca. Over time, Hindi evolved with vocabulary and grammar that was adapted to suit the lives of the native Indians living and working in Fiji. In parts of Fiji in which large numbers of Indians lived, Fijian Hindi, as it is known, came to be spoken by people who were not Indian.
Of course, Hindi is also spoken in other countries in which native Indians live and continue to speak their mother tongues, even if those countries do not recognize Hindi as a national or official language. Those countries include the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
A Hindi dialect is the native language of millions of people. You are doing well by trying to discover the best way how to learn Hindi.
