Hindustani language

Hindustani
Hindi-Urdu
ہندوستانی‎   •   हिन्दुस्तानी
The word Hindustani in Devanagari, Nastaliq and Kaithi scripts
Native to	Pakistan, India. Various based on religion.
Native speakers	(240 million[1] cited 1991–1997) Second language: 165 million (1999)[2] Total: 490 million (2006)[3]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central Zone Western Hindi Hindustani
Standard forms	Standard Hindi Standard Urdu
Dialects	Old Hindi
Writing system	Perso-Arabic (Urdu alphabet) Devanagari (Hindi and Urdu alphabets) Bharati Braille (Hindi and Urdu) Kaithi (historical)
Official status
Official language in	Pakistan (as Urdu)  India (as Hindi and Urdu)
Regulated by	Central Hindi Directorate (Hindi, India),[4] National Language Authority, (Urdu, Pakistan); National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (Urdu, India)[5]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	hi, ur
ISO 639-2	hin, urd
ISO 639-3	Either: hin – Standard Hindi urd – Urdu
Linguasphere	59-AAF-qa to -qf

Hindustani is a language. It is made up of the common parts of Hindi and Urdu. Hindi and Urdu have similar grammar, but slightly different vocabulary and very different scripts.

Hindustani was born in Punjab during the Ghaznavid Empire (Lahore as its capital) in the early decades of the eleventh century AD.^[6]

1. ↑ Standard Hindi: 180 million India (1991). Urdu: 48 million India (1997), 11 million Pakistan (1993). Ethnologue 16.
2. ↑ 120 million Standard Hindi (1999), 45 million Urdu (1999). Ethnologue 16.
3. ↑ "BBC: A Guide to Urdu". Archived from the original on 2012-05-25. Retrieved 2013-03-08.
4. ↑ The Central Hindi Directorate regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India. Source: Central Hindi Directorate: Introduction Archived 2010-04-15 at the Wayback Machine
5. ↑ National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language
6. ↑ "Excerpt: How Urdu began". Dawn News. 29 November 2008.