Hindi

हिन्दी
hi 600M speakers

Hindi (हिन्दी) is a Indo-European language with approximately 600M speakers speakers. It is written using the Devanagari (Nagari) script. Its BCP 47 language code is hi.

Hindi (हिन्दी) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken predominantly in northern and central India. It is one of the two official languages of the Government of India (alongside English) and serves as a lingua franca across many Indian states. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, read left-to-right.

Modern Standard Hindi shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Urdu; the two are sometimes collectively called Hindustani. Hindi has a rich literary tradition and is the language of Bollywood, India's prolific film industry.

Writing Systems Used for Hindi

Frequently Asked Questions

What alphabet or script does Hindi use?
Hindi is written using the Devanagari (Nagari) script (ISO 15924 code: Deva). Devanagari (Nagari) is written left-to-right.
What direction is Hindi written?
Hindi is written Left-to-right. Text runs from left to right, the same direction as most European languages.
How many people speak Hindi?
Hindi has approximately 600M speakers speakers worldwide. It is a member of the Indo-European language family.
What language family does Hindi belong to?
Hindi belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is written with the Devanagari (Nagari) script.
What is the language code for Hindi?
The BCP 47 language code for Hindi is "hi". This code is used in software, web standards (the HTML lang attribute), and internationalization contexts.

Data sourced from Unicode CLDR and ISO 639-3. Last updated April 20, 2026.