Hindi in the context of "Official scripts of the Indian Republic"

Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It originated in the Kingdom of Castile, a historical kingdom in north-central Spain. Today, it is a global language with 519 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 636 million speakers total, including second-language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico.

Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group, in which the language is also known as Castilian (castellano). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas.

Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəri/ DAY-və-NAH-gə-ree; in script: देवनागरी, IAST: Devanāgarī, Sanskrit pronunciation: [deːʋɐˈnaːɡɐriː]) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ancient Brāhmī script. It is one of the official scripts of India and Nepal. It was developed in, and was in regular use by, the 8th century CE. It had achieved its modern form by 1000 CE. The Devanāgarī script, composed of 48 primary characters, including 14 vowels and 34 consonants, is the fourth most widely adopted writing system in the world, being used for over 120 languages, the most popular of which is Hindi (हिन्दी).

The orthography of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language. Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case, meaning the script is a unicameral alphabet. It is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical, rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line, known as a शिरोरेखा śirorekhā, that runs along the top of full letters. In a cursory look, the Devanāgarī script appears different from other Indic scripts, such as Bengali-Assamese or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar, except for angles and structural emphasis.

In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/ dy-GLOSS-ee-ə, US also /daɪˈɡlɔːsiə/ dy-GLAW-see-ə) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers within the community. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.

The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as in medieval Europe, where Latin (H) remained in formal use even as colloquial speech (L) diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present-day dialect (as in northern India and Pakistan, where Hindustani (L) is used alongside the standard registers of Hindi (H) and Urdu (H); Germany, where Hochdeutsch (H) is used alongside German dialects (L); the Arab world, where Modern Standard Arabic (H) is used alongside other varieties of Arabic (L); and China, where Standard Chinese (H) is used as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese (L) are used in everyday communication); in Dravidian languages, Tamil has the largest diglossia with Literary Tamil (H) used in formal settings and colloquial spoken Tamil (L) used in daily life. Other examples include literary Katharevousa (H) versus spoken Demotic Greek (L); Indonesian, with its bahasa baku (H) and bahasa gaul (L) forms; Standard American English (H) versus African-American Vernacular English or Hawaiian Pidgin (L); and literary (H) versus spoken (L) Welsh.

Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp, among other sounds such as beep or hiccup.

Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (see photo), dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or ṭik-ṭik in Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali.

This is a list of languages by total number of speakers.

It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, while Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages. Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language, but sometimes considered multiple languages. Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani. Rankings of languages should therefore be used with caution, as it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.

Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in North India and Pakistan as the lingua franca of the region. It is also spoken by the Deccani-speaking community in the Deccan Plateau. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi (Prakritised and Sanskritised register written in the Brahmic script) and Urdu (Persianised and Arabised register written in the Perso-Arabic script) which serve as official languages of India and Pakistan, respectively. Thus, it is also called Hindi–Urdu. Colloquial registers of the language fall on a spectrum between these standards.

The concept of a Hindustani language as a "unifying language" or "fusion language" that could transcend communal and religious divisions across the subcontinent was endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi, as it was not seen to be associated with either the Hindu or Muslim communities as was the case with Hindi and Urdu respectively, and it was also considered a simpler language for people to learn. The conversion from Hindi to Urdu (or vice versa) is generally achieved by merely transliterating between the two scripts. Translation, on the other hand, is generally only required for religious and literary texts.

Urdu (اُرْدُو) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also an official Eighth Schedule language in India, the status and cultural heritage of which are recognised by the Constitution of India. It also has an official status in several Indian states.

Urdu and Hindi share a common, predominantly Sanskrit- and Prakrit-derived, vocabulary base, phonology, syntax, and grammar, making them mutually intelligible during colloquial communication. The common base of the two languages is sometimes referred to as the Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani language, and Urdu has been described as a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. While formal Urdu draws literary, political, and technical vocabulary from Persian, formal Hindi draws these aspects from Sanskrit; consequently, the two languages' mutual intelligibility effectively decreases as the factor of formality increases.

Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present on the Indian subcontinent. It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of modern-day republics of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the subcontinent was by various Muslim Turko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern Indian subcontinent, where Islamic influence was also firmly established. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century. Various dynasties of Turkic, Iranian and local Indian origin patronized the Persian language and contributed to the development of a Persian culture in India. The Delhi Sultanate developed their own cultural and political identity which built upon Persian and Indic languages, literature and arts, which formed the basis of an Indo-Muslim civilization.

Persian was the official language of most Muslim dynasties in the Indian subcontinent, such as the Delhi Sultanate, the Kashmir Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and their successor states, and the Sikh Empire. It was also the dominant cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic languages as their mother tongues. The Mughals were also culturally Persianised Central Asians (of Turko-Mongol origin on their paternal side), but spoke Chagatai Turkic as their first language at the beginning, before eventually adopting Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of northern India. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the official lingua franca of the Mughal Empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The influence of these languages led to a vernacular called Hindustani that is the direct ancestor language of today's Hindi–Urdu varieties.

In historical linguistics, sister languages are languages that are descended from a common ancestral language. Every language in a language family that descends from the same language as the others is a sister to them.

A commonly given example is of Urdu and Hindi (the standardized registers of the Hindustani language), which are mutually intelligible with each other. Also, the Romance languages, each of which is a continuation of Vulgar Latin. Italian and French (both Romance languages) have about 89% lexical overlap, meaning 89 percent of words share the same characteristics and root origins. Similarly, Spanish and Portuguese also have about 89% lexical overlap. Spanish and Romanian overlap less, about 67%, because while Spanish and Portuguese have undergone Arabic influence, Romanian has undergone many different influences over the years, particularly from the Slavic languages and Greek. Along with a large amount of shared vocabulary, the Romance languages share numerous features of morphology and syntax because they are all continuations of their common ancestor, Latin.