Hindi is Spreading Rapidly

Hindi is the most popular language of Indian subcontinent. It is on number 1 position as the first language, and also on number one position as second language. It is the most popular link language amongst non-Hindi speaking people in this region.

This language has done a tremendous job in the freedom movement of greater India, i.e. today's Pakistan, India and Bangla Desh.

Bollywood films aka Hindi films have become the greatest tool of spreading Hindi for last 7 decades. Even today the Bollywood films are one of the most important promoter of Hindi language. Bollywood films are spreading Hindi language all over Indian subcontinent and even in some other countries audio visually. The dialogues and songs of Hindi films help millions of the people to learn spoken Hindi.

Now, the electronic media, especially TV News and Entertainment Channels have overtaken the Bollywood films in this venture. These channels are giving home tutions of spoken Hindi through their various programs audio visually all over the Indian sub-continent. Hindi films, Hindi News, Hindi TV serials have become a part of daily life for a large section of Non-Hindi speaking people.

Furthermore, Hindi is an important language in politics in India, while Urdu enjoys the same status in Pakistan. Basically, Hindi and Urdu are the same languages with different scripts. (Please read my article Hindi Urdu Hindustani). The politicians are also spreading Hindi through their speeches.

Hindi is the most spoken language of markets. This is also helping Hindi to spread. In metro cities of non-Hindi speaking states of India (Like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore etc) Hindi has gotten a great support.

One of my friends is Kannada speaking, his wife is Tamil speaking. They have a cute daughter and a son, who are learning in an English medium school. They live in Maharashtra, in Marathi speaking area. This family is a multilingual family. But I have observed that all of the family members mostly speak Hindi at home at work, in spite of this language is not being originally their first language. (But now it has become their first language). This is not a rare case. It is seen almost every family where the parents are from different linguistic groups.

However, spread of Hindi through print media and literature is negligible in non-Hindi speaking regions. Further, some narrow minded political parties have an anti-Hindi agenda. But as Hindi language has intrinsic power, supported by the highest number of speakers as first and second language, no one can stop this language from her spread.

Hindi films are also popular in many central Asian and African countries, and so is Hindi language. Further the language is popular in the countries where people of South Asia are living in large number. Such countries include UAE, Baharin, England, USA and Canada.

The multinational companies of West and East have realized the power of Hindi, so there is a growing trend of learning Hindi in many countries, including USA, China and Japan.

Hindi is one of the major languages in Suriname, Fiji, Mauritius and Trinidad.

But all the spread of Hindi is mostly as a spoken language.

* One of the most spoken languages in the world. Other most spoken languages are Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, French and Bengali

* In India, it is first language of about 41% population and second language of about 25% people.

* The only Indian language which has increasing percentage of speaker

* Official Language of India, and of many states in India

* Hindi electronic media is the biggest on in South Asia

* Hindi print media is the biggest one in South Asia

* Significant number of speakers in Nepal, UK, Fiji, Suriname, Mauritius, Kenya, South Africa, Gulf Countries

* Hindi films are most popular films in the world

-Mahavir Sanglikar