Why in the News?

• Recently, a joint regional official language conference was organized in Jaipur.

Key Points:

About the conference:

=> This conference was organized by the Official Language Department of the Home Ministry.

=> About 3000 people from Central Government offices, Nationalized Banks, Public Sector Undertakings, and Town Official Language Implementation Committees participated in the conference .

=> The best-performing institutions were also honoured for promoting greater use of Hindi in government work.

Objective:

=> The objective of this conference was to promote the use of Hindi in government departments .

Hindi Language:

Introduction :

• Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language, spoken mainly in the Indian subcontinent .
• It is the official language of India according to the Indian Constitution , and it holds an important place in  Indian society , culture and literature .
• It is the third most widely spoken language in the world and one of the ten official languages of the UNESCO General Conference.

History:

• Hindi evolved from Sanskrit and has been spoken in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times.
• Over time, Hindi has also adopted words from Persian , Arabic , and English , especially during the Mughal Empire and British rule .

Script:

• The script of Hindi is Devanagari , which is developed from the Sanskrit script. It has 11 vowels and 33 consonants .
• Devanagari script is used not only for Hindi but also for many other Indian languages.

Linguistic Diversity:

• Hindi language has many dialects, such as Awadhi , Bhojpuri , Braj , Haryanvi , Marwari etc.

Expansion:

• Hindi is spoken not only in India but also in Nepal , Pakistan , Malaysia , Thailand , Fiji and other countries.

Place in the Constitution:

• Hindi has been accepted as the official language of the Union under Article 343 of the Indian Constitution.
• Apart from this, Hindi has been recognized as one of the 22 scheduled languages listed in the Eighth Schedule.