Hindustani language
Hindustani, historically also known as
Hindavi,
Dehlvi,
Urdu, and
Rekhta, is the lingua franca of North India and of Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, and incorporates a large amount of vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and Chagatai. It is a pluricentric language, with two official forms,
Modern Standard Hindi and
Modern Standard Urdu, which are its standardised registers, and which may be called
Hindi-Urdu when taken together. The colloquial languages are all but indistinguishable, and even though the official standards are nearly identical in grammar, they differ in literary conventions and in academic and technical vocabulary, with Urdu retaining stronger Persian, Central Asian and Arabic influences, and Hindi relying more heavily on Sanskrit. Before the Partition of India, the terms
Hindustani, Urdu, and
Hindi were synonymous; all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today.