Meaning of Hindustani | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A person from India, varying historically from the entire subcontinent to India north of the Deccan, especially the plains of the Ganges and Jumna.
2. The pluricentric language of Hindi-Urdu, of which Hindi and Urdu are literary standards; the language from which Hindi and Urdu are derived.
3. The Delhi dialect of that language.
4. The language which is now known as Urdu.
   historical
5. The language which is now known as Hindi.
   historical

Equivalents

Examples

“Swerg, in the Hinduſtànì language, means Heaven.”

“Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word…”

“Hindustani, or Urdu (i.e., camp language), is a dialect of Hindi, differing from it in its large admixture of Persian words, and in that it is usually printed in Persian or Arabic characters, while Hindi is commonly printed in Sanskrit letters.”

“Of the several languages derived from the Sanskrit, none exercises so general and wide-spread an influence over India as the Hindi, or Sir George's Common Hindustani.”

“But Mr. Lyall, in an article that is all too short, shows that Hindustani, or Hindi (for there is no essential difference between the two) possesses a continuous body of literature which represents intellectual life in Northern India during the past six centuries.”

CEFR level