Claim: In July 2007 the World Hindi Conference convened in the United States, a country with less than 900,000 Hindi speakers.
Evidence: 13-15 July 2007 United States Hindi and Urdu are widely spoken among the Indian and Pakistani communities in the United States as a first or second language. Speakers are concentrated in states with large South Asian populations, including California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Virginia. Besides being the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan in South Asia, Hindustani is also spoken by many in the South Asian diaspora and their descendants around the world, including North America (e.g., in Canada, Hindustani is one of the fastest growing languages), Europe, and the Middle East.