# Hindustani
## English
### Alternative forms

* Hindoostane, Hindostanee, Hindoostanee, Hindoostani, Hindustanee, Hindustane, Hindōstāni (obsolete)

### Etymology

Borrowed from Hindustani ہِنْدُوسْتانی (hindūstānī) / हिंदुस्तानी (hindustānī), from Classical Persian هِنْدُوسْتَانِی (hindūstānī), from هِنْدُو (hindū, “Hindu, Indian”) + ـسْتَان (-stān, “land”) + adjective suffix ـِی (-ī). Equivalent to Hindustan +‎ -i.

### Adjective

Hindustani (comparative more Hindustani, superlative most Hindustani)
* (dated outside of South Asia) Related to India, varying historically from the entire Indian subcontinent to India north of the Deccan, especially the plains of the Ganges and Jumna.

#### Translations
### Noun

Hindustani (plural Hindustanis)
* A person from India, varying historically from the entire subcontinent to India north of the Deccan, especially the plains of the Ganges and Jumna.

#### Translations
### Proper noun

Hindustani
* The pluricentric language of Hindi-Urdu, of which Hindi and Urdu are literary standards; the language from which Hindi and Urdu are derived.
** 1792, Sir William Jones, Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature, of Asia, page 150:Swerg, in the Hinduſtànì language, means Heaven.
** 1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter XI, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC: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…
* The Delhi dialect of that language.
* (historical) The language which is now known as Urdu.
** 1895, Harlan Page Beach, The Cross in the Land of the Trident, page 59: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.
* (historical) The language which is now known as Hindi.
** 1873, Haris Chandra's magazine, page 119, column 1: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.
** 1880, The Pall Mall Budget: Being a Weekly Collection of Articles Printed in the Pall Mall Gazette from Day to Day, with a Summary of News, page 977, column 2: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.

#### Synonyms

* Hindi-Urdu

#### Translations
### References

* ↑ Basu, Manisha (2017) The Rhetoric of Hindutva, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN: “Urdu, like Hindi, was a standardized register of the Hindustani language deriving from the Dehlavi dialect and emerged in the eighteenth century under the rule of the late Mughals.”
* ↑ “Hindustani”, in Oxford English Dictionary‎, Oxford University Press, 2024: “An Indo-Aryan language of northern South Asia widely used as a lingua franca, from which modern Hindi and Urdu derive.”
* ↑ Chand, Tara (1944) “Some Misconceptions About Hindustani”, in The Problem of Hindustani‎, Indian Periodicals Ltd.: “The name Hindustani has been used for Khari Boli. It has also been used as a synonym for Urdu by many writers, and for Modern Hindi by some.”

### Further reading

* Ethnologue entry for Hindi, hin ⁠
* Ethnologue entry for Urdu, urd ⁠
* Ethnologue entry for Fijian Hindustani, hif ⁠
* Ethnologue entry for Caribbean Hindustani, hns ⁠