Hindustani
North Indian tongue
Hindustani refers to the language continuum of northern India and Pakistan, encompassing both Hindi and Urdu before their formal separation along religious and political lines.
The spoken forms remain largely mutually intelligible; the written forms diverge—Hindi using Devanagari script, Urdu using Persian-Arabic.
Hindustani also describes anything relating to this region or its peoples: Hindustani classical music, Hindustani cuisine.
Indian melodic framework
Indian film industry
- MughalIndian Islamic imperial dynasty
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- cuisineCharacteristic cooking style
- diasporaScattered population sharing origins
chai · biryani · kurta · bazaar · rickshaw · Lucknow · Hyderabad · Delhi
Global folk-pop hybrid
- crossoverGenre-blending work or transition
- electronicaSynthesized listening music
- bhangraPunjabi folk music and dance
- remixAltered version of recording
collaboration · sampling · experimentation · genre-bending · synthesis
Pakistan's official language
- SanskritAncient Indo-Aryan language
- PersianOf or from Iran
- vernacularEveryday regional speech
- dialectRegional language variety
script · vocabulary · grammar · phonology · standardization · colloquial · literary · prose
raga
Indian melodic framework
Bollywood
Indian film industry
- MughalIndian Islamic imperial dynasty
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- cuisineCharacteristic cooking style
diaspora · chai · biryani · kurta · bazaar · rickshaw · Lucknow · Hyderabad · Delhi · partition
worldbeat
Global folk-pop hybrid
- crossoverGenre-blending work or transition
- electronicaSynthesized listening music
- bhangraPunjabi folk music and dance
remix · collaboration · sampling · experimentation · genre-bending · synthesis
Urdu
Pakistan's official language
- SanskritAncient Indo-Aryan language
- PersianOf or from Iran
- vernacularEveryday regional speech
dialect · script · vocabulary · grammar · phonology · standardization · colloquial · literary · prose · poetry