World Hindi Day
विश्व हिंदी दिवस की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं
World Hindi Day is celebrated on 10 January every year from 1975 onward when it was celebrated for first time in Nagpur, Maharashtra, but it was recognized as an annual holiday only in 2006 by the then Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. The purpose of the Day is to raise public awareness about the importance of the language of Hindi and to promote its recognition as an international language. The Day is celebrated by public and diplomatic services of India with special events aiming to promote the learning of Hindi at the national and international level.
As per the 22nd edition of the world language database Ethnologue, released on the occasion of Mother Language Day (February 21, 2020), Hindi is the 3rd most spoken language in the world with 615 million speakers after English and Mandarin.
Hindi belongs to the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European languages. It is a descendant of Sanskrit, but its vocabulary and grammar have been influenced and enriched by Arabic, Persian, English and South Indian languages. Many English words have been derived from Hindi, such as chutney, loot, bungalow, guru, jungle, karma, yoga, thug, avatar and so on.
The World Hindi Day should not be confused with the Hindi Day (Hindi Divas) that was established on September 14, 1949, when it was decided to make Hindi India’s national language. The Pacific island country, Fiji also has adopted Hindi as an official language. It is also a recognized regional language in Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. Hindi and Nepalese share the same script — Devanagari.
In Greece, Hindi is taught at the Foreign Language Teaching Center, University of Athens since 2005 and by ELINEPA at the Athens Center for Indian and Indo-Hellenic Studies.
