Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, and is now spoken by about one third of India's population. Hindi and other northern Indian languages probably emerged around the year 1000. Many Arabic words made their way into the Hindi language during the roughly 1000 years of Muslim rule of northern India.

Hindi also refers to a standardized register of Hindustani termed Khari Boli, that emerged as the standard dialect of Hindi. A Persian-influenced variant which developed from Khari Boli is modern Urdu.

Urdu is today the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in many parts of India. The primary differences between the two are that Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws its vocabulary with words from Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in a Perso-Arabic script, and has included many terms from Persian and Arabic vocabularies. Urdu also includes dialects of Hindustani other languages. Aside from these minor differences, many linguists consider Hindi and Urdu to be the same language.