Can I master Hindi in a year?
Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit through Prakrit and Apabhramsha. It has been influenced and enriched by Dravidian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese and English. It is a very expressive language. In poetry and songs, it can convey emotions using simple and gentle words. It can also be used for exact and rational reasoning. More than 180 million people in India regard Hindi as their mother tongue. Another 300 million use it as a second language. Hindi started to emerge as Apabhramsha in the 7th century and by the 10 century became stable. Several dialects of Hindi have been used in literature. Braj was the popular literary dialect until it was replaced by khari boli in the 19th century.
Hindi was the language that was adopted by Indian leaders as a symbol of national identity during the struggle for freedom. Hindi has been used as a literary language since the twelfth century. The development of prose, however, began only in the eighteenth century, which marks the emergence of Hindi as a full-fledged literary language.