Many words were assimilated into English when India was the colony of Britain. Most are formally recognized by scholars as borrowed from Hindi while there are disputes about a few.
Following are some of the words borrowed from Hindi and its parent language(s).
Other facts about Hindi:
- ‘Bazaar’ – Market, street lined with shops
- ‘Bungalow’ – Spacious house
- ‘Coolie’ (cooly) – Unskilled laborer, normally porters in India
- ‘Guru’ – Teacher / Guide / Mentor
- ‘Khaki’ - Sturdy cloth of this color (light olive brown to moderate or light yellowish brown)
- ‘Loot’ - To pillage, spoil
- ‘Pundit’ - A learned person, source of opinion
Other facts about Hindi:
- The script being phonetic, Hindi, unlike English, is pronounced as it is written and thus, comparatively easy to learn.
- There are 33 consonants and 11 vowels in Hindi. Additionally, there are also many conjunct consonants.
- All Hindi letters have at least a partial bar at the top, which connects to the other letters in a word. There are no uppercase or lowercase forms for Hindi letters.
- Hindi's popularity has been boosted by Bollywood, the Hindi film industry. These movies are now starting to have an international appeal (largely aided by the huge Indian diaspora abroad) and have broken into the western markets as well.
- A survey in 1997 found that 66% of all Indians can speak Hindi, and 77% of the Indians regard Hindi as "one language across the nation".