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Former good article nomineeHindi was a Language and literature good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
September 18, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed


Introduction

The article says:
"As a linguistic variety, Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English. Hindi alongside Urdu as Hindustani is the third most-spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English."
The second sentence contradicts the first one. If Hindustani is the third most-spoken first language, it comes after Mandarin and Spanish according to the first sentence. 2A02:A210:2145:7E00:8460:741C:F98:73F1 (talk) 03:52, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
After reading the sentences a few more times, the source of confusion becomes clear. The first sentence is about L1 speakers. The second sentence is about L1 + L2 speakers. Please reformulate the sentences to make them understandable at first reading (by a layman).

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:38, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edits by User:PadFoot2008

User:PadFoot2008 has removed the number of Hindi speakers from the infobox and has been reverted per WP:BRD. He still obstinately continues to revert despite being warned. Even A Geolinguistic Handbook, published in 1985, recorded the number of Hindi speakers as being over 220 million at that time. User:PadFoot2008's edits constitute original research in subtracting figures he found in order to make a conclusion he desires. I am pinging linguist User:Austronesier to this discussion in order to monitor these problematic edits. Thanks, AnupamTalk 01:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Read the article lead again. It says modern standard Hindi. If you were a linguist or at least had some experience editing articles related to Indo-Aryan languages, you'd know, that the Indian consensus doesn't record speakers of Modern Standard Hindi. The figures get conflated with speakers of Awadhi, Braj, Bundeli, etc, which are different but related languages. The figures might do good in the Central Indo-Aryan languages. Requesting @Austronesier for comment. PadFoot2008 (talk) 04:02, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anupam is an experienced editor with a thorough knowledge of WP policies and certainly experienced with IA related topics, so there is no need to be patronizing. We all know that census figures are problematic since language attitudes of speakers will result in certain languages to be overcounted (Hindi, Sanskrit and other prestige languages), and others to be undercounted (local vernaculars without a modern literary standard). But we can't do tenuous arithmetics here to fix this (unless we cite reliable source which exactly do that). The long-standing version of the infobox is sufficiently explicit about the overcounting. For more details, we need reliable sources. –Austronesier (talk) 06:32, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't we just remove the figures altogether? We know the figures are inflated. It's like providing the figures for the population of the entire European Union in population of Hungary and then saying in brackets the figures include non-Hungarians too. I know that reliable sources probably do not exist (I would list them in future if I find them), but there is no need to provide incorrect figures. The figures might do good in Hindi Belt, but not in this page about Standard Hindi. PadFoot2008 (talk) 07:54, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you see the official census sources, there is a group − Hindi languages, which includes languages like Pahadi, Garwali, Awadhi, Magahi, etc as well as Hindi. In Wikipedia, the second one is used for calculating the total number of Standard Hindi speakers. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 11:52, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The second one? What's the second one? PadFoot2008 (talk) 13:04, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This, for example, is the 2011 census report of "Population by mother tongue in the state of Gujarat". The languages are arranged in groups written in bold - ASSAMESE, BENGALI, BODO, DOGRI, GUJARATI, HINDI, KANNADA, etc. Within each group, there are languages that are considered part of the group. GUJARATI has Gujarati, Pattani, Saurashtra/Saurashtri and Others. HINDI has languages ranging from Awadhi to Hindi to Surjapuri (and Others). HINDI group has a total number of '4264868' speakers in Gujarat, which includes all the 'hindi languages', but only has '3670047' of "Hindi" speakers. What I'm saying is, we use the number of speakers described as 'Hindi' within the HINDI group as the number of standard Hindi speakers ('3670047') and not of the whole group. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 13:34, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the Indian census counting Awadhi, Bhojpuri and other langauges. But as mentioned in this article itself and other articles like Bhojpuri language, the census counts what people say without confirming it, resulting in the results possibly getting inflated due to illiteracy and people not realising what their language is actually called. Look at this file about UP mother tongue census, do you really think out of the 187 million total arbitrary "Hindi group" speaking population, "160 million" speak "[Standard] Hindi"? Just think about it. PadFoot2008 (talk) 17:13, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:Austronesier, thank you for your kind words. User:PadFoot2008, I am a leading author of articles pertaining to Indo-Aryan languages and peoples, but I will forgive your ignorance as you are a relatively new editor. The Government of India lists the total number of Hindi speakers as being 615 million, with the United Nations exploring the possibility of its inclusion as an official language. This is much greater than the deflated figures you are proposing. AnupamTalk 17:21, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These are L2 figures (otherwise you wouldn't get that many English or French speakers), so only of secondary relevance for this discussion here (L2 figures are of course relevant as such). –Austronesier (talk) 19:31, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I apologise for earlier having misjudged you, @Anupam. As you said, I am in fact relatively new to this section of Wikipedia. Anyways 615 million, as @Austronesier said, are L2 figures and thus not completely relevant here. The discussion is about the native speakers (L1) of Standard Hindi, which we don't seem to have any reliable source for as I explained earlier. I don't have a problem with L2 speakers, which are probably correct. Only the L1 figures are problematic (for reasons I've stated above), and thus can't be included. Once again, I suggest we altogether remove the L1 figures. PadFoot2008 (talk) 01:15, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we replace L1 speakers with "Total Speakers", I would have no issue with it. AnupamTalk 21:48, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've set label to Total Speakers (instead of native speakers) and removed "L1 speakers". PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Given the replacement, however, the "Total Speakers" number (for the whole world, not just India) should reflect this figure, 615 million. AnupamTalk 16:18, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@PadFoot2008, Anupam, and Austronesier: In the region we have Western UP and Delhi, and for the total number of speakers we have 615 million, including L2 and possibly people speaking related languages. I don't get it. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 10:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The region is supposed to be the region where native speakers are. The figure includes L2 speakers and non-Hindi (but self-reported) speakers too not just from India but from outside India. PadFoot2008 (talk) 11:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bhojpuri

Can we please accept that Bhojpuri is NOT a Hindi language, it's an Eastern Indo-Aryan language that belongs to the Bihari family? There's not even a debate on this. It's simply lumped in with "Hindi" for the sake of convenience. As an encyclopaedia, I don't understand why it's listed as a "dialect" of Hindi in the opening of the article! Theudariks 2.0 (talk) 16:41, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 28 July 2023

– The current article name is an ambiguous one, with the word Hindi referring to both the standard register of Hindustani and the group of languages in Central Indo-Aryan languages. In addition, Hindi could also refer to the languages of the Hindi belt. The new article name would be less confusing and more WP:PRECISE. PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:29, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The proposal would work if "Hindi language" indeed meant "Modern Standard Hindi" (MSH) only, and other readings of "Hindi" were something different from a language (e.g. a language group, in which we could have "Hindi languages" for this reading). But this is not the case: according to one common definition "Hindi (language)", primarily refers to "Modern Standard Hindi", the literary language that was shaped in the 19th century as a vehicle of Hindu identity against the long-standing tradition of Urdu, and this is also what we present in this article. But for many people (in fact hundreds of millions of people), "Hindi (language)" also refers to a wider bundle of language varieties. According to this significant POV, these varieties are considered dialects of a more broadly defined Hindi language, even though linguists (and local language activists) generally treat these varieties as distinct languages. Consequently, "Hindi language" is just as precise or imprecise as simple "Hindi".
Finally, most readers looking up for "Hindi" are looking for the language, regardless of whether they use "Hindi" strictly to refer to MSH, or to the wider bundle of language varieties. This makes the language (sensu stricto or sensu lato) the primary topic, in which case a natural disambiguator is unnecessary. –Austronesier (talk) 20:37, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Then should I change my proposal to Modern Standard Hindi? The current article title is still definitely going to cause confusion to many readers. Not all readers are aware of the the different implications of teh term. PadFoot2008 (talk) 03:36, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Modern Standard Hindi" has become some kind of default introductory characterization in texts about Hindi, but is rarely used as primary term. We find things like:

Hindi, the official language, is a standardized form of language that is also referred to as Modern Standard Hindi...
— Kachru (2006), Hindi

...the official and general written language [...] is Hindi, sometimes called Modern Standard Hindi...
— Masica (1991), The Indo-Aryan languages

But "Modern Standard Hindi" is rarely used as the primary denominator. In Google Scholar, there are only 12 sources that have "Modern Standard Hindi" in the title[1]. This is of course a direct corollary of the fact that for many scholars (Indian and non-Indian alike), usage of the term "Hindi" should be restricted to the modern literary language. (Btw, here's an exemplary source for the above-mentioned opposite POV[2]). –Austronesier (talk) 11:13, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a case of WP:COMMONNAME, but rather a case of WP:PRECISION. This article is about the Hindi language or the Modern Standard Hindi, and must thus should be distinguished from the Hindi languages. You are very experienced in this field and I think you would understand that "Hindi and it's varities" isn't really a thing, and rather Hindi is just a language similiar to Awadhi or Bundeli which too are languages related to but not varieties of the Hindi language. You provided two sources stating that per linguistic classification, Modern Standard Hindi and Hindi language are roughly the same thing. I do not see why this page shouldn't be moved. There do exist the Hindi language and the Hindi languages, but not Urdu languages, Latin languages, etc. Thus, this article move seems important. PadFoot2008 (talk) 16:17, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You assert that it's about PRECISION rather than COMMONNAME, without giving a reason why, let alone why it should outweigh the other four WP:CRITERIA: Recognizability, Naturalness, Concision, and Consistency, all of which point to "Hindi". Oppose. Mathglot (talk) 07:54, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 1 / Oppose 2- Second one is the primary redirect.
— Akshadév™ 💬 16:23, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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