Locale Hi in

Reference data for the Hindi (India) locale — endonym हिन्दी (भारत), written in the Devanagari script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: hi-IN
• ISO 639-1: hi
• ISO 639-3: hin
• Script: Deva (Devanagari)
• Region: IN (India)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 528,000,000
• L2 (additional): 139,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 667,000,000

Base locale

This is a regional variant of Locale Hi 001 (Hindi), the base/macro locale for this language.

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

• one — i = 0 or n = 1 (e.g. 0, 1)
• other — everything else (e.g. 2~17, 100, 1000, 10000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Apply Locale Hi 001 with the conventions of India.

• Formats: Indian grouping (12,34,567; lakh and crore), ₹ before or after the amount per project style, dates DD/MM/YYYY, 12-hour or 24-hour time.
• Terminology: the government publishes official terms (CSTT glossaries); use them for legal and administrative text and the common term for consumer text.
• Code-switching: Hindi-English mixing (Hinglish) is natural in advertising and chat, not in formal text. If the brand uses it, keep English words in Devanagari or Latin consistently.
• Related languages: Urdu shares the spoken grammar; see Locale Ur 001. Use Hindi vocabulary, not Urdu-origin words, only when the audience expects it.

Common pitfalls

• Mixing Latin and Devanagari spelling of the same English word.
• Using Western grouping (1,234,567) in a lakh/crore context.
• The general pitfalls in Locale Hi 001 also apply.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Unicode CLDR locale data for number grouping, calendars, and currency (https://cldr.unicode.org)