From Sanskrit through Apabhramsha to the modern standard
I can explain why Hindi has the vocabulary layers it has
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
हाथ और हस्त एक ही मूल से हैं।
hath and hast come from the same root.
तुलसीदास ने अवधी में लिखा।
Tulsidas wrote in Awadhi.
खड़ी बोली उन्नीसवीं सदी में मानक बनी।
Khari Boli became the standard in the nineteenth century.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Sanskrit gave way to the Prakrits, the Prakrits to Apabhramsha, and Apabhramsha to the early forms of the modern North Indian languages around the tenth century. Braj and Awadhi carried the literary tradition for centuries; खड़ी बोली became the standard only in the nineteenth.
Why हाथ and हस्त both exist and mean the same thing at different registers; why the formal word is often the newer borrowing rather than the older one; and why the standard has a shorter literary history than the dialects around it.
Apply this grammar in C2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesAssuming the formal word is always the older one.
Formal word assumed to be the older one
tatsam borrowings are often modern re-imports.
Standard assumed to be the oldest variety
Braj and Awadhi carried literature long before Khari Boli.
हाथ और हस्त एक ही मूल से हैं।
hath and hast come from the same root.
Inherited against reborrowed, like gorod and grad.
तुलसीदास ने अवधी में लिखा।
Tulsidas wrote in Awadhi.
The literary tradition predates the standard.
खड़ी बोली उन्नीसवीं सदी में मानक बनी।
Khari Boli became the standard in the nineteenth century.
About the same period the Russian standard settled.
The check for this topic is still being prepared
Ready-made hints are free
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in C2 course exercises
R. S. McGregor's outline, the standard concise academic description of Hindi morphology.
The Government of India standard for Devanagari spelling, followed for all written forms here.