Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in India, and also in Nepal, Singapore and South Africa. There are about 600 million Hindi speakers worldwide, 342 million of whom are native speakers. In 2011 there were 596 million Hindi speakers in India, 1.3 million Hindi speakers in Nepal, 361,000 Hindi speakers in South Africa (in 2003), and 50,000 Hindi speakers in Singapore (in 2017).

Hindi is the main language used in the northern Indian states of Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. It is spoken in much of north and central India alongside other languages such as Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi or Bengali. In other parts of India, as well as in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hindi is understood.

Hindi is spoken in the Bagmati, Janakpur and Narayani zones in the Terai lowlands of southern Nepal, and it is spoken in KwaZulu-Natal province in the east of South Africa.

Hindi is one of official languages of the government of India and used in parliament, in the judiciary, in communications between the central government and state government, and for other official purposes.