Duolingo, the world’s top-seated language-learning app has revealed that Hindi is now the second fastest-moving language in the United Kingdom, with a 41% surge in Hindi learners over the past year in the UK, making the language now more prevalent than French, Japanese, and Turkish, and only falling behind second to Welsh. Worldwide, 4.82m active learners of Hindi interact on the language-app.

Colin Watkins, Duolingo U.K. Country Manager had his story to tell. “We’re pleased to see the continuing uptake of Hindi on the app with so many people choosing to learn the language in the UK. Hindi is one of the most unique languages - many words are written as they are pronounced because each character has a different sound. This makes it one of the easier languages to learn. It also holds many similarities with English, as some Hindi words are read and pronounced as they are in English, but are written in Hindi. With it being the fifth most spoken language in the world, by over 360 million people globally, there’s no better time to learn Hindi.”

For third generation south Asians migrants, and especially Indians, this familiarity with English is quite intriguing. Many migrants have ruminated on how their parents, friends, and immediate peers all speak only English, and knowledge of their mother tongue Hindi is confined to a few words. They often feel rather guilty because they are not linguistically-equipped to speak to their grandparents back at home.

Quoting Colin, "We've seen an increase in people learning for lots of motivations this year. In 2021 family and culture have become increasingly important. I'd suggest this was the reason for an increase in people learning Hindi. Brits here want to connect with the language of their relatives or their heritage.”

For the British Indians learning Hindi also helped them to reconnect with their home roots and understand Hindi movies without using subtitles. The app also intends to add Gujarati, because apart from Hindi, Gujarati is one of the most spoken languages in the UK. There was a substantial diaspora from the Indian state of Gujarat and individuals marrying into Gujarati families and as a matter of fact, willing to learn the language and converse with their partner’s family.

UK Hindi Samiti stands out in this round. It was established in 1990 by Dr Padmesh Gupt with the objective of encouraging Hindi language and literature in the UK. For the next twenty years or so, the UK Hindi Samiti assembled International Hindi conferences and seminars in the UK including the 6th World Hindi Conference in London.

From 2000 onwards, the UK Hindi Samiti began to propagate Hindi Education as part of its overall scheme. They started with a written competition which later transfused into an annual Hindi examination supported by the High Commission of India. In 2015, Hindi education became their monumental action of choice.

Interestingly, the Urdu community in the UK is much bigger than the Hindi community. Professionals, mainly doctors, teachers, engineers in the UK speak Hindi as a first language; people who have no networks of relatives within an ace, and tend to be sprinkled all over the country.