It depends on how you want to define “Hindi” and “speaker” and “native.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to claim that a majority of Indians exhibit basic proficiency in speaking Hindi (as opposed to reading/writing it), but that still leaves a whole lot of people who aren’t going to understand any Hindi at all. Usually, I see figures of around 40-45% for native Hindi speakers, and this Wiki article seems to agree with that.
Gaudere’s law! Goddammit!
:smack: A No-prize for you, sir.
As for the Hindi question, I’m not really sure- I just know of Hindi as being one of the National Languages of India. But I’m not a native Hindu, as I was born and raised in my home state of Virginia. So I tend to think of myself as a Virginian first, and then an American Hindu. But I do know that it is one of the more popular of the national languages of India, hence my references to it as the majority.
Like my parents know Hindi, but they certainly don’t really speak it that well, or use it- they’re knowledge of it is probably equivalent to my knowledge of 4+ years of high school Latin, as compared to say my Grandfather, who can certainly speak Hindi easily with another person and have a perfectly normal conversation without having to think about the words, or look up certain words or such.
But my parents around the house when I grew up, they would speak Gujarati. And I can barely understand that sadly, I’d again put my knowledge of it as maybe even about even with the Latin studying, for me. I can understand the language, but I certainly can’t speak it well enough.
I’ll probably get mod-spanked for saying this, but I find it strangely fitting that Mormonism should be the religion to most closely resemble a celestial Amway scam. 