World Hindi Day 2026: Top 8 countries where Hindi is popular outside India
With almost 610M speakers, Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian family. Apart from India and the diaspora, many other countries use Hindi globally. World Hindi Day is observed on Jan 10 to celebrate its global influence.
Nepal
Nepal has the largest Hindi-speaking population after India. Around 8 million people speak Hindi in India, and among them, roughly 80,000 identify it as their first language. The use of Hindi in Nepal is largely because of the semantic and phonetic resemblance between Nepalese and Hindi languages. It had also been established through migration, trade, and media.
United States
The United States has the second-largest Hindi-speaking population outside India, with over 650,000 individuals who use the language in America. It is now the 11th most spoken foreign language in America. Migration has played the most important role here in the enculturation of Hindi in US society.
Mauritius
Mauritius has appx. 450,000 Hindi speakers. Even though it is not the official language, Hindi is spoken by one-third of the population and features prominently in the media.
Fiji
Fiji Hindi is one of the official languages of the country. About 38 per cent, nearly 380,000, people speak Hindi. The language was especially brought in by the British colonisers through the Indian indentured labour system.
South Africa
South Africa has approximately 250,000 people, mostly Indian South Africans. This was also brought in by the British colonisers and popularised by the Bollywood culture industry.
Suriname
Approximately 150,000 Surinamese people speak Hindi, particularly by the Indo-Surinamese community. The "Sarnami Hindi," a regional variety of the Hindi language, is to preserve the heritage of the Surinamese community.
Uganada
An estimated 100,000 people speak Hindi in Uganda. It is mostly used in the Indian-origin community who came with the colonisers in East Africa and have been living there for generations.
United Kingdom
It has around 45,800 Hindi speakers. Most of them belong to the Indian diaspora and British Indian community living in the United Kingdom or have first generation immigrants.
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