Khariboli

Khariboli, also spelled Khari Boli, is a form of Hindustani spoken in the core region of Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh, with speech extending into parts of Haryana and Uttarakhand. It forms the spoken base of the standard languages Hindi and Urdu and is often treated as the prestige dialect from which these standard registers developed.

Linguistically, Khariboli is part of the Western Hindi group within Hindustani and descends from older Indo-Aryan dialects such as Prakrit and Apabhramsa. It grew under the influence of Persian and other languages during the Mughal period, leading to a rich synthesis of vocabulary and stylistic finesse. By the 18th and 19th centuries it was widely used in literature, administration, and urban speech, and it became the basis for the modern standard forms of Hindi and Urdu.

In practice, Hindi and Urdu are codified standards that draw their common spoken base from Khariboli, but differ in script and vocabulary. Hindi is typically written in Devanagari with more Sanskrit-derived lexicon, while Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic script and draws more from Persian and Arabic sources. The term Khariboli is descriptive of the spoken core rather than a codified standard.

Today, Khariboli remains a dominant influence in media, education, and popular culture in northern India, and continues to serve as the primary spoken substrate for Hindustani across many social registers.