Hindi I

The big picture

Say these five English words out loud: name, mother, three, new, tooth. Now say the Hindi words that mean exactly the same things: नाम naam, माता maataa, तीन tiin, नया nayaa, दाँत daant. You have not been taught a single letter yet and you can already hear the family resemblance. That resemblance is real and it is ancient. Hindi and English are cousins, separated by about five thousand years and eight thousand kilometers, descended from the same lost ancestor that also produced Latin, Greek, Russian, and Persian. When a Hindi speaker says do (two), they are saying the same word as duo, deux, and dva.

This matters more than it might sound, because most English speakers approach Hindi expecting something entirely alien. It is not. The script is unfamiliar, yes, and you will spend the next three lessons conquering it. But underneath, Hindi grammar rewards you with things English speakers find intuitive once they see them: no definite article to place, only two genders, a verb system with fewer forms than Spanish, and a stock of vocabulary that English has been borrowing from for four hundred years. If you have ever used the words shampoo, jungle, bungalow, pajamas, loot, thug, veranda, cot, guru, or chutney, you have spoken Hindi in public.

Here is the plan for today. First we place Hindi in its family tree and collect those cognates properly. Then we look at the map: who speaks Hindi, where, and with what official standing, including the fact that surprises almost everyone about India's national language. Then we take on the question that no honest Hindi course can dodge, the relationship between Hindi and Urdu. Then we look at register, the difference between the Sanskrit shelf and the Persian shelf of Hindi vocabulary. And we finish with your first ten Hindi words in real Devanagari.

A family portrait: Indo-Aryan inside Indo-European

Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan group, the eastern wing of the Indo-Iranian branch of the enormous Indo-European family. Trace the line back and you reach Sanskrit, or rather the everyday spoken relatives of Sanskrit. The classical language of the Vedas gave way to a family of regional spoken languages called the Prakrits, which in turn simplified into a stage called Apabhramsha, out of which the modern northern languages emerged around a thousand years ago. Modern Hindi descends specifically from खड़ी बोली khaRii bolii, the dialect spoken around Delhi and the upper Ganges plain.

Its living siblings and cousins are the languages of northern and western India and of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal: Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Assamese, Nepali, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Sinhala, and Urdu. Go one branch over, into Iranian, and you reach Persian, Pashto, and Kurdish. Go further and you reach the European branches. The whole family is one enormous, slow-motion explosion out of a single prehistoric speech community.

The cognates are the fun part, and they are worth memorizing early because they are free vocabulary.

Hindi	Transliteration	English	The family link
नाम	naam	name	Latin nomen, Greek onoma, German Name
माता	maataa	mother	Latin mater, Greek meter
पिता	pitaa	father	Latin pater, Greek pater
दो	do	two	Latin duo, Russian dva
तीन	tiin	three	Latin tres, Greek treis
सात	saat	seven	Latin septem, Greek hepta
नौ	nau	nine	Latin novem, German neun
दस	das	ten	Latin decem, Greek deka
नया	nayaa	new	Latin novus, Greek neos
दाँत	daant	tooth	Latin dens, dentis (hence dentist)

The traffic has run the other way too. English absorbed a large vocabulary from Hindi and its neighbors during the centuries of British presence in India. शैम्पू shampoo comes from चाँपना chaampnaa, to press or knead, what a barber does to your scalp. जंगल jangal meant uncultivated waste ground before English decided it meant a rainforest. बंगला banglaa meant a house in the Bengal style, which became bungalow. पाजामा paajaamaa is literally leg-garment, from Persian. लूट luut is loot. And the humble कमरबंद kamarband, waist-tie, arrived at a formal dinner as the cummerbund.

Key idea: Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language descended from the Prakrits and ultimately from the same Indo-European ancestor as English, which is why naam, maataa, tiin, and daant look uncannily like name, mother, three, and tooth.

Where Hindi lives

Hindi is the language of the northern Indian plains, an arc of states often called the Hindi Belt: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and the capital, Delhi. That belt alone holds well over half a billion people. In the 2011 Census of India roughly 528 million people, about forty-four percent of the country, returned Hindi as their mother tongue, though that number generously bundles in dozens of related regional varieties such as Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Braj, and Rajasthani that many linguists count separately. Counts that separate them out put native Hindi speakers somewhere around 320 to 345 million. Either way, add the many millions across India who speak Hindi as a second language and it becomes one of the three or four most spoken languages on the planet.

Beyond India, Hindi and its close relatives travel with the diaspora. Fiji has a distinct variety, Fiji Hindi, with official recognition. Substantial Hindi-speaking communities live in Mauritius, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, South Africa, Nepal, the Gulf states, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

Now the fact that surprises people. India has no national language. None. Article 343 of the Constitution makes Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language of the Union, that is, the working language of the central government, and the Official Languages Act of 1963 kept English alongside it as an associate official language indefinitely. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution recognizes twenty-two scheduled languages, and individual states set their own official languages. So Hindi is an official language of the central government, one of twenty-two scheduled languages, and the most widely spoken language in the country, but it is not, legally, the national language, and saying otherwise in the wrong room in Chennai or Bengaluru will get you a lecture you deserve. We will return to this in the final module.

Key idea: Hindi is the majority language of northern India and an official language of the Union alongside English, but India has no national language, and twenty-two languages hold constitutional recognition.

One spoken language, two names: Hindi and Urdu

Here is the situation, stated plainly. In everyday conversation, Hindi and Urdu are the same language. A Hindi speaker from Delhi and an Urdu speaker from Lahore can talk for hours about food, family, weather, traffic, and film without noticing a boundary. The grammar is identical. The core vocabulary, the words for hand and water and go and eat, is identical. Linguists have a name for this shared spoken language: Hindustani, or simply Hindi-Urdu.

Where do they part? In three places, and all three are about writing and prestige rather than everyday speech.

• The script. Hindi is written in Devanagari, left to right, the script this course teaches. Urdu is written in a flowing Perso-Arabic script called Nastaliq, right to left. Two people who cannot read a word of each other's writing can be perfectly fluent in each other's speech.
• The high vocabulary. When a speaker needs a formal, technical, or literary word, Hindi reaches for Sanskrit and Urdu reaches for Persian and Arabic. Everyday words stay shared; the vocabulary of law, science, poetry, and news diverges.
• The literary tradition and identity. Urdu carries the ghazal, the poetry of Ghalib and Mir and Faiz, and, since 1947, its status as the national language of Pakistan. Hindi carries its own modern literature and its official role in India. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these two traditions were deliberately pulled apart, in language politics that remain live.

Compare a sentence. In both languages, what is your name? is आपका नाम क्या है? aapkaa naam kyaa hai? Word for word, letter for letter in sound, the same. Only the writing differs. Now compare a headline about the national economy and you will find the Hindi one full of Sanskrit compounds and the Urdu one full of Persian ones.

Key idea: Hindi and Urdu share one spoken grammar and core vocabulary, so learning Hindi conversation is learning Urdu conversation; they diverge in script, in the source of their formal vocabulary, and in literary and political identity.

Register: the Sanskrit shelf and the Persian shelf

Because of that history, Hindi often gives you two or three words for one idea, sitting on different shelves. The neutral everyday word is usually a तद्भव tadbhav word, one worn down naturally from Sanskrit over two thousand years. Above it sits a तत्सम tatsam word, borrowed back from Sanskrit unchanged, which sounds formal, official, or literary. Beside it sits a Persian or Arabic word, which sounds warm, poetic, everyday-elegant, and is what a film lyricist reaches for.

Meaning	Sanskrit shelf	Everyday or Persian shelf	Where you hear each
thank you	धन्यवाद dhanyavaad	शुक्रिया shukriyaa	formal speech vs friendly conversation
water	जल jal	पानी paanii	ritual and official vs everyday
city	नगर nagar	शहर shahar	place names and forms vs speech
question	प्रश्न prashn	सवाल savaal	exams vs conversation
answer	उत्तर uttar	जवाब javaab	textbooks vs conversation
time	समय samay	वक़्त vaqt	neutral vs poetic and colloquial
news	समाचार samaachaar	ख़बर khabar	broadcast vs speech
country	देश desh	मुल्क mulk	both common; mulk feels Urdu-flavored

None of this is a trap. It is a resource. This course teaches the middle register, the ordinary spoken Hindi of a friendly, educated conversation, which draws freely from both shelves exactly as real speakers do. Nobody in Delhi says जल when they want a glass of water.

Key idea: Hindi vocabulary comes in registers: everyday words inherited from Sanskrit, formal words reborrowed from Sanskrit, and a large Persian and Arabic layer, and fluent speakers slide between them constantly.

What Hindi asks of you, and what it gives back

Every language charges admission. Hindi will ask four things of you this semester. First, a new script, though it is a rational one and three lessons will do it. Second, two sound distinctions English does not use: aspiration (the puff of air in क ka versus ख kha) and retroflexion (tongue curled back for ट Ta versus tongue on the teeth for त ta). Third, every noun is masculine or feminine and adjectives and verbs must agree with it. Fourth, nouns change shape before postpositions, a system called the oblique case, which Module 3 will introduce gently.

And the refunds are generous. Hindi has no definite or indefinite article, so a book and the book are both just किताब kitaab. It has only two genders, not three. Its writing is close to phonetic: once you know the letters, you can read a word you have never seen. Word order is fixed and simple, subject then object then verb, so मैं हिंदी सीखता हूँ main hindii siikhtaa huun is literally I Hindi learning am. The verb system is small and regular, with almost no irregular verbs of the French or Spanish kind. And thanks to Bollywood there is more free listening material for Hindi than for almost any language on Earth.

Key idea: Hindi asks for a new script, aspiration, retroflexion, gender agreement, and the oblique case, and it repays you with no articles, two genders, near-phonetic spelling, fixed word order, and a very regular verb system.

Your first words

In this course every Hindi word appears three ways: the real Devanagari spelling, a transliteration in Latin letters, and the English meaning. Two conventions in the transliteration, which you should learn now. Long vowels are doubled: aa, ii, uu are held about twice as long as a, i, u. Retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled back, are written with a capital: T, Th, D, Dh, N, R. Everything else reads as you would expect. Say each of these aloud, and give every vowel its full value.

Hindi	Transliteration	English
नमस्ते	namaste	hello, greetings (and goodbye)
हाँ	haan	yes
नहीं	nahiin	no, not
शुक्रिया	shukriyaa	thank you
ठीक है	Thiik hai	okay, it is fine
पानी	paanii	water
चाय	chaay	tea
नाम	naam	name
भारत	bhaarat	India (the Indian name for India)
हिंदी	hindii	Hindi

Two footnotes on that list. भारत Bhaarat is what India calls itself in Hindi; the name India comes through Greek and Persian from the river Sindhu, the Indus. And the word हिंदी hindii itself is Persian: it simply means of the Hind, of the land beyond the Indus. The language's own name is a loanword. That is Hindi in miniature: Sanskrit bones, Persian clothes, an Indo-European skeleton, and a script we start on tomorrow.

Common misconceptions

• Hindi is India's national language. India has no national language. Hindi is an official language of the Union alongside English, and one of twenty-two scheduled languages.
• Hindi is unrelated to European languages. It is Indo-European, which is why naam, maataa, pitaa, tiin, and das resemble name, mother, father, three, and ten.
• Hindi and Urdu are completely different languages. Spoken casually, they are one language with two names; they diverge in script, formal vocabulary, and literary identity.
• Hindi is just modern Sanskrit. It descends from the spoken Prakrits rather than from classical Sanskrit directly, and it has absorbed an enormous Persian, Arabic, and English vocabulary along the way.
• Everyone in India speaks Hindi. Roughly half the country does not. The southern states speak Dravidian languages unrelated to Hindi, and the east and northeast have their own families.

Recap

• Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language descended from the Prakrits, ultimately Indo-European, and a distant cousin of English.
• Cognates such as naam, maataa, pitaa, do, tiin, saat, das, nayaa, and daant come free with the family relationship.
• Hindi is the majority language of the northern Hindi Belt and an official language of the Union with English; India has no national language, and twenty-two languages are scheduled.
• Hindi and Urdu share one spoken grammar and core vocabulary; they differ in script (Devanagari versus Nastaliq), in high vocabulary (Sanskrit versus Persian and Arabic), and in literary tradition.
• Hindi asks for a script, aspiration, retroflexion, gender, and the oblique case, and gives back no articles, two genders, phonetic spelling, and fixed word order.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Indo-Aryan languages. britannica.com
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindustani language. britannica.com
4. Government of India. (n.d.). National portal of India: profile and official languages. india.gov.in
5. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindi. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

Look at this line: नमस्ते। Nine strokes, one horizontal bar, and a word you already know. By the end of this lesson you will be reading most of it, and by the end of Module 1 all of it. The script is called देवनागरी devanaagarii, which is usually translated as the script of the city of the gods, and it is used for Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali, and a dozen other languages. About six hundred million people read it.

Here is the single most important thing to understand before you learn a single letter, and it is the thing that trips up everyone who assumes Devanagari is an alphabet like the Latin one. It is not an alphabet. It is an abugida, sometimes called an alphasyllabary, and the difference is this: every consonant letter comes with a vowel already attached. The letter क is not k. It is ka. The letter म is not m. It is ma. The letter न is na, प is pa, and so on through the whole set. That built-in vowel is called the inherent vowel, and it is the short vowel अ a, the neutral sound in English but or sofa.

Once you accept that, the whole system unfolds logically. If a consonant already has an a, then writing any other vowel means replacing that a with a small sign hung on the letter. And if you want no vowel at all, you need a mark that kills the inherent one. Devanagari has both. Today we learn the vowels and their signs. Tomorrow we take on the consonants in an organized grid that is one of the most elegant pieces of linguistic analysis ever committed to writing.

The headline and the shape of a word

Before the letters, notice the bar. Almost every Devanagari letter hangs from a horizontal line across the top called the शिरोरेखा shirorekhaa, the head-line. When letters sit next to each other in a word, their head-lines join up into one continuous rail. That rail is what makes a line of Hindi look like laundry pegged out to dry, and it is genuinely useful: the gaps in the rail show you where one word ends and the next begins.

So when you handwrite Devanagari, the traditional order is: draw the body of each letter first, then lay the bar across the top of the whole word in one stroke. Many learners do it the other way around and wonder why their letters never line up. Draw the letters, then the rail.

A few letters famously hang below the rail rather than from it, and a couple, such as ट and ठ, poke up through it. Those are exceptions worth noticing, not worrying about.

Key idea: Devanagari is an abugida: each consonant letter carries the inherent vowel a, so क is ka, and all letters of a word hang from a single connecting head-line drawn last.

A starter set of consonants

To practise vowels you need something to hang them on, so here are ten consonants chosen because their sounds are close to English. The full, organized consonant grid arrives in the next lesson; treat these as tools for today.

Letter	Reads as	Sounds like	A word to hold it
क	ka	k in skip	कल kal, yesterday or tomorrow
ग	ga	g in go, always hard	गरम garam, hot
ज	ja	j in jam	जल jal, water
न	na	n in no	नाम naam, name
प	pa	p in spin, with no puff	पल pal, a moment
ब	ba	b in book	बस bas, bus, or enough
म	ma	m in map	मन man, mind
र	ra	a light tapped r, like the tt in American butter	रस ras, juice
ल	la	l in lamp	लाल laal, red
स	sa	s in sun, always	सब sab, all

Two of them deserve a note now. The Hindi र is not the English r of red; it is a single quick tap of the tongue against the ridge behind the teeth, the sound in the middle of American butter or ladder, or the single-tap r of Spanish pero. And the Hindi क and प are unaspirated: no puff of air. Hold a strip of paper in front of your mouth and say English pin: the paper jumps. Say spin: it does not. That second p, the one with no puff, is the Hindi प. This will matter enormously tomorrow.

With those ten and the inherent vowel alone, you can read words: कल kal, जल jal, पल pal, बस bas, मन man, रस ras, सब sab, कम kam (less), नमक namak (salt), कमल kamal (lotus), गरम garam (hot), सलाम salaam (a greeting). Say them aloud. Every a is the short neutral vowel of sofa, not the a of father.

Key idea: With ten consonants and no vowel signs at all you can already read real Hindi words such as namak, kamal, and garam, because every consonant supplies its own short a.

The vowel letters

Hindi teaches eleven vowels, and they come in a strict traditional order that every Indian child recites. Here they are as independent letters, the form used when a vowel starts a word or stands alone.

Letter	Sound	English approximation	Example word
अ	a	u in but, a in sofa; short and neutral	अब ab, now
आ	aa	a in father; long, roughly twice as long	आम aam, mango
इ	i	i in sit; short	इस is, this (oblique)
ई	ii	ee in see; long	ईमान iimaan, honesty
उ	u	oo in book; short	उस us, that (oblique)
ऊ	uu	oo in food; long	ऊपर uupar, above
ऋ	ri	ri in rich; a Sanskrit inheritance	ऋतु ritu, season
ए	e	ay in say but pure, with no glide off the end	एक ek, one
ऐ	ai	in modern Hindi, a long e as in bet or the a in cat	ऐसा aisaa, such, like this
ओ	o	o in go but pure, with no glide	ओर or, direction
औ	au	in modern Hindi, an open o as in law	और aur, and

Four honest notes about that table, because a text course owes you the truth about sounds it cannot play for you.

• Long really means long. The difference between इ and ई, or उ and ऊ, is not a change in vowel quality so much as duration. Hindi uses length to distinguish words: दिन din is day, दीन diin is humble or wretched.
• ए and ओ are pure vowels. English say and go end in a little glide, a y and a w. Hindi ए and ओ do not. Freeze your mouth in position and hold the sound: eeeee, ooooo.
• ऐ and औ are not really diphthongs any more. The transliterations ai and au are historical. In standard modern Hindi ऐ is usually a single low front vowel, so है hai (is) sounds much closer to heh than to high, and पैसा paisaa (money) is closer to pehsaa. Likewise औ is usually an open o, so और aur (and) rhymes roughly with English or. Keep the spellings ai and au, because everyone writes them that way, but adjust your ear.
• ऋ is a museum piece. In Sanskrit it was a vowel made of an r. Hindi speakers simply say ri. It shows up in borrowed formal words such as कृपया kripayaa (please) and ऋषि rishi (sage), and nowhere else. Learn to read it and move on.

Key idea: Hindi has eleven vowel letters in a fixed traditional order; length distinguishes words, ए and ओ are pure vowels with no glide, and ऐ and औ are no longer really the diphthongs their transliterations suggest.

The matras: vowels riding on consonants

The independent letters above are used only when a vowel begins a word or follows another vowel. Everywhere else, a vowel attaches to its consonant as a small sign called a मात्रा maatraa. There are ten matras, one for each vowel except अ, which needs none because it is already there.

Here is the whole system on one consonant, क ka. Read down the column and say each aloud.

Vowel	Matra	On क	Reads	Where the sign sits
अ a	none	क	ka	inherent, nothing written
आ aa	ा	का	kaa	a vertical stroke after
इ i	ि	कि	ki	a hook written BEFORE, read after
ई ii	ी	की	kii	a hook written after
उ u	ु	कु	ku	a small tail below
ऊ uu	ू	कू	kuu	a longer tail below
ऋ ri	ृ	कृ	kri	a small loop below
ए e	े	के	ke	one stroke above the head-line
ऐ ai	ै	कै	kai	two strokes above
ओ o	ो	को	ko	vertical stroke plus one mark above
औ au	ौ	कौ	kau	vertical stroke plus two marks above

Study the internal logic, because it makes the whole set memorable rather than arbitrary. The long vowel of a pair gets more ink than the short one: one tail below for u, a longer one for uu. One stroke above for e, two for ai. And the o and au signs are simply the e and ai signs with the aa stroke added on the right. Learn four shapes and you have eight letters.

Now the one that catches every beginner, and it is worth a paragraph of its own. The i-matra is written to the LEFT of its consonant but pronounced AFTER it. कि is ki, not ik. दिन is din, not idn. The sign leans left and hooks over the top of the letter it belongs to, like a person reaching back to grab someone's hand. Compare the pair carefully: कि ki has its hook in front, की kii has its hook behind. That single difference of side is the whole distinction between short and long i, and Hindi uses it constantly: दिन din is day and दीन diin is destitute; मिल mil is meet and मील miil is a mile.

Key idea: Ten matra signs replace the inherent a; long vowels get more ink than their short partners, o and au are built from e and ai plus the aa stroke, and the i-matra is written before the consonant it follows.

Reading practice: real words, right now

Cover the transliterations and work through these slowly, sounding out each syllable before you check yourself. Every word uses only the ten starter consonants and the matras.

Hindi	Read it	Means
नाम	naam	name
काम	kaam	work
पानी	paanii	water
दिन	din	day (uses द, a bonus letter: dental d)
साल	saal	year
मेरा	meraa	my
बोलना	bolnaa	to speak
कौन	kaun	who
एक	ek	one
गुलाब	gulaab	rose
किताब	kitaab	book
सोना	sonaa	gold; also to sleep

Notice किताब kitaab. The first syllable shows the i-matra leaning backwards over क, and the second shows the aa stroke after त. Three letters, three vowel decisions, one very common word. Notice also that Hindi spelling is honest: once you know the letters and the matras, the word tells you how to say it. There is no English-style cough, though, dough problem waiting for you.

The silent a at the end of words

One rule stands between you and reading Hindi correctly, and it is the rule that separates Hindi from Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, every written inherent vowel is pronounced: राम is Raama, कमल is kamala. In Hindi, the inherent a at the end of a word is silent. राम is Raam. कमल is kamal. नमक is namak. गरम is garam. सलाम is salaam.

Look at what that means for the writing system: the last letter of most Hindi words is written with a vowel it does not actually have. This is why Hindi spelling looks slightly over-supplied with letters, and why the god's name that English spells Rama is pronounced Raam by every Hindi speaker in India.

The same deletion happens inside longer words in ways we will study in Lesson 4, but the word-final rule is the one to internalize today, and it is close to exceptionless in ordinary Hindi. There is a mirror-image trap: because the a is silent at the end, learners sometimes assume it is silent everywhere and read कमल as kml. It is not. Inside the word the inherent a is alive and well: ka-ma-l.

Key idea: The inherent a is not pronounced at the end of a Hindi word, so राम is Raam and नमक is namak, but it is fully pronounced everywhere else inside the word.

Killing the vowel on purpose: the halant

Sometimes you need a bare consonant in the middle of a word, where the silent-a rule does not apply. Devanagari provides a small diagonal stroke under the letter called the हलंत halant, or in Sanskrit terminology the virama: क् is a bare k, न् is a bare n. You will see it in dictionaries, in careful transcription of foreign words, and occasionally in ordinary print.

In practice, though, Hindi usually does something more elegant than writing a halant: it fuses the two consonants into a single joined shape called a conjunct. That is why नमस्ते namaste has that compressed स्त in the middle rather than a स with a stroke under it. Conjuncts get a full treatment in Lesson 4. For now, simply recognize the halant when you see it and know what it means: no vowel here.

Common misconceptions

• Devanagari is an alphabet like the Latin one. It is an abugida: each consonant carries a built-in a, so क is ka and a vowel sign replaces that a rather than adding to nothing.
• The i-matra is pronounced before the consonant because it is written before it. Written first, read second: कि is ki and दिन is din.
• Short and long vowels are the same sound at different speeds and the difference does not matter. Length distinguishes real words: din is day, diin is destitute; mil is meet, miil is a mile.
• ऐ and औ are pronounced eye and ow. In modern standard Hindi they are usually single vowels: है sounds close to heh, और close to or.
• Every written letter is pronounced, as in Sanskrit. Hindi drops the inherent a at the end of a word, so राम is Raam, not Raama.

Recap

• Devanagari is an abugida; every consonant carries the inherent short vowel a, and letters hang from a connecting head-line drawn last.
• The eleven vowel letters are अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ, taught in that fixed order.
• Independent vowel letters are used at the start of a word; elsewhere the vowel appears as a matra attached to a consonant.
• The matra system is internally logical: long vowels get more ink, and ो and ौ are े and ै plus the aa stroke.
• The i-matra is written before the consonant it follows; the word-final inherent a is silent, so कमल is kamal.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Devanagari. britannica.com
2. Unicode Consortium. (n.d.). Devanagari code chart, U0900. unicode.org
3. Library of Congress. (n.d.). ALA-LC romanization tables. loc.gov
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Devanagari. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

Most alphabets are in the order they are in for no reason at all. Why does English put A B C D at the front? Because Phoenician did, roughly three thousand years ago, and nobody has moved anything since. The Devanagari consonants are different. They are arranged in a table, five rows of five, and the arrangement is a piece of phonetic science: the rows run from the very back of your mouth to your lips, and the columns sort the sounds by voicing and by breath. Indian grammarians worked this out well over two thousand years ago, long before any European tradition described speech this precisely, and the writing system still carries their analysis on its face.

This is very good news for you, because it means you do not memorize thirty-three unrelated shapes. You learn a map of your own mouth, and the letters hang on it. And two of the columns encode distinctions that English does not use to tell words apart, which is why they feel hard: aspiration, the puff of air, and retroflexion, the curl of the tongue. Both get careful, patient treatment in this lesson, because getting them wrong is the difference between saying hair and forehead, or lentils and a branch.

One honest limit up front. This is a text course. I can describe where your tongue goes, tell you exactly what to feel, and give you minimal pairs to test yourself with, but I cannot play you a sound. So do the physical exercises in this lesson rather than reading past them, and go find recordings once you know what to listen for. Knowing what to listen for is most of the battle, and that is what a page can give you.

The grid: five places, five manners

Here are the twenty-five core consonants, the वर्ग varga or class consonants. Read the table across the rows.

Place	Voiceless plain	Voiceless aspirated	Voiced plain	Voiced aspirated	Nasal
Velar: back of the tongue on the soft palate	क ka	ख kha	ग ga	घ gha	ङ nga
Palatal: blade of the tongue on the hard palate	च cha	छ chha	ज ja	झ jha	ञ nya
Retroflex: tongue tip curled back to the ridge	ट Ta	ठ Tha	ड Da	ढ Dha	ण Na
Dental: tongue tip on the back of the upper teeth	त ta	थ tha	द da	ध dha	न na
Labial: both lips	प pa	फ pha	ब ba	भ bha	म ma

Read the rows top to bottom while touching the roof of your mouth with your tongue, and you will feel the point of contact walking forward: soft palate, hard palate, the ridge behind the teeth, the teeth themselves, the lips. Read the columns left to right and you will hear a different logic: plain, then plain plus a puff of air, then the same sound with the voice switched on, then voiced plus breath, then the nasal made at the same place.

Two of the five nasals barely exist as independent letters in modern Hindi. ङ nga (the ng of sing) and ञ nya (the ny of canyon) appear almost only inside old conjunct spellings, and Hindi normally replaces them with a dot, as Lesson 4 will show. The other three are everyday letters: ण Na turns up in words like कारण kaaran (reason) and गुण gun (quality), न na is one of the commonest letters in the language, and म ma is everywhere.

Key idea: The twenty-five varga consonants form a grid whose rows are places of articulation running from the soft palate to the lips, and whose columns are voiceless plain, voiceless aspirated, voiced plain, voiced aspirated, and nasal.

Aspiration: the puff you already make

Column two and column four of the grid are aspirated. Aspiration means a distinct puff of breath released with the consonant. Hindi treats it as a difference between words. English does not, which is why English speakers hear the pairs as identical, even though their own mouths make both sounds every day.

Prove it to yourself right now. Hold a thin strip of paper about two centimetres in front of your lips. Say pin. The paper jumps. Now say spin. The paper barely moves. The p in pin is aspirated; the p in spin is not. English chooses automatically based on position and speakers never notice. Hindi chooses deliberately and everybody notices.

So you already own both sounds. Your job is to separate them from their English habits and put each one where Hindi wants it. Two exercises:

• To make the unaspirated Hindi प: say the English word spin, then say it again while silently dropping the s. What remains is प. Do the same with skin for क and stop for the dental त.
• To make the aspirated Hindi फ: say the English word pin with the paper in front of your mouth and exaggerate the puff. Then hold that puff and add it to other consonants: कह, tha, chha. The paper should jump every time.

One warning specific to English speakers: फ pha is not f. It is p plus a puff. Many Hindi speakers do pronounce it as f in ordinary speech, which muddies the water, but the letter's own value is an aspirated p. There is a separate letter for genuine f, which you meet at the end of this lesson.

Here are the pairs that make the point. Say each pair aloud with the paper strip, twenty times if necessary.

Plain	Aspirated	The difference in meaning
काल kaal, time or death	खाल khaal, skin or hide	an entirely different word
पल pal, a moment	फल phal, fruit	an entirely different word
बाल baal, hair	भाल bhaal, forehead	an entirely different word
चल chal, move, go on	छल chhal, deceit	an entirely different word
तल tal, bottom, surface	थल thal, land, dry ground	an entirely different word
दो do, two	धो dho, wash	an entirely different word

The voiced aspirates in column four, घ gha, झ jha, ढ Dha, ध dha, भ bha, are the hardest for most learners, because English has no voiced sound with a puff on it. The trick is to think of it as a breathy voice, a little sigh riding on the consonant, rather than a separate h after it. भारत bhaarat is not b-h-aarat with a pause; it is one breathy b. Try saying English abhor quickly and steal the bh out of the middle.

Key idea: Aspiration is a puff of air that English uses automatically (pin versus spin) and Hindi uses to distinguish words, so kaal and khaal, pal and phal, baal and bhaal are separate words entirely.

Dental versus retroflex: where the tongue lands

Now the second contrast, and the one that gives an English speaker an accent that never quite goes away unless it is worked on deliberately. Hindi has two full sets of t-like and d-like sounds, made at two different places.

• Dental त थ द ध न: the tip of your tongue touches the back of your upper front teeth. This is the t of Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian. It sounds soft and slightly dull to an English ear.
• Retroflex ट ठ ड ढ ण: the tip of your tongue curls up and back and strikes the hard ridge behind the teeth, or slightly further back. This sounds sharp, hollow, and slightly hard to an English ear.

Here is the fact that reorients everything. The English t and d are made between those two positions, on the ridge, closer to the retroflex than to the dental. So when an English speaker says the name Tom, Hindi ears file it under ट, the retroflex. This is exactly why Hindi renders English words with retroflex letters: टेबल Tebal for table, डॉक्टर DaakTar for doctor, टैक्सी Taiksii for taxi. And it is why Indian English sounds the way it does to Americans and Britons: those retroflex letters are simply being read as written.

The practical consequence for you is uncomfortable but useful. Your default English t is already close to the Hindi retroflex ट, so the sound you need to work on is the dental त. To find it, push your tongue tip forward until it is pressing the back of your top teeth, almost between the teeth, and say ta. It will feel oddly childish and lisped. That feeling is correct.

To find the retroflex, do the opposite: curl the tip of the tongue up and back until it points toward the roof of your mouth, and let it flick down onto the ridge. Say Ta. It will sound hollow, almost like a drum.

Dental	Retroflex	Why it matters
ताल taal, rhythm, beat	टाल Taal, postpone	a musician versus a procrastinator
दाल daal, lentils	डाल Daal, branch; also put!	the classic dinner-table mix-up
दिन din, day	डिब्बा Dibbaa, a box	different words, different tongue positions
पानी paanii, water	पाणि paaNi, hand (a Sanskrit word)	the dental and retroflex n differ too

Key idea: Hindi splits t, d, and n into a dental series made on the teeth and a retroflex series made with the tongue curled back to the ridge; the English t sits nearer the retroflex, so the sound an English speaker must consciously learn is the dental one.

The rest of the consonants

Eight more letters complete the traditional set of thirty-three. Four are semivowels, called अंतस्थ antasth, the in-between sounds. Four are the fricatives and the h, called ऊष्म uushm, the hot or breathy sounds.

Letter	Reads	Sound	Example
य	ya	y in yes	यह yah, this
र	ra	a single tap, like the tt in American butter	रात raat, night
ल	la	l in lamp, always clear, never the dark l of English full	लाल laal, red
व	va	between English v and w; the lip barely touches the teeth	वह vah, that, he, she
श	sha	sh in ship	शहर shahar, city
ष	Sha	a retroflex sh in Sanskrit; in modern Hindi read exactly like श	भाषा bhaashaa, language
स	sa	s in sun, always	साल saal, year
ह	ha	h in hat, but breathier and voiced between vowels	हाथ haath, hand

Two honest notes. First, व: Hindi has one letter where English has both v and w, and the real sound is a soft approximant somewhere between them. Speakers vary; वह is written vah and commonly said woh. Do not agonize. Second, ष: in Sanskrit it was a genuine retroflex sh, but modern Hindi speakers pronounce it identically to श. You need to recognize it in spelling, not to produce a separate sound.

Two flaps and five dotted letters

Hindi adds a few letters that the classical grid does not have, all formed by putting a small dot, a नुक़्ता nuqtaa, under an existing letter.

The first two are genuine Hindi sounds that Sanskrit lacked: ड़ Ra and ढ़ Rha, the flapped retroflexes. To make ड़, curl your tongue back as for ड and then flick it forward and down so it brushes the roof of the mouth on the way. It sounds like a very fast, hard r made at the back of the ridge. It is extremely common: बड़ा baRaa (big), लड़का laRkaa (boy), लड़की laRkii (girl), थोड़ा thoRaa (a little), साड़ी saaRii (sari), पढ़ना paRhnaa (to read or study, with the aspirated ढ़). Note that ड़ never begins a word.

The other five carry sounds that arrived with Persian, Arabic, and English.

Letter	Reads	Sound	Example
क़	qa	a k made far back, at the uvula; Arabic qaf	क़िला qilaa, fort
ख़	kha (x)	the raspy ch of German Bach or Scottish loch	ख़बर khabar, news
ग़	gha	the voiced version of that rasp; French r	ग़ज़ल ghazal, a lyric poem
ज़	za	z in zoo	ज़रूर zaruur, certainly
फ़	fa	f in fun	सफ़ेद safed, white

In real life these are unevenly observed. ज़ za and फ़ fa are stable in educated speech and in print; ज़्यादा zyaadaa (more) is never said with a plain j. The other three, क़, ख़, and ग़, are frequently pronounced by Hindi speakers as plain क, ख, and ग, especially away from Urdu-influenced registers, and are often printed without their dots. Learn to recognize all five; produce ज़ and फ़ carefully and treat the rest as a bonus.

Key idea: A nuqta dot under a letter creates the flapped retroflexes ड़ and ढ़, which are core Hindi sounds, and the five borrowed letters क़ ख़ ग़ ज़ फ़, of which ज़ and फ़ are the ones to master first.

A reading spree with the full set

You now have the letters. Sound these out slowly, syllable by syllable, before checking the transliteration: घर ghar (house). छोटा chhoTaa (small). बड़ा baRaa (big). दूध duudh (milk). ठंडा ThanDaa (cold). गरम garam (hot). किताब kitaab (book). कुर्सी kursii (chair, though the conjunct waits for tomorrow). हाथ haath (hand). भाई bhaaii (brother). बहन bahan (sister). शहर shahar (city). दिल्ली Dillii (Delhi). भारत bhaarat (India). पढ़ना paRhnaa (to read). समझना samajhnaa (to understand). धन्यवाद dhanyavaad (thank you). खाना khaanaa (food, or to eat). चाय chaay (tea).

As you read, keep asking two questions at every letter: is there a puff or not, and where is my tongue? Those two questions are the whole of Hindi pronunciation for an English speaker. Everything else you can already do.

Common misconceptions

• The consonant order is arbitrary, like ABC. It is a phonetic map: rows walk from the soft palate to the lips, columns sort by voicing and breath.
• English has no aspiration, so I cannot make these sounds. English aspirates automatically: pin has the puff, spin does not. You own both sounds; Hindi just makes you choose.
• फ is the letter for f. फ is an aspirated p. The letter for f is फ़, with a dot, though many speakers blur the two.
• The Hindi त is the same as English t. English t lands on the ridge and is heard by Hindi ears as retroflex ट. The dental त needs the tongue pushed forward onto the teeth.
• ष is a different sound from श in Hindi. In Sanskrit it was; in modern Hindi the two are pronounced identically and only the spelling differs.

Recap

• Twenty-five varga consonants sit in a grid of five places (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental, labial) by five manners.
• Columns two and four are aspirated; aspiration distinguishes words in Hindi, as in kaal versus khaal and pal versus phal.
• The dental series त थ द ध न is made on the teeth; the retroflex series ट ठ ड ढ ण is made with the tongue curled back, and the English t is closer to the retroflex.
• Eight further letters complete the classical set: य र ल व and श ष स ह, with ष pronounced like श in modern Hindi.
• Nuqta letters add the flapped retroflexes ड़ and ढ़, plus क़ ख़ ग़ ज़ फ़ for Persian, Arabic, and English sounds.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Devanagari. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Retroflex consonant. britannica.com
3. Unicode Consortium. (n.d.). Devanagari code chart, U0900. unicode.org
4. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: dictionaries and language resources. dsal.uchicago.edu

The big picture

You have the vowels, the matras, and thirty-three consonants plus the dotted extras. One question remains, and it is the question the whole design of Devanagari revolves around: what happens when two consonants meet with no vowel between them? Every consonant letter comes with a built-in a. So how do you write the str in the middle of a word, or the sk of school, or the st of नमस्ते?

The answer is the conjunct, संयुक्ताक्षर samyuktaakshar, a fused shape built from two or more consonants stacked or joined into one unit. Conjuncts are the part of Devanagari that makes a page of Hindi look complicated, and they are the last real obstacle between you and reading anything you like. The good news is that most of them are formed by one simple, predictable operation, and a couple of dozen frequent ones will carry you through ordinary text.

Today we finish the script. Conjuncts first, then the two nasal marks and the difference between them, then the one genuinely tricky thing about Hindi spelling, medial schwa deletion, then the numerals, the sentence-ending danda, and the sign Hindi invented so it could write the word doctor. By the end you will be able to sound out any Hindi word you meet.

Conjuncts, part one: cut the stem

Look at most Devanagari consonants and you will see a vertical stem on the right: क ग च ज त न प ब म ल स श व ध भ ख घ. That stem is the key. To make a conjunct, you cut the stem off the first letter, leaving a half-form, and glue the remainder to the front of the next letter.

Full letters	What happens	Conjunct	In a word
स + त	स loses its stem	स्त sta	नमस्ते namaste, hello
न + द	न loses its stem	न्द nda	हिन्दी hindii, Hindi
च + छ	च loses its stem	च्छ chchha	अच्छा achchhaa, good
ल + ल	the first ल loses its stem	ल्ल lla	दिल्ली Dillii, Delhi
स + क	स loses its stem	स्क ska	स्कूल skuul, school
न + य	न loses its stem	न्य nya	धन्यवाद dhanyavaad, thank you
क + त	क loses its stem	क्त kta	वक़्त vaqt, time
प + य	प loses its stem	प्य pya	प्यार pyaar, love

Once you see the pattern, most conjuncts stop being mysterious: look for a squashed letter without its right-hand stem sitting in front of a normal one, and read them in order. अच्छा is a-ch-chh-aa. नमस्ते is na-ma-s-te.

A minority of consonants have no vertical stem to cut, chiefly ट ठ ड ढ द ह and a few others. Those stack vertically instead, the first sitting on top of the second: द् + ध gives द्ध, as in युद्ध yuddh (war); ट् + ट gives ट्ट, as in पट्टी paTTii (bandage, strip); ह् + म gives ह्म, as in ब्रह्मा Brahmaa.

Key idea: A conjunct writes two consonants with no vowel between them; the usual method is to cut the vertical stem off the first letter and join what remains to the front of the second.

Conjuncts, part two: the strange behaviour of र

The letter र ra refuses to play by those rules, and it does two entirely different things depending on whether it comes first or second. This is worth learning properly because र is one of the commonest letters in Hindi.

When र comes first and has no vowel, it does not appear as a letter at all. It becomes a small hook riding above the head-line, over the letter that follows, called the रेफ reph. Read it as an r pronounced before whatever it sits on.

• कर्म karm, action, deed, karma: the hook over म means r comes first.
• गर्म garm, hot: r before m.
• दर्द dard, pain: r before the second d.
• अर्थ arth, meaning: r before th.
• सूर्य suury, sun: r before y.

When र comes second, it appears as a small diagonal stroke at the foot of the letter before it, and is read after that letter.

• प्रेम prem, love: p then r.
• ग्राम graam, village: g then r.
• क्रम kram, order, sequence.
• त्रिशूल trishuul, trident.
• भारत में bhaarat men, in India; and भ्रम bhram, illusion.

After the retroflex letters ट ठ ड ढ, which have no convenient foot, र attaches as a little tail on the side instead: ट्रेन Tren (train), ड्रामा Draamaa (drama). English loanwords are full of these.

So the rule is a mirror: hook above means r first, stroke below means r second. Look at गर्म garm and ग्राम graam side by side until the difference is obvious.

Key idea: र written first becomes a hook above the following letter and is read before it; र written second becomes a stroke at the foot of the preceding letter and is read after it.

The four conjuncts everybody memorizes

A handful of conjuncts fused so long ago that their shapes no longer resemble their parts. Indian schoolchildren recite three of them at the very end of the alphabet as if they were extra letters. Learn them as whole units.

Conjunct	Made from	Read as	In a word
क्ष	क् + ष	ksh	क्षमा kshamaa, forgiveness
त्र	त् + र	tr	मित्र mitr, friend
ज्ञ	ज् + ञ	gy in Hindi, not jn	ज्ञान gyaan, knowledge; विज्ञान vigyaan, science
श्र	श् + र	shr	श्री shrii, the honorific Mr or Shri

ज्ञ deserves the spotlight. Its parts say j plus the palatal nasal, which in Sanskrit was pronounced roughly jnya. Hindi speakers say gy. So ज्ञान is gyaan, विज्ञान is vigyaan, and the common name यज्ञ is yagy. Marathi speakers, reading the same letters, say dny. Nobody says what is written. This is the single most-mispronounced conjunct for learners, so bank it now.

The two nasal marks

Hindi has two small marks that both live above the head-line and both involve the nose, and telling them apart is essential.

The anusvara, अनुस्वार, is a plain dot: ं. Its job is abbreviation. When a nasal consonant is followed by another consonant from the same row of the grid, Hindi writes a dot instead of the nasal letter and its conjunct. Read the dot as whichever nasal matches the row of the letter that follows.

Written with the dot	Equals	Read as	Meaning
हिंदी	हिन्दी	hindii, with a dental n	Hindi
अंडा	अण्डा	anDaa, with a retroflex n	egg
गंगा	गङ्गा	gangaa, with the ng of sing	the Ganges
चंद्र	चन्द्र	chandr, with a dental n	moon
संभव	सम्भव	sambhav, with m	possible

Notice the elegance: one dot, five possible readings, and the following letter tells you which. If the next consonant is from the ट row, the dot is a retroflex N; if from the त row, a dental n; if from the प row, an m.

The chandrabindu, चंद्रबिंदु, is a crescent with a dot inside: ँ, literally moon-dot. It does something different. It does not stand for a consonant at all. It tells you to nasalize the vowel itself, letting air out through the nose while the vowel continues, exactly like French bon or English uh-huh said through the nose.

• हाँ haan, yes.
• माँ maan, mother.
• गाँव gaanv, village.
• पाँच paanch, five.
• दाँत daant, tooth.
• हँसना hansnaa, to laugh.

Nasalization changes meaning, so this is not decoration. है hai is is; हैं hain is are. That single nasal breath is the difference between talking about one person and several, and you will meet it in every conversation from Lesson 6 onward.

One printing detail that confuses learners: when a matra already occupies the space above the head-line, printers usually replace the chandrabindu with a plain dot to avoid a collision. That is why मैं main (I) and नहीं nahiin (no, not) are written with the dot even though the sound is a nasalized vowel, not a consonant. You cannot always tell from the mark alone; you learn the word. This is one of the few places where Hindi spelling asks you to know rather than to deduce.

Finally, the visarga ः is a Sanskrit leftover, two dots after a vowel standing for a light h. It appears in a handful of borrowed formal words such as दुःख duhkh (sorrow) and प्रातः praatah (morning). Recognize it and move on.

Key idea: The anusvara dot abbreviates a nasal consonant and is read as whichever nasal matches the following letter's row; the chandrabindu nasalizes the vowel itself, and the contrast between hai and hain shows that nasalization changes meaning.

The vanishing a inside words

In Lesson 2 you learned that the inherent a at the end of a word is silent: कमल is kamal. There is a second, less tidy rule, and it is the one genuinely unpredictable corner of Hindi spelling. Inside longer words, an inherent a in the second-to-last syllable often disappears too.

Written	Naive reading	Actually said	Meaning
लड़का	laRakaa	laRkaa	boy
बोलना	bolanaa	bolnaa	to speak
नमकीन	namakiin	namkiin	salty, savoury
समझना	samajhanaa	samajhnaa	to understand
कमरा	kamaraa	kamraa	room

The working rule of thumb: when a written a sits between two consonants and there is another vowel on each side of that little cluster, it tends to drop. Compare a word where it does not drop, because dropping it would leave an impossible cluster: बहन bahan (sister) keeps its a, and महल mahal (palace) keeps its a.

Be honest with yourself about this one. It is the reason a Hindi word occasionally sounds shorter than it looks, and no beginner gets it perfect by rule. Learn each new word with its pronunciation attached, exactly as you would in English, where you cannot deduce that chocolate has two syllables in speech and three in spelling.

Key idea: Beyond the silent final a, Hindi also deletes an inherent a in the second-to-last syllable of many words, so लड़का is laRkaa and नमकीन is namkiin; learn the pronunciation with the word.

Numerals, the danda, and the sign for doctor

Devanagari has its own digits, and they are the ancestors of yours. The numerals you use every day, called Arabic numerals in English, travelled from India to the Arab world and thence to Europe, which is why Arabic speakers call them Indian numbers. Here is the original set.

Devanagari	०	१	२	३	४	५	६	७	८	९
Value	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Hindi name	शून्य	एक	दो	तीन	चार	पाँच	छह	सात	आठ	नौ

Look at २, ३, and ९ and you can see the family resemblance to 2, 3, and 9. Modern Hindi mostly prints the Western forms, but the Devanagari digits appear on Indian banknotes, in literature, on some official signs, and in page numbers, so learn to recognize them.

Sentences end with a vertical bar called the दंड danD, written ।, not with a full stop. So a sentence looks like this: मेरा नाम राम है। meraa naam Raam hai. My name is Ram. Question marks, exclamation marks, and commas are borrowed from English and used exactly as you expect. In poetry a double bar ॥ marks the end of a verse.

Finally, a modern invention. English has a short o, in words like doctor and college, that Hindi lacks. Rather than force it into an existing vowel, Hindi added a sign: a small crescent above the letter, called the candra, giving ॉ. So डॉक्टर DaakTar (doctor), कॉलेज kaalej (college), and ऑफ़िस aafis (office). When you see that crescent, you are almost always looking at an English loanword.

A full reading spree

Everything is now on the table. Sound each of these out before you look at the transliteration, saying the letters in order and applying every rule you know.

नमस्ते namaste, hello. धन्यवाद dhanyavaad, thank you. आपका नाम क्या है? aapkaa naam kyaa hai? What is your name? मैं ठीक हूँ। main Thiik huun. I am fine. हिंदी बहुत अच्छी भाषा है। hindii bahut achchhii bhaashaa hai. Hindi is a very good language. दिल्ली भारत की राजधानी है। Dillii bhaarat kii raajdhaanii hai. Delhi is India's capital. मुझे चाय पसंद है। mujhe chaay pasand hai. I like tea. स्वागत है। svaagat hai. Welcome. फिर मिलेंगे। phir milenge. We will meet again.

Read those nine lines slowly, twice. If you can get through them, you can read Hindi. Everything from here on is vocabulary and grammar, and none of it requires new letters.

Common misconceptions

• Conjuncts are hundreds of unrelated shapes to memorize. Most are one operation: cut the vertical stem off the first letter and join it to the next.
• ज्ञ is pronounced jn or gyaan-with-a-j. Hindi says gy: ज्ञान is gyaan and विज्ञान is vigyaan, even though the parts are j and the palatal nasal.
• The dot and the moon-dot mean the same thing. The anusvara dot stands in for a nasal consonant; the chandrabindu nasalizes the vowel. hai and hain are different words because of it.
• Hindi spelling is perfectly phonetic. Nearly. Medial schwa deletion makes लड़का laRkaa and नमकीन namkiin shorter than they look.
• Arabic numerals came from Arabia. They came from India, reached Europe via the Arab world, and their Devanagari ancestors are still printed on Indian currency.

Recap

• A conjunct joins consonants with no vowel between them, usually by cutting the stem off the first letter.
• र first becomes a hook above the next letter (गर्म garm); र second becomes a stroke at the foot of the previous one (ग्राम graam).
• क्ष ksh, त्र tr, ज्ञ gy, and श्र shr are fused conjuncts learned as units; ज्ञ is said gy, not jn.
• The anusvara dot replaces a nasal consonant and takes its value from the following row; the chandrabindu nasalizes the vowel, as in haan, maan, and hain.
• Medial schwa deletion shortens words in speech; Devanagari has its own digits, the danda ends sentences, and the candra sign writes the English short o.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Devanagari. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Numerals and numeral systems. britannica.com
3. Unicode Consortium. (n.d.). Devanagari code chart, U0900. unicode.org
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Devanagari conjuncts. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

You can read Devanagari now. Time to say something to somebody. This lesson gives you the opening moves of a Hindi conversation: how to say hello, how to ask after someone, how to thank them, and how to leave politely. It also asks you to make a decision that English never makes you make, and that Hindi makes you make in every single sentence you address to another human being: which word for you.

English collapsed its polite and familiar pronouns into one word centuries ago and has been comfortable ever since. Hindi has three, and they encode a whole social geometry: age, status, intimacy, warmth, and sometimes contempt. Choosing wrong is not a grammar mistake, it is a social one. So we will spend real time on it, and I will give you a rule that keeps you safe: use आप aap with everyone until somebody tells you not to.

The plan today: namaste and what it actually means, the greetings you will hear from different communities, the three yous, the small word जी jii that does more social work than any other syllable in Hindi, the courtesy vocabulary, and a full how-are-you exchange you can use tomorrow.

Namaste, and what it means

The word is नमस्ते namaste, and it is two words fused: नमः namah, a bow or salutation, and ते te, to you. I bow to you. The fuller and slightly more formal variant is नमस्कार namaskaar, which you will hear in broadcasting, on stage, and in Marathi-influenced western India.

Four practical facts about it:

• It works at any hour. There is no separate good morning or good evening in ordinary Hindi conversation. सुप्रभात suprabhaat (good morning) and शुभ रात्रि shubh raatri (good night) exist, but they are literary and formal; you will hear English good morning in an office far more often than either.
• It works both ways. नमस्ते is hello and goodbye, like the Italian ciao or the Hawaiian aloha.
• It comes with a gesture. Palms pressed together at the chest, fingers up, a small bow of the head. The gesture alone is a complete greeting, which is why it works across a crowded room and across a language barrier.
• It is polite but not stiff. Younger urban Indians say hi and hello constantly, in Hindi sentences, without anyone blinking. नमस्ते is what you use with elders, with strangers, and whenever you want to be respectful, and it is never wrong.

India is not one community, and greetings mark that. You will hear all of these, and knowing them is a real courtesy.

Greeting	Reads	Who says it	The reply
नमस्ते / नमस्कार	namaste / namaskaar	general, and the default for a learner	the same word back
राम राम	Raam Raam	rural north India, especially among older people	राम राम
सत श्री अकाल	sat srii akaal	Sikh greeting, common in Punjab and Delhi	the same phrase back
आदाब	aadaab	a courtly Urdu greeting, common among Muslims in north India	आदाब
अस्सलाम अलैकुम	assalaam alaikum	Muslim greeting, peace be upon you	वालेकुम अस्सलाम vaalekum assalaam
जय श्री कृष्ण	jay srii krishn	Gujarat and among Krishna devotees	the same phrase back

The general rule for all of them is the same: return the greeting you are given, in the words you were given. That single habit will make you sound at home.

Key idea: नमस्ते means I bow to you, serves as both hello and goodbye at any hour, comes with folded hands, and sits alongside community greetings such as sat srii akaal and assalaam alaikum, each of which is returned in kind.

The three yous

Here is the heart of the lesson.

Pronoun	Level	Who you say it to	The verb form
तू tuu	intimate or contemptuous	God in prayer, a tiny child, a lifelong best friend, a pet; also used deliberately to insult	तू है tuu hai
तुम tum	familiar	friends, siblings, cousins, people clearly younger, classmates once you know them	तुम हो tum ho
आप aap	respectful	strangers, elders, teachers, in-laws, officials, anyone you are not sure about, and any group	आप हैं aap hain

Take तू seriously as a hazard. In a temple it is intimate devotion; in a hospital corridor addressed to a stranger it is an insult that starts fights. It is genuinely warm between two people who have been friends since childhood, and genuinely offensive from a foreigner to a shopkeeper. You will hear it in film dialogue and in songs constantly, which is exactly why learners misjudge it. Recognize it, do not use it.

तुम is the friendly middle, and it is where most real friendships live. Two students the same age will land there within a conversation or two. It is also, historically, what employers said to household staff, which is why some Indians are careful with it in mixed settings. As a learner, wait to be offered it; you will usually be offered it directly, with something like तुम कह सकते हो tum kah sakte ho, you can say tum.

आप is the safe default and it costs you nothing. It is used for one person or many, and it is the pronoun of respect, distance, and courtesy. Indians address their own parents and older siblings as आप throughout their lives in many families. To be explicit about addressing a group, add a word: आप लोग aap log (you people) or आप सब aap sab (you all).

Notice one grammatical consequence you will use immediately: आप always takes plural agreement, even for a single person. आप कैसे हैं? aap kaise hain? is literally how are you-plural, exactly like the French vous or the German Sie.

Key idea: तू is intimate or insulting, तुम is friendly, and आप is respectful and always plural in agreement; the beginner's rule is to use आप with everyone until invited to switch.

जी: the smallest big word in Hindi

जी jii is a particle of respect, and it attaches almost anywhere. It has no direct English translation; it is closest to the warmth of sir or ma'am, but far lighter and far more frequent.

• After a name or title: राम जी Raam jii, गांधी जी Gaandhii jii, डॉक्टर साहब. Attaching जी to a name is the ordinary polite way to refer to almost any adult.
• After kinship terms: माता जी maataa jii (respected mother), पिता जी pitaa jii (respected father), भाई जी, दीदी जी.
• Before yes and no: जी हाँ jii haan is a respectful yes; जी नहीं jii nahiin a respectful no. A bare हाँ to an elder can sound curt.
• Alone: जी? means pardon? or yes? when someone calls you. जी! on its own is a polite acknowledgement, roughly indeed or of course.

Alongside जी, learn the everyday address terms Indians use with strangers, because Hindi rarely leaves a stranger unnamed. A young man at a shop or an auto-rickshaw driver is भैया bhaiyaa, brother. An older man is भाई साहब bhaaii saahab. A woman roughly your age is दीदी diidii, elder sister, or बहन जी bahan jii. Older women and men are आंटी aunty and अंकल uncle, borrowed straight from English and used across India for any older person, related or not. Calling a shopkeeper brother is not familiarity; it is basic courtesy.

The courtesy vocabulary

Hindi	Reads	Means	Note
धन्यवाद	dhanyavaad	thank you	Sanskrit shelf; formal, correct, slightly stiff
शुक्रिया	shukriyaa	thank you	Persian shelf; warmer and very common in speech
बहुत बहुत शुक्रिया	bahut bahut shukriyaa	thank you very much	doubling bahut is the natural intensifier
कृपया	kripayaa	please	mostly written; signs and forms rather than speech
माफ़ कीजिए	maaf kiijiye	excuse me, forgive me	for apologies and for squeezing past someone
सुनिए	suniye	listen, that is, excuse me	the normal way to get a stranger's attention
कोई बात नहीं	koii baat nahiin	no problem, it is nothing	literally, no matter at all
स्वागत है	svaagat hai	welcome	on signs everywhere in India

Two honest cultural notes that no phrasebook tells you. First, Hindi speakers thank one another far less often than English speakers do, especially inside a family. Thanking your mother for dinner can land as cold and formal, because gratitude between intimates is assumed rather than announced. Warmth is shown by feeding you more, not by saying please. Second, the Hindi word for please is genuinely rare in speech. Politeness lives in the verb instead: the ending -इए -iye turns a command into a courteous request. बैठिए baiThiye, please sit. बताइए bataaiye, please tell me. आइए aaiye, please come in. That ending, not कृपया, is how a Hindi speaker sounds polite.

Key idea: जी marks respect everywhere, strangers are addressed with kin terms such as bhaiyaa and diidii, and politeness in Hindi lives in the verb ending -iye rather than in a word for please.

A whole exchange

Here is a complete opening conversation. Read it aloud twice: once as written, once with the roles reversed.

Hindi	Reads	English
नमस्ते!	namaste!	Hello!
नमस्ते! आप कैसे हैं?	namaste! aap kaise hain?	Hello! How are you? (to a man)
मैं ठीक हूँ, शुक्रिया। और आप?	main Thiik huun, shukriyaa. aur aap?	I am fine, thank you. And you?
मैं भी ठीक हूँ।	main bhii Thiik huun.	I am fine too.
अच्छा, फिर मिलेंगे।	achchhaa, phir milenge.	Good, we will meet again.
ठीक है, नमस्ते।	Thiik hai, namaste.	All right, goodbye.

Three things to notice. First, आप कैसे हैं? changes for the gender of the person you are speaking to: कैसे kaise to a man, कैसी kaisii to a woman. That is your first taste of the agreement system that Module 3 formalizes. Second, भी bhii means too or also and always comes after the word it applies to: मैं भी is me too. Third, अच्छा achchhaa is the most versatile word in spoken Hindi. It means good, but with a rising tone it means really? and with a falling one it means I see, or right then, or okay. You will hear it a hundred times a day.

A more informal version, between friends who have reached तुम, would run: क्या हाल है? kyaa haal hai? What is the state of things, that is, how is it going? Answer: सब ठीक है। sab Thiik hai. All is well.

And to leave: नमस्ते covers it, but you also have फिर मिलेंगे phir milenge (we will meet again, the everyday goodbye), अलविदा alvidaa (farewell, weighty and final, the word of poetry and airport scenes), and in cities simply बाय bye.

Key idea: A full Hindi greeting exchange is namaste, aap kaise or kaisii hain, main Thiik huun shukriyaa aur aap, and phir milenge, with the adjective changing for the gender of the person addressed.

Common misconceptions

• Namaste is only for hello. It serves as both hello and goodbye, at any hour of the day.
• तू is simply the informal you, like Spanish tu. तू is intimate or insulting, not merely casual; तुम is the friendly middle. Learners should use neither at first.
• आप is for one person and तुम for many. Both can be plural, and आप always takes plural verb agreement even for one person; for an explicit plural, say आप लोग.
• Hindi speakers say please and thank you as often as English speakers. They do not, especially inside families; politeness runs through the -iye verb ending and through जी.
• Hindi has ordinary good morning and good evening greetings. The formal words exist, but namaste covers the day, and urban Indians often use the English phrases instead.

Recap

• नमस्ते means I bow to you, works as hello and goodbye, and comes with folded hands.
• Community greetings include Raam Raam, sat srii akaal, aadaab, and assalaam alaikum; return whichever you are given.
• तू is intimate or rude, तुम is friendly, आप is respectful and takes plural agreement; default to आप.
• जी marks respect after names and before yes and no; strangers are addressed as bhaiyaa, diidii, aunty, and uncle.
• The polite verb ending -इए, as in बैठिए and आइए, does the work that please does in English.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Namaste. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
3. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani grammar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

Today you build your first complete Hindi sentences, and you get an unusually generous deal. The verb to be, होना honaa, is the most irregular verb in most languages: English has am, are, is, was, were, been; Spanish has two entire verbs for it. Hindi's present tense has four forms. That is the whole list. हूँ, है, हो, हैं.

You also get a second gift that no European language offers. Hindi pronouns do not mark gender. There is no he-versus-she choice to make. यह yah covers he, she, it, and this; वह vah covers he, she, it, and that. The gender comes back later, in verbs and adjectives, but the pronoun itself never forces you to decide. If you have ever frozen mid-sentence in French wondering whether to say il or elle, Hindi has quietly removed the problem.

The plan: the pronouns, the four forms of honaa, word order, the two entirely different jobs of the little word क्या kyaa, the family of question words that all begin with क, and then a full self-introduction you can deliver to a real human being.

The pronouns

Hindi	Reads	Means	Note
मैं	main	I	nasalized vowel; not the English word main
तू	tuu	you, intimate	recognize, do not use
तुम	tum	you, familiar	friends and juniors
आप	aap	you, respectful	your default; grammatically plural
यह	yah, said ye	he, she, it, this	for someone or something near
वह	vah, said vo	he, she, it, that	for someone or something further off
हम	ham	we	also I in parts of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh
ये	ye	these, they (near)	also a respectful he or she
वे	ve, said vo	those, they (far)	also a respectful he or she

Two honest notes about the writing. First, यह and वह are the standard written spellings, but almost nobody says yah and vah in conversation; you will hear ye and vo, and in informal writing and film subtitles you will often see वो spelled out. Second, the near-versus-far distinction is real but loose: यह for the person beside you, वह for the person across the room or absent from it, and speakers are not fussy about the boundary.

A third note that matters for politeness. When you speak about someone respectfully, Hindi uses the plural: ये मेरे पिता जी हैं। ye mere pitaa jii hain. This is my father, literally these are my father. That plural-for-respect habit runs through the whole language.

Key idea: Hindi pronouns do not mark gender, so yah and vah cover he, she, and it alike; in speech they are said ye and vo, and the plural forms are also used about a single person out of respect.

Honaa in the present: the whole table

Pronoun	Form of honaa	Whole phrase	English
मैं	हूँ huun	मैं हूँ	I am
तू	है hai	तू है	you are (intimate)
तुम	हो ho	तुम हो	you are (familiar)
आप	हैं hain	आप हैं	you are (respectful)
यह / वह	है hai	यह है	he, she, it is
हम	हैं hain	हम हैं	we are
ये / वे	हैं hain	वे हैं	they are

Four forms, and three of them are one syllable. Notice that the difference between है hai and हैं hain is the nasal mark you learned in Lesson 4, and it carries the entire singular-plural distinction. Say them aloud back to back until the nasal breath is unmistakable to your own ear. If you skip it, you will say he is when you mean they are, and, because आप takes plural agreement, you will address your host as though he were a stranger's cat.

Word order: the verb goes last

Hindi is a subject-object-verb language. Whatever else happens in the sentence, the verb comes at the end. English speakers find this odd for about a week and then find it restful, because it is genuinely consistent.

Hindi	Word by word	Natural English
मैं छात्र हूँ।	I student am	I am a student.
वह डॉक्टर है।	he doctor is	He is a doctor.
हम भारत में हैं।	we India in are	We are in India.
मेरा नाम अनिल है।	my name Anil is	My name is Anil.
यह मेरी किताब है।	this my book is	This is my book.

Look at मैं छात्र हूँ again and notice what is missing: there is no word for a. Hindi has no articles at all. मैं छात्र हूँ is I am a student and, in the right context, I am the student. One less decision in every sentence you build.

Look also at मेरा नाम and मेरी किताब. The possessive changed: मेरा meraa before नाम (a masculine noun) and मेरी merii before किताब (a feminine noun). That is the agreement system, and Module 3 takes it apart properly. For now, learn these as fixed phrases and let the pattern soak in.

Key idea: Hindi puts the verb last and has no articles, so मैं छात्र हूँ is literally I student am and means I am a student.

The two jobs of kyaa

क्या kyaa is a small word with two entirely separate functions, and telling them apart is a matter of position.

Job one: at the front of a sentence, क्या turns a statement into a yes-or-no question and is not translated at all. It is a spoken question mark placed at the beginning.

• आप भारत से हैं। aap bhaarat se hain. You are from India.
• क्या आप भारत से हैं? kyaa aap bhaarat se hain? Are you from India?
• क्या यह आपकी किताब है? kyaa yah aapkii kitaab hai? Is this your book?
• क्या तुम ठीक हो? kyaa tum Thiik ho? Are you okay?

Job two: anywhere else in the sentence, क्या means what.

• आपका नाम क्या है? aapkaa naam kyaa hai? What is your name?
• यह क्या है? yah kyaa hai? What is this?
• आपका पता क्या है? aapkaa pataa kyaa hai? What is your address?

Compare क्या यह है? (is this it?) with यह क्या है? (what is this?). The same three words; the position of क्या does all the work. In practice, a rising intonation alone can also make a yes-or-no question, exactly as in English: आप ठीक हैं? with the voice going up is perfectly natural and very common. The initial क्या is the fully explicit version.

Key idea: क्या at the front of a sentence is an untranslated yes-or-no question marker; क्या anywhere else means what.

The question words all begin with क

English question words mostly begin with wh. Hindi question words mostly begin with क. Learn them as a set.

Hindi	Reads	Means	Example
कौन	kaun	who	वह कौन है? vah kaun hai? Who is that?
क्या	kyaa	what	यह क्या है? yah kyaa hai? What is this?
कहाँ	kahaan	where	आप कहाँ से हैं? aap kahaan se hain? Where are you from?
कब	kab	when	कक्षा कब है? kakshaa kab hai? When is the class?
क्यों	kyon	why	आप यहाँ क्यों हैं? aap yahaan kyon hain? Why are you here?
कैसे / कैसा	kaise / kaisaa	how / what kind of	आप कैसे हैं? aap kaise hain? How are you?
कितना	kitnaa	how much, how many	यह कितने का है? yah kitne kaa hai? How much is this?
कौन सा	kaun saa	which	कौन सा शहर? kaun saa shahar? Which city?

Where do they go? Not at the front, as in English. A Hindi question word goes where the answer would go, which is usually just before the verb. So it is आपका नाम क्या है? and not क्या आपका नाम है?, because the answer, अनिल, occupies exactly that slot: मेरा नाम अनिल है। Build the answer first and put the question word in the gap.

Key idea: Hindi question words begin with क and sit where the answer would sit, usually immediately before the verb, rather than moving to the front of the sentence as English question words do.

Your first negative sentence

नहीं nahiin means no and not, and it goes directly before the verb.

• मैं डॉक्टर नहीं हूँ। main DaakTar nahiin huun. I am not a doctor.
• यह मेरी किताब नहीं है। yah merii kitaab nahiin hai. This is not my book.
• नहीं, मैं भारत से नहीं हूँ। nahiin, main bhaarat se nahiin huun. No, I am not from India.

Notice that नहीं does double duty as the answer no and as the word not, exactly as in English no, I am not. Module 4 gives negation its full treatment, including a quirk where the verb हूँ can be dropped after नहीं.

A full introduction

Here is everything assembled. Read it aloud, then rewrite it with your own name, country, and occupation.

Hindi	Reads	English
नमस्ते! मेरा नाम सारा है।	namaste! meraa naam Saaraa hai.	Hello! My name is Sara.
आपका नाम क्या है?	aapkaa naam kyaa hai?	What is your name?
मेरा नाम अनिल है। आप कहाँ से हैं?	meraa naam Anil hai. aap kahaan se hain?	My name is Anil. Where are you from?
मैं अमरीका से हूँ। और आप?	main amriikaa se huun. aur aap?	I am from America. And you?
मैं दिल्ली से हूँ। क्या आप छात्रा हैं?	main Dillii se huun. kyaa aap chhaatraa hain?	I am from Delhi. Are you a student?
जी हाँ, मैं छात्रा हूँ। आप छात्र हैं?	jii haan, main chhaatraa huun. aap chhaatr hain?	Yes, I am a student. Are you a student?
जी नहीं, मैं छात्र नहीं हूँ। मैं अध्यापक हूँ।	jii nahiin, main chhaatr nahiin huun. main adhyaapak huun.	No, I am not a student. I am a teacher.
आपसे मिलकर ख़ुशी हुई।	aapse milkar khushii huii.	Pleased to meet you.

Notice छात्र chhaatr for a male student and छात्रा chhaatraa for a female one. Many Hindi occupation words come in pairs like this: अध्यापक adhyaapak and अध्यापिका adhyaapikaa for a male and female teacher. Others do not change at all: डॉक्टर DaakTar, इंजीनियर injiniyar, वकील vakiil (lawyer), and किसान kisaan (farmer) are the same for everyone.

And bank that last line whole: आपसे मिलकर ख़ुशी हुई aapse milkar khushii huii, literally happiness happened having met with you. Do not analyse it yet. Say it at the end of every introduction and watch faces open up.

Key idea: A complete Hindi self-introduction needs only honaa, a possessive, se for from, and the question words: meraa naam ___ hai, main ___ se huun, main ___ huun, plus kyaa for questions and nahiin for denials.

Common misconceptions

• Hindi pronouns distinguish he and she. They do not. यह and वह cover he, she, and it; gender appears in verbs and adjectives instead.
• क्या always means what. At the front of a sentence it is an untranslated yes-or-no question marker: क्या आप ठीक हैं? means are you all right?
• Question words move to the front, as in English. They sit where the answer sits, usually just before the verb: आपका नाम क्या है?
• है and हैं are spelling variants of the same word. The nasal mark is the singular-plural distinction, and आप always takes हैं.
• You need a word for a or the. Hindi has no articles; मैं छात्र हूँ serves for both I am a student and I am the student.

Recap

• The pronouns are मैं, तू, तुम, आप, यह, वह, हम, ये, वे, and none of them marks gender.
• होना in the present has only four forms: हूँ, है, हो, हैं.
• Hindi word order is subject, object, verb, and Hindi has no articles.
• क्या at the front makes a yes-or-no question; elsewhere it means what; the other question words all begin with क and sit before the verb.
• नहीं before the verb negates the sentence and also stands alone as the answer no.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani grammar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of Wisconsin-Madison. (n.d.). Center for South Asia: language study. southasia.wisc.edu

The big picture

Every Hindi noun is either masculine or feminine. Not just people and animals: a house is masculine, a book is feminine, a road can be either depending on which word for road you use. There is no neuter, no it, no escape hatch. And because adjectives, possessives, and most verb forms have to agree with the noun, getting gender wrong ripples outward through the sentence.

If you have studied French, German, or Spanish, you know this discomfort. Here is the Hindi version of the news, and it is better than you expect. Hindi gender is largely predictable from the ending of the word, far more so than French. Two patterns cover most of the vocabulary, and a modest list of exceptions covers most of the rest. Learn the patterns properly today and you will guess right most of the time from your very first month.

Today: the two great patterns, the four noun types they produce, the exceptions worth memorizing and the reason they exist, and then plurals, which follow directly from the same four types. By the end you will be able to look at almost any Hindi noun and say, with reasonable confidence, both its gender and its plural.

The two great patterns

Here is the whole system in two lines.

• A noun ending in the long vowel -आ -aa is usually masculine.
• A noun ending in the long vowel -ई -ii is usually feminine.

That is it. लड़का laRkaa, boy, is masculine and ends in -aa. लड़की laRkii, girl, is feminine and ends in -ii. The pattern is so consistent for people that it generalizes: बेटा beTaa son, बेटी beTii daughter; बकरा bakraa male goat, बकरी bakrii female goat. And it carries over to objects that have no natural gender at all: कमरा kamraa (room) is masculine, कुर्सी kursii (chair) is feminine.

Everything that does not end in -aa or -ii must simply be learned, and those nouns split evenly enough between the genders that guessing is a coin flip. Hindi grammarians therefore sort nouns into four types, and it is worth learning the names because the plural and the oblique both key off them.

Type	Description	Examples
Masculine marked	ends in -आ	लड़का laRkaa boy, कमरा kamraa room, बेटा beTaa son, कुत्ता kuttaa dog, केला kelaa banana, दरवाज़ा darvaazaa door, रास्ता raastaa road, पैसा paisaa money
Masculine unmarked	ends in anything else	घर ghar house, दिन din day, नाम naam name, हाथ haath hand, फूल phuul flower, शहर shahar city, स्कूल skuul school, दोस्त dost friend
Feminine marked	ends in -ई	लड़की laRkii girl, बेटी beTii daughter, कुर्सी kursii chair, रोटी roTii flatbread, चाबी chaabii key, गाड़ी gaaRii car or train, नदी nadii river
Feminine unmarked	ends in anything else	किताब kitaab book, रात raat night, बात baat matter or thing said, आँख aankh eye, दुकान dukaan shop, सड़क saRak road, चीज़ chiiz thing

The words marked and unmarked are worth a moment. A marked noun wears its gender visibly in its ending and will change shape in the plural and the oblique. An unmarked noun keeps its gender quietly and changes less. When you meet a new word, the first question to ask is not what does it mean but which of these four boxes does it live in.

Key idea: Hindi nouns ending in -aa are usually masculine and those ending in -ii are usually feminine; every noun belongs to one of four types (masculine marked or unmarked, feminine marked or unmarked), and that type governs both its plural and its oblique form.

The exceptions, and why they exist

The exceptions are not random. They come in three understandable groups, which makes them far easier to hold in your head than a flat list would be.

Group one: masculine nouns that end in -ii. A small set, but they include some very common words.

• पानी paanii, water
• आदमी aadmii, man
• दही dahii, yoghurt
• घी ghii, clarified butter
• मोती motii, pearl
• हाथी haathii, elephant

Note that आदमी is masculine by natural gender: it means man. The others simply have to be learned, and the list is short enough to learn today. पानी is the one that catches everybody, because it is one of the first nouns you meet and it breaks the rule.

Group two: feminine nouns that end in -aa. Almost all of these are borrowings from Sanskrit or Persian and Arabic, where they were already feminine in the source language. Recognizing that they are loanwords makes them predictable.

• भाषा bhaashaa, language
• हवा havaa, air, wind
• दवा davaa, medicine
• माता maataa, mother (natural gender)
• आशा aashaa, hope
• कविता kavitaa, poem
• दुनिया duniyaa, world
• सभा sabhaa, assembly

Group three: masculine nouns in -aa that behave irregularly. These are masculine, as the pattern predicts, but they do not take the -e plural you are about to learn. They are Sanskrit-derived nouns and male kinship terms.

• पिता pitaa, father
• राजा raajaa, king
• नेता netaa, leader
• चाचा chaachaa, paternal uncle; and the whole family of daadaa, naanaa, maamaa

So पिता is masculine, and one father and several fathers are both पिता. Compare लड़का, which becomes लड़के in the plural. Natural gender always wins for people, in any case: माँ maan and बहन bahan are feminine whatever their endings, and भाई bhaaii is masculine despite ending in -ii.

One more practical corner: English loanwords. Hindi absorbs them freely and usually makes them masculine by default: स्कूल skuul, बैंक bank, फ़ोन phone, कंप्यूटर kampyuuTar, होटल hoTal. But when a Hindi equivalent is feminine, the borrowing often inherits that gender: कार kaar (car) is feminine because गाड़ी gaaRii is, and many speakers treat टेबल Tebal (table) as feminine for the same reason.

Key idea: The exceptions cluster: a short list of masculine -ii nouns headed by paanii and aadmii, a group of feminine -aa nouns borrowed from Sanskrit and Persian such as bhaashaa and havaa, and Sanskrit-type masculines such as pitaa and raajaa that resist the -e plural.

Plurals: four types, four rules

Now the payoff for sorting nouns into types. The plural rule is different for each of the four, and once you know the type the plural is automatic. These are the forms used when the noun is the subject of a sentence, which grammarians call the direct case.

Type	Rule	Singular	Plural
Masculine marked (-aa)	-aa becomes -e	लड़का laRkaa	लड़के laRke
Masculine unmarked	no change at all	घर ghar	घर ghar
Feminine marked (-ii)	add -याँ, shortening the ii	लड़की laRkii	लड़कियाँ laRkiyaan
Feminine unmarked	add -एँ	किताब kitaab	किताबें kitaaben

Work through examples of each until they feel automatic.

• कमरा kamraa, room, becomes कमरे kamre. दो कमरे do kamre, two rooms.
• केला kelaa, banana, becomes केले kele. पाँच केले paanch kele, five bananas.
• घर ghar, house, stays घर. दो घर do ghar, two houses. Nothing changes at all; the numeral carries the plurality.
• दिन din, day, stays दिन. सात दिन saat din, seven days.
• कुर्सी kursii, chair, becomes कुर्सियाँ kursiyaan. तीन कुर्सियाँ tiin kursiyaan, three chairs.
• रोटी roTii, flatbread, becomes रोटियाँ roTiyaan.
• रात raat, night, becomes रातें raaten. दो रातें do raaten, two nights.
• दुकान dukaan, shop, becomes दुकानें dukaanen.

Three details to notice. First, the masculine unmarked plural really is identical to the singular; a Hindi sentence with घर in it tells you the number from the context and the verb, not from the noun. Second, feminine plurals are always nasalized: याँ and एँ both carry the nasal mark, and skipping it turns a plural into something that is not a word. Third, a feminine noun already ending in -या, such as चिड़िया chiRiyaa (bird), simply nasalizes: चिड़ियाँ chiRiyaan. And a feminine noun in -आ, such as भाषा, takes -एँ after the vowel: भाषाएँ bhaashaaen, languages.

Key idea: The four noun types take four plurals: -aa becomes -e, unmarked masculines do not change, -ii takes -iyaan, and unmarked feminines take -en; every feminine plural ending is nasalized.

How to actually learn gender

Rules get you most of the way. For the rest, use the technique that works for German and French learners too, adapted to Hindi.

• Never learn a bare noun. Learn it attached to an agreeing adjective, so the gender rides along inside the phrase. अच्छा घर achchhaa ghar, a good house. अच्छी किताब achchhii kitaab, a good book. When you later hesitate over किताब, the phrase answers for you.
• Or learn it inside a full sentence. यह मेरा कमरा है। This is my room. यह मेरी कुर्सी है। This is my chair. The possessive मेरा or मेरी does the same work.
• Group by pattern, not alphabetically. Keep one page for -aa masculines, one for -ii feminines, and one, deliberately short, for exceptions.
• Accept errors. Getting a gender wrong in Hindi produces a sentence that is understood perfectly, exactly like saying le table in French. It marks you as a learner; it does not stop communication. Speak first, correct later.

Here is a starter vocabulary sorted the way your notebook should be sorted. Copy it out and add to it every week.

Masculine -aa	Masculine other	Feminine -ii	Feminine other
कमरा room	घर house	कुर्सी chair	किताब book
दरवाज़ा door	दिन day	रोटी flatbread	रात night
केला banana	फूल flower	चाबी key	दुकान shop
कुत्ता dog	शहर city	गाड़ी car, train	सड़क road
रास्ता road, way	पानी water (exception)	नदी river	भाषा language (exception)
बेटा son	आदमी man (exception)	बेटी daughter	माँ mother

Common misconceptions

• Hindi gender is arbitrary, like French. It is largely readable from the ending: -aa is usually masculine, -ii usually feminine, and the exceptions cluster into small, learnable groups.
• पानी must be feminine because it ends in -ii. It is masculine, and so are aadmii, dahii, ghii, motii, and haathii.
• Every noun changes in the plural. Unmarked masculines do not change at all: one ghar and ten ghar look identical.
• The nasal mark on feminine plurals is optional. It is not; kitaaben and laRkiyaan are nasalized, and without it the word is simply wrong.
• Nouns have neuter gender for objects. Hindi has no neuter. A room is masculine, a chair is feminine, and there is no third option.

Recap

• Every Hindi noun is masculine or feminine; there is no neuter.
• Nouns in -aa are usually masculine, nouns in -ii usually feminine, and the four noun types are masculine marked, masculine unmarked, feminine marked, feminine unmarked.
• Exceptions cluster: paanii and aadmii are masculine in -ii; bhaashaa and havaa are feminine in -aa; pitaa and raajaa are masculine but do not take the -e plural.
• Plurals: -aa becomes -e, unmarked masculines are unchanged, -ii becomes -iyaan, and unmarked feminines add -en.
• Learn every noun with an agreeing adjective or possessive attached, so the gender travels with the word.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani grammar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of California, Berkeley. (n.d.). Institute for South Asia Studies: languages of South Asia. southasia.berkeley.edu

The big picture

English says in the room. Hindi says room in: कमरे में kamre men. The little words that English puts in front of a noun, Hindi puts behind it, which is why they are called postpositions rather than prepositions. That much is easy, and you could learn it in a minute.

Here is the part that takes a lesson. When a postposition follows a noun, the noun itself changes shape. कमरा kamraa, a room, becomes कमरे kamre before में. लड़का laRkaa, a boy, becomes लड़के laRke before को. This changed shape is called the oblique case, and it is the one piece of Hindi grammar that reliably unsettles beginners, because there is no English equivalent to hang it on.

So let me give you the right way to think about it from the start. The oblique does not mean anything. It carries no information about in, on, from, or to; the postposition carries all of that. The oblique is simply a signal, a small flag the noun raises to say a postposition is coming. Hindi once had a full case system like Sanskrit's, with a different ending for each role. That system eroded, collapsing into a single all-purpose oblique form, and the postpositions moved in to do the specific work. What you are learning is the residue of a much bigger machine.

Today: the postpositions themselves, then the oblique rules for all four noun types, then the pronouns, then the possessive का, and finally the construction Hindi uses instead of a verb to have.

The postpositions

Postposition	Reads	Means	Example
में	men	in, inside	घर में ghar men, in the house
पर	par	on, at	मेज़ पर mez par, on the table
से	se	from, with (a tool), by, than	दिल्ली से Dillii se, from Delhi
को	ko	to, for; also marks a definite object	राम को Raam ko, to Ram
तक	tak	up to, until, as far as	शाम तक shaam tak, until evening
का / के / की	kaa / ke / kii	of, the possessive	राम का घर Raam kaa ghar, Ram's house

Six words carry an enormous amount of Hindi. On top of them sits a family of compound postpositions, each built from के plus a second word. Because they all contain के, they behave like a single unit and they all trigger the oblique in exactly the same way.

Compound	Reads	Means	Example
के पास	ke paas	near; also used for to have	घर के पास ghar ke paas, near the house
के साथ	ke saath	with, in the company of	दोस्त के साथ dost ke saath, with a friend
के लिए	ke liye	for, for the sake of	आपके लिए aapke liye, for you
के ऊपर	ke uupar	above, on top of	मेज़ के ऊपर mez ke uupar, above the table
के नीचे	ke niiche	below, under	कुर्सी के नीचे kursii ke niiche, under the chair
के सामने	ke saamne	in front of, opposite	स्कूल के सामने skuul ke saamne, opposite the school
के पीछे	ke piichhe	behind	दरवाज़े के पीछे darvaaze ke piichhe, behind the door
के बारे में	ke baare men	about, concerning	भारत के बारे में bhaarat ke baare men, about India
के बाद	ke baad	after	खाने के बाद khaane ke baad, after the meal
से पहले	se pahle	before	शाम से पहले shaam se pahle, before evening

Key idea: Hindi puts its relational words after the noun; six simple postpositions (men, par, se, ko, tak, kaa) plus a family of compounds built on के cover almost everything English does with prepositions.

The oblique, type by type

Now the shape change. Take the four noun types from the last lesson and apply one rule to each.

Type	Direct singular	Oblique singular	Direct plural	Oblique plural
Masculine marked	लड़का laRkaa	लड़के laRke	लड़के laRke	लड़कों laRkon
Masculine unmarked	घर ghar	घर ghar	घर ghar	घरों gharon
Feminine marked	लड़की laRkii	लड़की laRkii	लड़कियाँ laRkiyaan	लड़कियों laRkiyon
Feminine unmarked	किताब kitaab	किताब kitaab	किताबें kitaaben	किताबों kitaabon

Read that table twice and three facts fall out of it, and those three facts are the whole lesson.

• Every oblique plural ends in -ओं -on. Every single one, masculine or feminine, marked or unmarked. This is the most reliable rule in beginner Hindi. If a plural noun has a postposition after it, it ends in -on. घरों में, किताबों में, लड़कों को, लड़कियों से.
• Feminine nouns never change in the oblique singular. लड़की को, किताब में, रात में. Nothing happens. Half the vocabulary is free.
• Only masculine marked nouns change in the oblique singular, and they change -aa to -e, which is the same form as their direct plural.

That last point produces the ambiguity every learner stumbles over once. लड़के can be two completely different things:

• लड़के अच्छे हैं। laRke achchhe hain. The boys are good. Here लड़के is a direct plural.
• लड़के को किताब दो। laRke ko kitaab do. Give the book to the boy. Here लड़के is an oblique singular.

The tell is trivial once you know to look: is a postposition following? If yes, it is oblique singular. If no, it is a plural subject. Hindi never leaves you guessing for long.

Practise the transformation aloud. कमरा becomes कमरे में, in the room. दरवाज़ा becomes दरवाज़े के पीछे, behind the door. रास्ता becomes रास्ते पर, on the road. And घर stays घर in घर में but becomes घरों in घरों में, in the houses.

Key idea: Before any postposition a noun goes oblique: all oblique plurals end in -on, feminine singulars never change, and masculine -aa singulars become -e, which is why laRke can be either the boys or, before a postposition, the boy.

The pronouns go oblique too

Pronouns have their own oblique forms, and several of them fuse with को and से into single words that you should learn whole rather than assemble.

Direct	Oblique stem	With को (to, for)	With से (from, with)
मैं main	मुझ mujh	मुझे mujhe or मुझको mujhko	मुझसे mujhse
तुम tum	तुम tum	तुम्हें tumhen or तुमको tumko	तुमसे tumse
आप aap	आप aap	आपको aapko	आपसे aapse
यह yah	इस is	इसे ise or इसको isko	इससे isse
वह vah	उस us	उसे use or उसको usko	उससे usse
हम ham	हम ham	हमें hamen or हमको hamko	हमसे hamse
ये ye	इन in	इन्हें inhen or इनको inko	इनसे inse
वे ve	उन un	उन्हें unhen or उनको unko	उनसे unse

Notice how यह and वह turn into इस and उस, quietly changing their vowels. That is worth memorizing because those stems appear everywhere: इसमें ismen (in this), उसमें usmen (in that), इस किताब में is kitaab men (in this book), उस आदमी से us aadmii se (from that man).

The fused forms मुझे, तुम्हें, उसे, हमें, and उन्हें are the ones you will use most, and they are also the forms in a construction you already met: आपसे मिलकर ख़ुशी हुई, pleased to meet you, is literally happiness happened from meeting with you.

का, के, की: the postposition that agrees

Possession works with का, and का is the one postposition that changes its own form. It agrees not with the owner but with the thing owned, exactly as an adjective would.

Thing owned	Form	Example	English
masculine singular	का kaa	राम का घर Raam kaa ghar	Ram's house
masculine plural, or masculine before a postposition	के ke	राम के घर Raam ke ghar	Ram's houses
feminine, singular or plural	की kii	राम की किताब Raam kii kitaab	Ram's book

Two agreements happen at once here, and seeing both is the mark of someone who has understood the system. Look at लड़के का नाम laRke kaa naam, the boy's name. The owner, लड़का, has gone oblique to लड़के because का is a postposition following it. And का itself has taken the masculine singular form because नाम, the thing owned, is masculine singular. Owner goes oblique; possessive agrees with the owned.

Now compare: लड़की की किताब laRkii kii kitaab, the girl's book. The owner लड़की is feminine and so does not change, and की agrees with किताब. And लड़कों के नाम laRkon ke naam, the boys' names: plural owner takes the -on ending, and के agrees with the plural नाम.

The possessive pronouns are simply this pattern frozen into single words. मेरा meraa (my) is मैं plus का; तुम्हारा tumhaaraa (your, familiar); आपका aapkaa (your, respectful); उसका uskaa (his, her); हमारा hamaaraa (our); उनका unkaa (their, or his and her respectfully). All of them agree with the thing owned: मेरा नाम meraa naam (my name), मेरी किताब merii kitaab (my book), मेरे दोस्त mere dost (my friends).

Key idea: का, के, की is a postposition that agrees with the thing owned rather than the owner, while the owner itself goes oblique, giving laRke kaa naam, the boy's name.

Hindi has no verb to have

You will look for it and it will not be there. Hindi expresses possession with a postposition and the verb to be, and the construction it chooses depends on what kind of possession you mean.

For things you can put down: use के पास, near, literally saying that the object is in your vicinity. The owner goes oblique before के, so मेरा becomes मेरे.

• मेरे पास एक किताब है। mere paas ek kitaab hai. I have a book. Literally: near me one book is.
• राम के पास पैसे हैं। Raam ke paas paise hain. Ram has money.
• क्या आपके पास चाबी है? kyaa aapke paas chaabii hai? Do you have the key?
• उनके पास गाड़ी नहीं है। unke paas gaaRii nahiin hai. They do not have a car.

For relatives and things you cannot put down: drop पास and use के alone. Family, body parts, and inherent qualities work this way.

• मेरे दो भाई हैं। mere do bhaaii hain. I have two brothers.
• उसकी तीन बहनें हैं। uskii tiin bahnen hain. She has three sisters.
• राम के दो बच्चे हैं। Raam ke do bachche hain. Ram has two children.

Watch the verb in those sentences. It agrees with the thing possessed, not with the possessor: किताब है but पैसे हैं, भाई हैं but चाबी है. That follows naturally once you see that the possessed thing is the grammatical subject. In मेरे पास एक किताब है, the sentence is really a book exists near me, and the book is what the verb answers to.

Key idea: Hindi has no verb to have: portable possessions use ke paas plus honaa, relatives and inalienable things use bare ke, and in both the verb agrees with the thing possessed.

Common misconceptions

• The oblique case means something, like the accusative or dative. It means nothing by itself; it is a flag saying a postposition follows, and the postposition carries the meaning.
• All nouns change in the oblique singular. Only masculine -aa nouns do. Feminine nouns and unmarked masculines are unchanged in the singular.
• लड़के always means boys. It is the direct plural and also the oblique singular; the presence of a postposition tells you which.
• का agrees with the owner. It agrees with the thing owned: laRke kaa naam and laRkii kii kitaab both show the owner oblique and का matching the possession.
• Hindi must have some verb for to have. It does not. ke paas plus honaa and bare ke plus honaa cover the ground instead.

Recap

• Hindi relational words follow the noun: में, पर, से, को, तक, का, plus compounds built on के.
• Any noun before a postposition goes oblique; every oblique plural ends in -ओं.
• Feminine singulars never change; masculine -aa singulars become -e, sharing a form with the direct plural.
• Pronouns have oblique stems (मुझ, इस, उस, इन, उन) and fused forms such as मुझे, उसे, and उन्हें.
• का, के, की agrees with the thing owned; possession uses के पास for portable things and bare के for relatives.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani grammar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of Pennsylvania. (n.d.). Department of South Asia Studies: Hindi-Urdu program. southasia.sas.upenn.edu

The big picture

English adjectives never change. Good book, good books, good boy, good boys: one form, four uses. Hindi adjectives change, and they change to match the noun they describe in gender, in number, and in whether that noun is standing before a postposition. That sounds like three things to track. In practice it is one small table with three cells, and half of Hindi's adjectives do not change at all.

Here is the shape of the good news. Hindi adjectives fall into exactly two classes. If an adjective ends in the long vowel -आ -aa, it inflects. If it ends in anything else, it does not, ever, under any circumstances. That is a rule you can apply by looking at a word, which is more than French or German offer. And the feminine form has only one shape, singular and plural alike, so the whole system has three forms rather than four.

Today: the two classes, the three forms, agreement before the noun and after the verb, the possessive adjectives you have been using as fixed phrases, the reflexive अपना, and comparison, which Hindi does with a postposition instead of an ending.

Two classes of adjective

Class one: adjectives ending in -आ. These inflect, exactly like a marked masculine noun.

Adjective	Means	Adjective	Means
अच्छा achchhaa	good	बुरा buraa	bad
बड़ा baRaa	big, elder	छोटा chhoTaa	small, younger
नया nayaa	new	पुराना puraanaa	old (of things)
लंबा lambaa	tall, long	छोटा chhoTaa	short
ठंडा ThanDaa	cold	गरम garam	hot (invariable)
सस्ता sastaa	cheap	महँगा mahangaa	expensive
काला kaalaa	black	हरा haraa	green
नीला niilaa	blue	पीला piilaa	yellow

Class two: everything else. These never change, whatever noun they attach to.

Adjective	Means	Adjective	Means
सुंदर sundar	beautiful	ख़ूबसूरत khuubsuurat	beautiful
लाल laal	red	सफ़ेद safed	white
साफ़ saaf	clean	ख़ुश khush	happy
मुश्किल mushkil	difficult	आसान aasaan	easy
अमीर amiir	rich	ग़रीब ġariib	poor
तेज़ tez	fast, sharp	भारी bhaarii	heavy
ज़रूरी zaruurii	necessary	दिलचस्प dilchasp	interesting

Look at भारी bhaarii and ज़रूरी zaruurii. They end in -ii, and they are invariable. That is the point of the rule: only the -aa ending triggers inflection, and no other ending does. There is a small set of Persian and Arabic borrowings that end in -aa and still refuse to change, of which the most common are ज़्यादा zyaadaa (more) and बढ़िया baRhiyaa (excellent, first-rate). Treat those two as memorized exceptions.

Key idea: Hindi adjectives ending in -आ inflect; every other adjective, including those ending in -ii such as bhaarii and zaruurii, is invariable.

The three forms

An inflecting adjective has three shapes, and one of them does double duty.

Form	Used for	Example phrase	English
-आ achchhaa	masculine singular, direct	अच्छा लड़का	a good boy
-ए achchhe	masculine plural direct, and ALL masculine oblique	अच्छे लड़के	good boys; or, before a postposition, the good boy
-ई achchhii	feminine, singular and plural, direct and oblique	अच्छी लड़की, अच्छी लड़कियाँ	a good girl, good girls

Read that feminine row again, because it is the best news in the lesson: the feminine adjective has one single form. Singular, plural, before a postposition or not, it is अच्छी. Half the nouns in the language, and nothing to decide.

Now the important consequence for the masculine. An adjective goes to -ए before a postposition even when the noun itself does not change. Compare:

• बड़ा घर baRaa ghar, a big house. Direct, nothing changes.
• बड़े घर में baRe ghar men, in the big house. The noun घर is an unmarked masculine and stays घर, but the adjective still goes oblique to बड़े.
• बड़े घरों में baRe gharon men, in the big houses. Now both change.
• बड़ी दुकान में baRii dukaan men, in the big shop. Feminine: nothing at all changes.

That first pair, बड़ा घर versus बड़े घर में, is the sentence to burn in. The adjective is the more sensitive of the two words; it registers the postposition even when the noun does not.

Key idea: Inflecting adjectives have three forms: -aa for masculine singular direct, -e for masculine plural and every masculine oblique, and -ii for all feminines; the adjective goes oblique even when the noun it modifies does not.

Agreement after the verb too

Adjectives agree wherever they appear, not only in front of the noun. When an adjective sits in the predicate, after the noun and before होना, it still matches.

Hindi	Reads	English
लड़का अच्छा है।	laRkaa achchhaa hai.	The boy is good.
लड़की अच्छी है।	laRkii achchhii hai.	The girl is good.
लड़के अच्छे हैं।	laRke achchhe hain.	The boys are good.
किताबें अच्छी हैं।	kitaaben achchhii hain.	The books are good.
यह कमरा बहुत बड़ा है।	yah kamraa bahut baRaa hai.	This room is very big.
ये कुर्सियाँ बहुत पुरानी हैं।	ye kursiyaan bahut puraanii hain.	These chairs are very old.

Notice बहुत bahut, meaning very. It is an adverb, and adverbs in Hindi never change. So do बहुत bahut (very), थोड़ा thoRaa (a little, which does change when it is an adjective but not when it modifies another adjective), काफ़ी kaafii (quite, enough), and बिल्कुल bilkul (completely, absolutely).

The possessives are adjectives

You have been saying मेरा नाम and मेरी किताब since Module 2 without being told why. Now you know: the possessives are -aa class adjectives, and they agree with the thing owned.

Possessive	Masculine singular	Masculine plural or oblique	Feminine
my	मेरा meraa	मेरे mere	मेरी merii
your, familiar	तुम्हारा tumhaaraa	तुम्हारे tumhaare	तुम्हारी tumhaarii
your, respectful	आपका aapkaa	आपके aapke	आपकी aapkii
his, her, its	उसका uskaa	उसके uske	उसकी uskii
our	हमारा hamaaraa	हमारे hamaare	हमारी hamaarii
their, or his and her respectfully	उनका unkaa	उनके unke	उनकी unkii

Say each row aloud with a noun: मेरा नाम, मेरे दोस्त, मेरी किताब. आपका घर, आपके बच्चे, आपकी गाड़ी. And remember that the oblique form is why possession sentences run मेरे पास, not मेरा पास: the compound postposition के पास puts मेरा into its oblique -e shape.

One more possessive deserves a flag, though this course only asks you to recognize it. अपना apnaa means one's own, and Hindi requires it whenever the owner is the subject of the same sentence. So:

• वह अपनी किताब पढ़ता है। vah apnii kitaab paRhtaa hai. He reads his own book.
• वह उसकी किताब पढ़ता है। vah uskii kitaab paRhtaa hai. He reads someone else's book.

English uses his for both and leaves the ambiguity to context. Hindi settles it with a separate word, and using उसका where अपना belongs is one of the most persistent learner errors. Recognize the pattern now; you will drill it in Hindi II.

Key idea: The possessives meraa, tumhaaraa, aapkaa, uskaa, hamaaraa, and unkaa are -aa adjectives agreeing with the thing owned, and apnaa is the special form used when the owner is the subject of the sentence.

Comparison without endings

Hindi has no -er and no -est. Comparison is built with the postposition से, which here means than, and the structure is beautifully simple: the thing compared against comes first, with से attached, and then the plain adjective.

Hindi	Word by word	English
राम श्याम से लंबा है।	Ram, Shyam than, tall is	Ram is taller than Shyam.
यह किताब उस किताब से अच्छी है।	this book, that book than, good is	This book is better than that one.
दिल्ली मुंबई से ठंडी है।	Delhi, Mumbai than, cold is	Delhi is colder than Mumbai.
हिंदी उतनी मुश्किल नहीं है।	Hindi that-much difficult not is	Hindi is not that difficult.

For the superlative, compare against everything: सबसे sabse, literally than all.

• यह सबसे अच्छी किताब है। yah sabse achchhii kitaab hai. This is the best book.
• वह सबसे बड़ा शहर है। vah sabse baRaa shahar hai. That is the biggest city.
• हिंदी सबसे आसान नहीं है, लेकिन सबसे मुश्किल भी नहीं है। Hindi is not the easiest, but it is not the hardest either.

If you want to be emphatic you can add ज़्यादा zyaadaa, more, between the से phrase and the adjective: राम श्याम से ज़्यादा लंबा है। It is optional, and Hindi speakers often leave it out. Note that in यह किताब उस किताब से अच्छी है the second किताब is preceded by उस, the oblique of वह, because a postposition follows. Every rule in this module is now working at once, in one ordinary sentence.

Key idea: Hindi builds comparatives with से meaning than, placed after the thing compared against, and superlatives with सबसे, than all; the adjective itself keeps its plain agreeing form.

Common misconceptions

• All Hindi adjectives change. Only those ending in -आ. सुंदर, लाल, मुश्किल, and even भारी and ज़रूरी never change at all.
• Adjectives ending in -ii are feminine forms. Not necessarily: भारी and ज़रूरी end in -ii and are invariable, used with masculine and feminine nouns alike.
• Feminine adjectives have separate singular and plural forms. They do not; अच्छी covers both, in direct and oblique alike.
• If the noun does not change in the oblique, neither does the adjective. बड़े घर में shows the opposite: the adjective goes oblique even when the unmarked noun does not.
• Hindi must have a comparative ending. It has none; से carries than, and सबसे carries the superlative.

Recap

• Adjectives in -आ inflect; all others are invariable.
• The three forms are -aa (masculine singular direct), -e (masculine plural and all masculine oblique), and -ii (all feminine).
• Adjectives agree before the noun and in the predicate after होना, and they go oblique even when the noun does not.
• The possessives are -aa adjectives agreeing with the thing owned; अपना is used when the owner is the subject.
• Comparison uses से for than and सबसे for the superlative, with no change to the adjective itself.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani grammar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of Wisconsin-Madison. (n.d.). Center for South Asia: language study. southasia.wisc.edu

The big picture

Hindi verbs are, by the standards of the languages English speakers usually study, remarkably tame. There is no list of two hundred irregular verbs to memorize. There are no separate endings for I, you, and he. Instead, the Hindi verb does something no European verb does: it splits into two pieces, and the two pieces agree with different things. One piece, a participle, agrees with the gender and number of the subject, exactly like an adjective. The other piece, the auxiliary, agrees with the subject's person and number, exactly like the verb to be you already know.

That means the sentence I speak Hindi comes out differently depending on whether a man or a woman is saying it. मैं हिंदी बोलता हूँ for a man; मैं हिंदी बोलती हूँ for a woman. English speakers find this startling for about a day, and then find it useful, because it makes Hindi conversation surprisingly easy to follow: you can hear who is being talked about.

Today: the infinitive and the stem inside it, the infinitive's double life as a noun, the habitual present in full, what it does and does not cover, the vocabulary of a daily routine, and the construction Hindi uses to say that you like something.

The infinitive and the stem

Every Hindi verb is listed in the dictionary as an infinitive ending in -ना -naa. Cut that ending off and what remains is the stem, from which every other form in the language is built. There are no exceptions to this: the stem is always the infinitive minus ना.

Infinitive	Reads	Means	Stem
बोलना	bolnaa	to speak	बोल bol
करना	karnaa	to do, to make	कर kar
जाना	jaanaa	to go	जा jaa
आना	aanaa	to come	आ aa
खाना	khaanaa	to eat	खा khaa
पीना	piinaa	to drink	पी pii
पढ़ना	paRhnaa	to read, to study	पढ़ paRh
लिखना	likhnaa	to write	लिख likh
देखना	dekhnaa	to see, to watch	देख dekh
सुनना	sunnaa	to hear, to listen	सुन sun
रहना	rahnaa	to live, to stay	रह rah
सीखना	siikhnaa	to learn	सीख siikh
समझना	samajhnaa	to understand	समझ samajh
सोना	sonaa	to sleep	सो so

Now a Hindi feature with no English parallel. The infinitive is also a noun, a masculine one, and it works exactly like the English -ing form.

• हिंदी सीखना मुश्किल नहीं है। hindii siikhnaa mushkil nahiin hai. Learning Hindi is not difficult.
• पढ़ना अच्छा है। paRhnaa achchhaa hai. Reading is good.

The most famous case is खाना khaanaa, which means both to eat and food. So खाना खाना khaanaa khaanaa means to eat food, and it is not a typo. Similarly पीना is both to drink and, colloquially, a drink.

Key idea: Every Hindi verb ends in -ना, and cutting that ending off gives the stem from which all other forms are built; the infinitive also serves as a masculine verbal noun, which is why khaanaa means both to eat and food.

The habitual present

The formula has two slots.

STEM + ता / ते / ती + हूँ / है / हो / हैं

The first ending is the imperfective participle and it behaves like an -aa adjective: -ता for masculine singular, -ते for masculine plural, -ती for feminine, singular and plural alike. The second word is the present of होना, chosen by the pronoun exactly as you learned in Lesson 6. Here is बोलना, to speak, in full.

Subject	Masculine	Feminine	English
मैं	बोलता हूँ boltaa huun	बोलती हूँ boltii huun	I speak
तू	बोलता है boltaa hai	बोलती है boltii hai	you speak (intimate)
तुम	बोलते हो bolte ho	बोलती हो boltii ho	you speak (familiar)
आप	बोलते हैं bolte hain	बोलती हैं boltii hain	you speak (respectful)
यह / वह	बोलता है boltaa hai	बोलती है boltii hai	he, she speaks
हम	बोलते हैं bolte hain	बोलती हैं boltii hain	we speak
ये / वे	बोलते हैं bolte hain	बोलती हैं boltii hain	they speak

Three observations that will save you trouble.

• तुम takes the plural participle. तुम बोलते हो, even to one man, because तुम is grammatically plural. The same logic that gives आप हैं gives तुम बोलते हो.
• The feminine has one participle form. बोलती serves singular and plural; only the auxiliary tells them apart: वह बोलती है (she speaks) versus वे बोलती हैं (they, feminine, speak).
• A mixed group is masculine. If a group contains any man at all, Hindi uses the masculine plural. This is the grammatical convention, not a statement about the people.

Now put objects in and watch the word order hold: subject, object, verb.

Hindi	Word by word	English
मैं हिंदी बोलता हूँ।	I Hindi speak am	I speak Hindi. (a man speaking)
मैं चाय पीती हूँ।	I tea drink am	I drink tea. (a woman speaking)
वह किताब पढ़ती है।	she book read is	She reads a book.
हम दिल्ली में रहते हैं।	we Delhi in live are	We live in Delhi.
बच्चे स्कूल जाते हैं।	children school go are	The children go to school.
आप बहुत अच्छी हिंदी बोलते हैं।	you very good Hindi speak are	You speak very good Hindi.

Key idea: The habitual present is stem plus ता, ते, or ती agreeing with the subject's gender and number, plus the present of honaa agreeing with the subject's person, giving main boltaa huun for a man and main boltii huun for a woman.

What this tense actually covers

Be careful here, because the name matters. The Hindi habitual present covers general truths and repeated actions, which is what English does with the simple present: I speak Hindi, she reads a lot, we live in Delhi, water boils at a hundred degrees.

It does not cover what is happening at this moment. For that, Hindi has a separate present continuous, built with रहा, रहे, or रही between the stem and the auxiliary.

• मैं हिंदी सीखता हूँ। main hindii siikhtaa huun. I learn Hindi, that is, I am a Hindi learner in general.
• मैं हिंदी सीख रहा हूँ। main hindii siikh rahaa huun. I am learning Hindi right now, at this moment.
• वह चाय पी रही है। vah chaay pii rahii hai. She is drinking tea right now.

That continuous form is properly a Hindi II topic, and this course will not drill it. But you will hear it constantly from the first conversation, so recognize the shape: a रहा, रहे, or रही sitting between stem and auxiliary means right now. Notice that it agrees with the subject just as the participle does.

A day in Hindi

Here is the vocabulary of an ordinary day, and then a paragraph using it. Read the paragraph aloud, then rewrite it about yourself.

Hindi	Reads	Means
उठना	uThnaa	to get up
नहाना	nahaanaa	to bathe
काम करना	kaam karnaa	to work
बात करना	baat karnaa	to talk, to converse
घर	ghar	house, home
दफ़्तर	daftar	office
सुबह	subah	morning
दोपहर	dopahar	afternoon, midday
शाम	shaam	evening
रात	raat	night
रोज़	roz	daily, every day
हमेशा	hameshaa	always
अक्सर	aksar	often
कभी कभी	kabhii kabhii	sometimes

मैं रोज़ सुबह छह बजे उठता हूँ। main roz subah chhah baje uThtaa huun. I get up at six every morning. फिर मैं चाय पीता हूँ और अख़बार पढ़ता हूँ। phir main chaay piitaa huun aur akhbaar paRhtaa huun. Then I drink tea and read the newspaper. मैं दफ़्तर में काम करता हूँ। main daftar men kaam kartaa huun. I work in an office. शाम को मैं अपने दोस्तों से बात करता हूँ। shaam ko main apne doston se baat kartaa huun. In the evening I talk with my friends. रात को मैं हिंदी सीखता हूँ। raat ko main hindii siikhtaa huun. At night I learn Hindi.

Notice शाम को and रात को: with times of day, को functions as at or in. And notice अपने दोस्तों से, my friends: अपना because the owner is the subject, and the -e ending plus the -on ending because a postposition follows a plural noun. Everything from Module 3 is doing its job here.

Notice also the pattern noun plus करना. Hindi builds a great many verbs this way: काम करना (to do work, to work), बात करना (to do talk, to converse), मदद करना (to help), इंतज़ार करना (to wait), शुरू करना (to begin), पसंद करना (to like). Learning करना well multiplies your vocabulary.

Key idea: The habitual present covers general and repeated actions, not what is happening right now; the continuous adds रहा, रहे, or रही between stem and auxiliary, and many everyday verbs are built as a noun plus करना.

Saying what you like

English says I like tea, with I as the subject. Hindi turns the sentence inside out and says something closer to tea is pleasing to me. The liker takes को, and the thing liked becomes the grammatical subject.

• मुझे चाय पसंद है। mujhe chaay pasand hai. I like tea.
• मुझे हिंदी पसंद है। mujhe hindii pasand hai. I like Hindi.
• उसे किताबें पसंद हैं। use kitaaben pasand hain. She likes books. Note the plural verb, agreeing with किताबें.
• क्या आपको भारतीय खाना पसंद है? kyaa aapko bhaaratiiy khaanaa pasand hai? Do you like Indian food?
• मुझे यह फ़िल्म पसंद नहीं है। mujhe yah film pasand nahiin hai. I do not like this film.

Those को forms are the fused pronouns from Lesson 8: मुझे, तुम्हें, आपको, उसे, हमें, उन्हें. This inside-out pattern, which grammarians call a dative subject, is used for a whole family of Hindi expressions: liking, needing, knowing a language, feeling hungry, and being ill. You will meet more of them in the food lesson.

Common misconceptions

• Hindi verbs have a different ending for every person, like Spanish. They do not; the participle agrees with gender and number, and the small auxiliary handles person.
• बोलता हूँ means I am speaking right now. It means I speak in general. Right now requires बोल रहा हूँ.
• तुम is singular so it takes the singular participle. तुम is grammatically plural: तुम बोलते हो.
• Men and women use the same verb forms. The participle agrees with the speaker's gender, so main boltaa huun and main boltii huun are both correct, for different speakers.
• I like tea translates word for word. Hindi says mujhe chaay pasand hai, with the liker in को and the thing liked controlling the verb.

Recap

• Every verb ends in -ना; the stem is the infinitive minus that ending, and the infinitive doubles as a masculine noun.
• The habitual present is stem plus ता, ते, or ती plus the present of होना.
• The participle agrees with the subject's gender and number; the auxiliary agrees with person; तुम takes the plural participle.
• The habitual present covers general and repeated action; रहा, रहे, and रही mark what is happening right now.
• Liking is expressed with को plus पसंद है, and the verb agrees with the thing liked.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani verbs. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of California, Berkeley. (n.d.). Institute for South Asia Studies. southasia.berkeley.edu

The big picture

Two jobs today, and they fit together better than they look. First, saying no, which in Hindi means choosing among three different negative words depending on what kind of sentence you are in. Second, the future tense, which is built by taking a form you have not met yet, the subjunctive, and gluing an agreeing ending onto it. Both are short systems with clean rules, and by the end of this lesson you will be able to say what you will not be doing tomorrow, which is most of conversation.

There is also a small trap waiting in the vocabulary, and it is one of the genuinely charming oddities of Hindi. The word कल kal means tomorrow. It also means yesterday. Not two words that happen to look alike: one word, one spelling, both meanings. Hindi lets the tense of the verb sort it out, which is a reasonable division of labour once you stop being alarmed by it.

The three negatives

Hindi splits the work of English not across three words, and the split is by sentence type.

Word	Reads	Used in	Example
नहीं	nahiin	ordinary statements and questions	मैं हिंदी नहीं बोलता। I do not speak Hindi.
मत	mat	negative commands	मत जाओ। Do not go.
न	na	subjunctives, conditionals, and tag questions	अच्छा है, है न? It is good, is it not?

नहीं is the workhorse and it does ninety percent of the job. It goes directly before the verb, and it also stands alone as the answer no.

• वह दिल्ली में नहीं रहता। vah Dillii men nahiin rahtaa. He does not live in Delhi.
• मुझे चाय पसंद नहीं है। mujhe chaay pasand nahiin hai. I do not like tea.
• यह मेरी किताब नहीं है। yah merii kitaab nahiin hai. This is not my book.

Now a genuine quirk worth learning properly, because it will make your Hindi sound native. In the habitual present, the auxiliary is usually dropped after नहीं. Both of these are correct:

• मैं हिंदी नहीं बोलता हूँ। main hindii nahiin boltaa huun.
• मैं हिंदी नहीं बोलता। main hindii nahiin boltaa. More natural, and what you will hear.

The dropping is optional and applies only when the auxiliary is a helper. When होना is the main verb of the sentence, it stays: मैं डॉक्टर नहीं हूँ, not मैं डॉक्टर नहीं. Say those two aloud and the difference will feel obvious: in the first sentence something is being denied about an action, in the second about an identity, and identity needs its verb.

मत is for telling someone not to do something, and it goes before the command form.

• मत जाओ। mat jaao. Do not go. (to तुम)
• यहाँ मत बैठिए। yahaan mat baiThiye. Please do not sit here. (to आप)
• चिंता मत करो। chintaa mat karo. Do not worry.

न is lighter and more literary. Its most useful everyday job for a beginner is the tag question: है न? hai na? meaning isn't it?, right?. Hindi speakers use it constantly, exactly as a Canadian uses eh or a Brazilian uses ne. आप हिंदी बोलते हैं, है न? You speak Hindi, don't you?

Key idea: नहीं negates statements and goes directly before the verb, often swallowing the auxiliary in the habitual present; मत negates commands; न appears in subjunctives and in the tag question है न.

Nobody, nothing, never

Hindi builds its negative words in pairs, and like Spanish it uses two negatives in one sentence without them cancelling out.

Hindi	Reads	Means	In a sentence
कोई नहीं	koii nahiin	nobody, no one	यहाँ कोई नहीं है। There is nobody here.
कुछ नहीं	kuchh nahiin	nothing	मुझे कुछ नहीं चाहिए। I need nothing.
कभी नहीं	kabhii nahiin	never	मैं कभी नहीं जाता। I never go.
कहीं नहीं	kahiin nahiin	nowhere	वह कहीं नहीं जाती। She goes nowhere.
कोई नहीं / कुछ भी नहीं	kuchh bhii nahiin	nothing at all	मुझे कुछ भी नहीं पता। I know nothing at all.

Notice the positive halves of these pairs, which are just as useful: कोई koii (someone, any), कुछ kuchh (something, some), कभी kabhii (ever, sometimes), कहीं kahiin (somewhere, anywhere). क्या आपको कुछ चाहिए? Do you need something? And note that कोई is also the way Hindi says a, any before a countable noun, which is as close as the language gets to an indefinite article: कोई किताब, some book or other.

The future: two agreeing parts

The Hindi future is built in two steps. First you take the subjunctive form of the verb, which has one ending per person. Then you attach गा, गे, or गी, which agrees with the subject's gender and number, exactly like the participle in the habitual present.

Here are the subjunctive endings, added to the stem.

Subject	Ending	Subjunctive of बोलना
मैं	-ऊँ	बोलूँ boluun
तू, यह, वह	-ए	बोले bole
तुम	-ओ	बोलो bolo
आप, हम, ये, वे	-एँ	बोलें bolen

Now add the agreeing ending and you have the future.

Subject	Masculine	Feminine	English
मैं	बोलूँगा boluungaa	बोलूँगी boluungii	I will speak
तू	बोलेगा bolegaa	बोलेगी bolegii	you will speak (intimate)
तुम	बोलोगे bologe	बोलोगी bologii	you will speak (familiar)
आप	बोलेंगे bolenge	बोलेंगी bolengii	you will speak (respectful)
यह / वह	बोलेगा bolegaa	बोलेगी bolegii	he, she will speak
हम	बोलेंगे bolenge	बोलेंगी bolengii	we will speak
ये / वे	बोलेंगे bolenge	बोलेंगी bolengii	they will speak

The गा element is worth a word of history, because it explains why it agrees. It began life as a separate word, a participle meaning something like gone, which fused onto the verb over centuries. It never stopped behaving like the adjective it once was, which is why it has the familiar three forms: गा for masculine singular, गे for masculine plural, गी for feminine.

A few verbs need a small note about spelling. Stems ending in a vowel insert a glide in writing: जाना gives मैं जाऊँगा main jaauungaa, वह जाएगा vah jaaegaa, हम जाएँगे ham jaaenge. खाना gives मैं खाऊँगा, वह खाएगा. And two very common verbs shorten their stem vowel: लेना (to take) gives मैं लूँगा main luungaa, and देना (to give) gives मैं दूँगा main duungaa. होना itself gives मैं हूँगा main huungaa, वह होगा vah hogaa, हम होंगे ham honge, which you will use constantly: कल छुट्टी होगी। kal chhuTTii hogii. Tomorrow will be a holiday.

Key idea: The future is the subjunctive form plus गा, गे, or गी, so the first part agrees with person and the second with gender and number, giving main boluungaa for a man and main boluungii for a woman.

Future sentences, positive and negative

Negating the future is simple: नहीं goes before the verb, and nothing is dropped, because the future has no separable auxiliary to drop.

Hindi	Reads	English
मैं कल दिल्ली जाऊँगा।	main kal Dillii jaauungaa.	I will go to Delhi tomorrow.
वह हिंदी सीखेगी।	vah hindii siikhegii.	She will learn Hindi.
हम शाम को खाना खाएँगे।	ham shaam ko khaanaa khaaenge.	We will eat in the evening.
मैं वहाँ नहीं जाऊँगा।	main vahaan nahiin jaauungaa.	I will not go there.
क्या आप कल आएँगे?	kyaa aap kal aaenge?	Will you come tomorrow?
वे कुछ नहीं कहेंगे।	ve kuchh nahiin kahenge.	They will say nothing.

Kal, and the day after or before

Now the charming oddity. Hindi time words look outward from today in both directions at once, and the same word serves each direction.

Hindi	Reads	Looking back	Looking forward
आज	aaj	today
कल	kal	yesterday	tomorrow
परसों	parson	the day before yesterday	the day after tomorrow
तरसों	tarson	three days ago	in three days

How does anyone ever know which is meant? The verb tells you, without ambiguity.

• कल मैं दिल्ली जाऊँगा। kal main Dillii jaauungaa. Tomorrow I will go to Delhi. The future ending settles it.
• कल मैं दिल्ली गया। kal main Dillii gayaa. Yesterday I went to Delhi. The past form settles it.

Once you see the logic it stops feeling like a defect. Hindi treats कल as meaning simply the day adjacent to today, and lets the grammar of the sentence supply the direction. English does something similar with next: next Friday points forward, but only because the tense of the sentence says so.

Other future time words: अगले हफ़्ते agle hafte (next week), अगले महीने agle mahiine (next month), अगले साल agle saal (next year), बाद में baad men (later), जल्दी jaldii (soon, and also quickly), अभी abhii (right now), फिर phir (then, again).

Key idea: कल means both yesterday and tomorrow and परसों both the day before and the day after; the tense of the verb, not the word itself, tells you which direction time is running.

The subjunctive on its own

You built the future out of the subjunctive, so it is worth two minutes on what that form does when it stands alone without गा. It expresses possibility, permission, suggestion, and doubt: the space English fills with may, should, shall, and let us.

• चलें? chalen? Shall we go?
• मैं क्या करूँ? main kyaa karuun? What should I do?
• शायद वह आए। shaayad vah aae. Perhaps he will come.
• मैं अंदर आऊँ? main andar aauun? May I come in?
• भगवान करे! bhagvaan kare! May God grant it!

Compare मैं जाऊँ? (should I go?) with मैं जाऊँगा (I will go). Removing गा removes the certainty. That single syllable is the difference between a plan and a question, and hearing it is worth more to a beginner than being able to produce every subjunctive on demand.

Common misconceptions

• नहीं works for every kind of negation. Commands take मत, and subjunctives and tag questions take न.
• Dropping हूँ after नहीं is sloppy. It is the more natural pattern in the habitual present; but when होना is the main verb it must stay: मैं डॉक्टर नहीं हूँ.
• Two negatives in one Hindi sentence cancel out. They do not; कुछ नहीं and कोई नहीं are the normal ways to say nothing and nobody.
• The future has a single invariable ending. It has two agreeing parts: a person ending and a गा, गे, गी that agrees with gender and number.
• कल must mean tomorrow because that is how it is usually taught. It means the adjacent day in either direction; the verb tense picks the direction.

Recap

• नहीं negates statements and precedes the verb, often absorbing the habitual-present auxiliary; मत negates commands; न appears in subjunctives and in है न.
• कोई नहीं, कुछ नहीं, कभी नहीं, and कहीं नहीं are ordinary double negatives meaning nobody, nothing, never, and nowhere.
• The future is the subjunctive plus गा, गे, or गी, agreeing in gender and number.
• Stems ending in vowels insert a glide (जाएगा), and लेना and देना shorten to लूँगा and दूँगा.
• कल is both yesterday and tomorrow, परसों both directions two days out, and the verb tense disambiguates.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani verbs. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of Pennsylvania. (n.d.). Department of South Asia Studies: Hindi-Urdu program. southasia.sas.upenn.edu

The big picture

Today's lesson has two halves and they feel completely different. The first half is the easiest thing in the Hindi verb system: the past of verbs like go, come, and sit, which works exactly the way you would guess. The second half is the single hardest thing a first-year Hindi student meets, the construction with ने ne, in which the subject of a past sentence gets a postposition and the verb stops agreeing with it and starts agreeing with the object instead.

Let me be honest with you about that second half before we start, because being honest about it is the best teaching I can do. Nobody masters ने in a first semester. Learners make mistakes with it for a year or more. Native speakers themselves disagree about a handful of verbs. What you can absolutely do this semester is recognize it instantly when you hear it, understand exactly why it works the way it does, and produce it correctly in the common cases. That is a realistic goal and this lesson aims at it. Treat ने as a pattern to recognize now and to master later, and you will not be discouraged.

The plan: the perfective participle and its short list of irregulars, intransitive past sentences, था as the past of होना, then ने with everything it drags along, then the honest historical explanation that makes it make sense, and finally the habitual past.

The perfective participle

The past is built from a new participle, formed by adding a vowel to the stem. Like the imperfective participle, it agrees like an adjective, but this one has four forms rather than three, because the feminine plural is separately marked with a nasal.

Form	Ending	बोलना	देखना	पढ़ना
masculine singular	-आ	बोला bolaa	देखा dekhaa	पढ़ा paRhaa
masculine plural	-ए	बोले bole	देखे dekhe	पढ़े paRhe
feminine singular	-ई	बोली bolii	देखी dekhii	पढ़ी paRhii
feminine plural	-ईं	बोलीं boliin	देखीं dekhiin	पढ़ीं paRhiin

Stems ending in a vowel insert a glide य in the writing: आना gives आया aayaa, खाना gives खाया khaayaa, सोना gives सोया soyaa.

And now the whole list of genuinely irregular perfective participles in Hindi. Read it and enjoy it, because it is six words long.

Verb	Irregular participle	Means
जाना jaanaa, to go	गया, गए, गई, गईं	went
करना karnaa, to do	किया, किए, की, कीं	did
होना honaa, to be, to become	हुआ, हुए, हुई, हुईं	happened, became
देना denaa, to give	दिया, दिए, दी, दीं	gave
लेना lenaa, to take	लिया, लिए, ली, लीं	took
पीना piinaa, to drink	पिया, पिए, पी, पीं	drank

Six. English has around two hundred: go, went, gone; take, took, taken; drink, drank, drunk; and on and on. Hindi asks you to memorize six and then hands you every other verb for free. This is the moment to notice how well the language treats a beginner.

Key idea: The perfective participle adds -आ, -ए, -ई, or -ईं to the stem and agrees like an adjective, and Hindi has only six genuinely irregular ones: gayaa, kiyaa, huaa, diyaa, liyaa, and piyaa.

Intransitive verbs: the easy half

An intransitive verb is one that takes no direct object: to go, to come, to sit, to sleep, to run, to be born. With these, the past is as straightforward as you could wish. Put the participle at the end of the sentence and make it agree with the subject. There is no auxiliary at all.

Hindi	Reads	English
मैं गया।	main gayaa.	I went. (a man speaking)
मैं गई।	main gaii.	I went. (a woman speaking)
वह आया।	vah aayaa.	He came.
वह आई।	vah aaii.	She came.
हम दिल्ली गए।	ham Dillii gae.	We went to Delhi.
लड़कियाँ स्कूल गईं।	laRkiyaan skuul gaiin.	The girls went to school.
बच्चा सो गया।	bachchaa so gayaa.	The child fell asleep.
वे कल नहीं आए।	ve kal nahiin aae.	They did not come yesterday.

Notice how short these sentences are. English needs did not come, three words; Hindi manages नहीं आए, two. And notice there is no हूँ or है anywhere: the perfective past stands alone.

Thaa: the past of honaa

To say was and were, you need the past of होना, which is था and its agreeing forms. This is the most-used past form in the language and it is simple.

Form	Used for	Example
था thaa	masculine singular	मैं दिल्ली में था। I was in Delhi.
थे the	masculine plural, and with आप	वे यहाँ थे। They were here.
थी thii	feminine singular	वह ख़ुश थी। She was happy.
थीं thiin	feminine plural	लड़कियाँ स्कूल में थीं। The girls were at school.

With था you can already describe the past of any state: मैं छात्र था (I was a student), खाना अच्छा था (the food was good), वह मेरा दोस्त था (he was my friend), कल छुट्टी थी (yesterday was a holiday).

Key idea: With intransitive verbs the perfective participle agrees with the subject and stands alone with no auxiliary, and था, थे, थी, थीं is the past of honaa for describing past states.

Ne: the hard half

Now the construction. Here is the rule, stated as plainly as it can be stated.

When a transitive verb is in the perfective, the subject takes the postposition ने, and the verb agrees with the object instead of the subject.

Watch it happen. Compare a present sentence with its past.

Present	Past with ने	English
मैं खाना खाता हूँ।	मैंने खाना खाया।	I eat food. / I ate food.
मैं किताब पढ़ता हूँ।	मैंने किताब पढ़ी।	I read a book. / I read a book. (past)
वह चाय पीती है।	उसने चाय पी।	She drinks tea. / She drank tea.
हम फ़िल्म देखते हैं।	हमने फ़िल्म देखी।	We watch a film. / We watched a film.
वे काम करते हैं।	उन्होंने काम किया।	They work. / They did the work.

Look hard at the second row. मैंने किताब पढ़ी uses पढ़ी, the feminine form, because किताब is feminine. It does not matter at all whether the speaker is a man or a woman. That is the whole strangeness of the construction in a single sentence: the subject has been shunted aside by a postposition and no longer controls the verb.

The ने forms of the pronouns are worth learning as a block.

Pronoun	With ने	Pronoun	With ने
मैं	मैंने mainne	हम	हमने hamne
तुम	तुमने tumne	आप	आपने aapne
यह	इसने isne	ये	इन्होंने inhonne
वह	उसने usne	वे	उन्होंने unhonne

Three further rules complete the picture.

• Intransitive verbs never take ने. मैं गया, never मैंने गया. If there is no object, there is nothing for the verb to agree with, so the subject keeps the job.
• If the object itself carries को, the verb goes to a default masculine singular. मैंने लड़की को देखा। mainne laRkii ko dekhaa. I saw the girl. Both the subject and the object are now behind postpositions, so the verb has nobody to agree with and falls back to the neutral form देखा.
• A handful of transitive-looking verbs refuse ने. The common ones are लाना laanaa (to bring), भूलना bhuulnaa (to forget), and मिलना milnaa (to meet). मैं भूल गया, not मैंने भूला. Memorize these three now and add others as you meet them.

Key idea: With a transitive verb in the perfective, the subject takes ने and the verb agrees with the object, so mainne kitaab paRhii is feminine because kitaab is; intransitives never take ने, and a को-marked object forces the neutral masculine singular.

Why on earth does Hindi do this?

Because it used to be a passive, and the passive quietly turned into an ordinary past tense over about a thousand years.

In Sanskrit, one common way to express a completed action was a passive participle construction: by me the book was read. The agent, the person doing the reading, was marked with the instrumental case, meaning by. The book was the grammatical subject, so the participle agreed with the book. That is exactly the structure you see in मैंने किताब पढ़ी, if you read it as by me a book was read. Over the centuries speakers stopped hearing it as a passive and started using it as the ordinary way of talking about the past, but the machinery, the agent marker and the object agreement, stayed exactly where it was. ने is the descendant of that instrumental by.

Linguists call the result split ergativity, and Hindi is the textbook example. Most languages handle subjects one way throughout. English is nominative-accusative: the subject of I sleep and the subject of I read the book are treated identically. Some languages, such as Basque, Georgian, and many Australian languages, are ergative-absolutive: they group the subject of an intransitive verb with the object of a transitive one, and mark the transitive subject specially. Hindi does both, split by tense. In the present and future it behaves like English; in the perfective with a transitive verb, it behaves like Basque.

Knowing this does not make the construction automatic. But it does turn it from an arbitrary cruelty into a fossil you can read, and most learners find it much easier to remember a rule they understand the reason for.

Key idea: The ne construction is the fossil of a Sanskrit passive, by me the book was read, which is why the agent takes a marker and the verb agrees with the object; Hindi is therefore split-ergative, English-like in the present and future and ergative in the perfective transitive.

The habitual past

One more past, and it is free, because you already know both of its parts. Take the imperfective participle from the last lesson and put था instead of है after it. The result means used to or would.

• मैं हिंदी बोलता था। main hindii boltaa thaa. I used to speak Hindi.
• वह रोज़ आती थी। vah roz aatii thii. She used to come every day.
• हम दिल्ली में रहते थे। ham Dillii men rahte the. We used to live in Delhi.

Both parts agree: the participle with gender and number, and था likewise. And note that ने never appears here, because this is an imperfective form, not a perfective one. The ने rule is triggered by the perfective, not by pastness in general.

A short story in the past

कल मैं बाज़ार गया। kal main baazaar gayaa. Yesterday I went to the market. वहाँ मैंने एक किताब ख़रीदी। vahaan mainne ek kitaab kharidii. There I bought a book. फिर मैंने चाय पी। phir mainne chaay pii. Then I drank tea. मेरा दोस्त भी वहाँ था। meraa dost bhii vahaan thaa. My friend was there too. हमने बहुत बातें कीं। hamne bahut baaten kiin. We talked a lot. शाम को मैं घर आया। shaam ko main ghar aayaa. In the evening I came home.

Read it once more and watch the switching. गया and आया have no ने because जाना and आना are intransitive, and they agree with मैं. ख़रीदी, पी, and कीं all have ने and agree with their feminine objects किताब, चाय, and बातें. And था is just the past of होना. Every rule in this lesson is visible in six sentences.

Common misconceptions

• ने marks the past tense. It marks the agent of a perfective transitive verb. The habitual past मैं बोलता था has no ने at all.
• Every past sentence takes ने. Intransitive verbs never do: मैं गया, वह आई, हम बैठे.
• The verb after ने agrees with the speaker's gender. It agrees with the object: मैंने किताब पढ़ी is feminine whoever is speaking.
• Hindi has many irregular past forms. It has six: gayaa, kiyaa, huaa, diyaa, liyaa, piyaa.
• Ergativity is a defect or an error. It is a normal way for languages to work, found in Basque, Georgian, and many Australian languages, and in Hindi it is the fossil of a Sanskrit passive.

Recap

• The perfective participle is stem plus -आ, -ए, -ई, or -ईं, and only six verbs are irregular.
• Intransitive verbs form the past with no auxiliary and agree with the subject.
• था, थे, थी, थीं is the past of होना and describes past states.
• Transitive perfectives take ने on the subject and agree with the object; a को-marked object forces the neutral masculine singular; लाना, भूलना, and मिलना are exceptions.
• The construction descends from a Sanskrit passive, which is why Hindi is called split-ergative; the habitual past, participle plus था, never uses ने.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Hindi language. britannica.com
2. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Ergative-absolutive alignment. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindustani verbs. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu

The big picture

I am going to start this lesson with a warning rather than an encouragement, because you deserve the truth and because knowing it in advance will save you a great deal of frustration.

Hindi numbers are hard. Not conceptually hard, but hard in the brute way that memorizing a hundred separate words is hard. In English, once you know the digits and the tens, you get every number up to a hundred for free: twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, all built by simple assembly. Hindi gives you no such gift. Each number from one to a hundred is its own word, worn down by two thousand years of sound change from its Sanskrit compound until the seams no longer show. Twenty-one is इक्कीस ikkiis and twenty-two is बाईस baaiis; you can see traces of one and two in them if you squint, but you could not have predicted either.

So this lesson is honest about its ask. You are being handed a hundred vocabulary items. Nobody learns them in a week. The strategy that works is chunking: master one to twenty completely, then the ten multiples, then fill in one decade at a time over several months. And the practical fallback that every learner uses, including many who speak Hindi well, is to fall back on digits and English numerals for large prices. Indian shopkeepers do this constantly with each other. You are in good company.

After the numbers: telling time, which has some genuinely delightful oddities; the days and months; and money, where India counts in units English does not have.

One to twenty

Number	Hindi	Reads	Number	Hindi	Reads
1	एक	ek	11	ग्यारह	gyaarah
2	दो	do	12	बारह	baarah
3	तीन	tiin	13	तेरह	terah
4	चार	chaar	14	चौदह	chaudah
5	पाँच	paanch	15	पंद्रह	pandrah
6	छह	chhah	16	सोलह	solah
7	सात	saat	17	सत्रह	satrah
8	आठ	aaTh	18	अठारह	aThaarah
9	नौ	nau	19	उन्नीस	unniis
10	दस	das	20	बीस	biis

Look at दो do, तीन tiin, सात saat, नौ nau, and दस das and you are looking at your Indo-European cousins again: two, three, seven, nine, ten. Latin duo, tres, septem, novem, decem. That family resemblance goes all the way through the numerals, which is a small mercy in a hard lesson.

The tens, and the one pattern that helps

10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100
दस das	बीस biis	तीस tiis	चालीस chaaliis	पचास pachaas	साठ saaTh	सत्तर sattar	अस्सी assii	नब्बे nabbe	सौ sau

Learn those ten words cold. They are the anchors, and with them alone you can say approximate amounts, which covers a great deal of shopping and small talk.

There is exactly one structural pattern worth knowing, and it saves you nine words. The number just below each multiple of ten is built as one less than the coming ten, using a prefix उन un-.

• 19 उन्नीस unniis, one less than twenty (बीस)
• 29 उनतीस untiis, one less than thirty
• 39 उनतालीस untaaliis, one less than forty
• 49 उनचास unchaas, one less than fifty
• 59 उनसठ unsaTh, one less than sixty

That is the entire regularity available. Everything else, including the whole run from twenty-one to twenty-nine, is individual: इक्कीस ikkiis 21, बाईस baaiis 22, तेईस teiis 23, चौबीस chaubiis 24, पच्चीस pachchiis 25, छब्बीस chhabbiis 26, सत्ताईस sattaaiis 27, अट्ठाईस aTThaaiis 28. Say those aloud and you can hear the ghosts of एक, दो, तीन inside them, which helps recall even though it does not let you predict.

Key idea: Every Hindi number from 1 to 100 is a separate word rather than an assembly, so counting must be memorized in chunks; the only real pattern is the उन prefix marking one less than the next ten.

Big numbers: lakh and crore

Above a hundred, Hindi departs from the English system in a way you will meet on your first day in India.

Hindi	Reads	Value	Written in India
सौ	sau	100	100
हज़ार	hazaar	1,000	1,000
लाख	laakh	100,000	1,00,000
करोड़	karoR	10,000,000	1,00,00,000

Notice the commas. Indian convention groups the last three digits together and then every two digits after that, so a hundred thousand is written 1,00,000. Indian newspapers, salary offers, film box-office reports, and government budgets all use lakh and crore rather than million and billion. A ten-crore film has earned a hundred million rupees. If you cannot convert quickly, remember two anchors: a lakh is a hundred thousand, and a crore is a hundred lakh.

Ordinals, briefly: पहला pahlaa first, दूसरा duusraa second, तीसरा tiisraa third, चौथा chauthaa fourth, छठा chhaThaa sixth. From five upward the pattern is regular, adding -वाँ -vaan to the number: पाँचवाँ paanchvaan fifth, सातवाँ saatvaan seventh, दसवाँ dasvaan tenth. All ordinals are -aa adjectives and agree: पहली किताब pahlii kitaab, the first book.

Telling time

The word for o'clock is बजे baje, which literally means struck, from बजना bajnaa, to ring or strike. Hindi still counts hours by the striking of a bell.

• कितने बजे हैं? kitne baje hain? What time is it?
• एक बजा है। ek bajaa hai. It is one o'clock. Note the singular, both in बजा and है.
• दो बजे हैं। do baje hain. It is two o'clock.
• आठ बजे हैं। aaTh baje hain. It is eight o'clock.
• कक्षा तीन बजे है। kakshaa tiin baje hai. The class is at three o'clock.

Now the delightful part. Hindi has dedicated words for the common fractions, inherited from a traditional system of market measures, and two of them are irreplaceable single words.

Hindi	Reads	Means	Example
सवा	savaa	a quarter past, one and a quarter	सवा चार बजे, 4:15
साढ़े	saaRhe	half past (from three onward)	साढ़े तीन बजे, 3:30
पौने	paune	a quarter to	पौने पाँच बजे, 4:45
डेढ़	DeRh	one and a half, so half past one	डेढ़ बजे, 1:30
ढाई	Dhaaii	two and a half, so half past two	ढाई बजे, 2:30

Read those last two again. Hindi has a single word meaning one and a half and another meaning two and a half, and साढ़े is not used with one or two because those words already exist. So 1:30 is डेढ़ बजे and 2:30 is ढाई बजे, but 3:30 is साढ़े तीन बजे. Learners find this charming once they stop resisting it, and these words are used far beyond the clock: डेढ़ किलो is a kilo and a half, ढाई साल is two and a half years.

For am and pm, Hindi uses the part of the day: सुबह के आठ बजे subah ke aaTh baje (eight in the morning), दोपहर के दो बजे dopahar ke do baje (two in the afternoon), शाम के छह बजे shaam ke chhah baje (six in the evening), रात के नौ बजे raat ke nau baje (nine at night).

Key idea: बजे means o'clock, literally struck; savaa, saaRhe, and paune give quarter past, half past, and quarter to, and Hindi uses the dedicated words DeRh and Dhaaii for half past one and half past two.

Days and months

The days of the week hold a genuine surprise for an English speaker, and it is a family resemblance again. Hindi weekdays are named for the same seven celestial bodies as the English and Romance ones, because both systems descend from the same ancient astrological week.

Hindi	Reads	Day	Named for
सोमवार	somvaar	Monday	som, the moon; compare Monday, lundi
मंगलवार	mangalvaar	Tuesday	Mangal, Mars; compare mardi
बुधवार	budhvaar	Wednesday	Budh, Mercury; compare mercredi
गुरुवार	guruvaar	Thursday	Guru, Jupiter; compare jeudi
शुक्रवार	shukravaar	Friday	Shukra, Venus; compare vendredi
शनिवार	shanivaar	Saturday	Shani, Saturn; compare Saturday
रविवार	ravivaar	Sunday	Ravi, the sun; also called इतवार itvaar

वार vaar means day, so the pattern is simply planet plus day. Learn सोम, मंगल, बुध, गुरु, शुक्र, शनि, रवि and the week assembles itself.

Months are easier: modern Hindi borrows the Gregorian names, adapted in spelling. जनवरी janvarii, फ़रवरी farvarii, मार्च maarch, अप्रैल aprail, मई maii, जून juun, जुलाई julaaii, अगस्त agast, सितंबर sitambar, अक्टूबर akTuubar, नवंबर navambar, दिसंबर disambar.

Alongside these runs the traditional Hindu lunar calendar, whose months are चैत्र chaitra, वैशाख vaishaakh, and so on, and whose era, the Vikram Samvat, runs about fifty-seven years ahead of the Common Era. You do not need it for daily conversation, but every festival in the next module is dated by it, which is why Diwali and Holi move around the Gregorian calendar from year to year.

Money, prices, and age

The currency is the रुपया rupayaa, plural रुपये rupaye, divided into a hundred पैसे paise. The ₹ symbol, adopted in 2010, was designed by D. Udaya Kumar and combines the Devanagari letter र with a Latin R, the two horizontal strokes evoking both the shirorekha and an equals sign.

• यह कितने का है? yah kitne kaa hai? How much is this? Literally, this is of how much? Note कितने, the oblique form, because का follows.
• यह सौ रुपये का है। yah sau rupaye kaa hai. It is a hundred rupees.
• ये कितने के हैं? ye kitne ke hain? How much are these?
• पचास रुपये। pachaas rupaye. Fifty rupees.

Notice रुपये rather than रुपया after a number. Counted things take the plural, and रुपया is a marked masculine, so its plural is रुपये. The same happens with साल: दो साल do saal, two years, where साल is unmarked and does not change.

Age has two idioms and you should know both.

• मैं बीस साल का हूँ। main biis saal kaa huun. I am twenty years old. A man says का; a woman says की: मैं बीस साल की हूँ।
• मेरी उम्र बीस साल है। merii umr biis saal hai. My age is twenty years. Neutral and slightly more formal.
• आपकी उम्र क्या है? aapkii umr kyaa hai? How old are you? Ask this carefully; as in English, it is a personal question.

Key idea: Hindi weekdays are planet plus vaar, matching the English and Romance week; prices use kitne kaa hai with the oblique kitne, and age is expressed with saal kaa or saal kii agreeing with the speaker.

Common misconceptions

• Hindi numbers assemble like English ones. They do not; each number from 1 to 100 is a separate word, and only the उन prefix for one-less-than-ten is predictable.
• A lakh is a million. A lakh is a hundred thousand and a crore is ten million; Indian commas group as 1,00,000 and 1,00,00,000.
• साढ़े works for every half hour. Not for 1:30 or 2:30, which have their own words, डेढ़ and ढाई.
• बजे is a preposition meaning at. It means struck, as a bell strikes, and the number precedes it: तीन बजे, at three o'clock.
• The Hindi weekday names are unrelated to English ones. Both name the same seven celestial bodies, which is why Shani and Saturn both give Saturday.

Recap

• Hindi numbers 1 to 100 must be memorized individually; learn 1 to 20 and the ten multiples first.
• The उन prefix marks one less than the next ten: unniis, untiis, untaaliis.
• लाख is 100,000 and करोड़ is 10,000,000, written with Indian comma grouping.
• बजे is o'clock; savaa, saaRhe, and paune are quarter past, half past, and quarter to, with DeRh and Dhaaii for 1:30 and 2:30.
• Weekdays are planet plus vaar; prices ask kitne kaa hai, and age uses saal kaa or saal kii.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Rupee. britannica.com
2. Reserve Bank of India. (n.d.). Indian currency. rbi.org.in
3. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Indian numbering system. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindu calendar. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

English has one word for uncle. Hindi has five, and which one you use tells your listener, instantly and without further explanation, whether the man is your father's older brother, your father's younger brother, your mother's brother, your father's sister's husband, or your mother's sister's husband. That is not decoration. In a society organized for centuries around the joint family, संयुक्त परिवार samyukt parivaar, in which several generations and several brothers' households lived under one roof, those five men occupied genuinely different positions with different authority, different obligations, and different degrees of formality. The vocabulary is a map of the household.

This lesson covers the three vocabularies you will reach for most in real life: family, food, and shopping. Along the way it gives you a construction Hindi uses for physical sensations that turns English inside out, and an honest account of when bargaining is expected and when doing it makes you look foolish.

The kinship web

Start with the core, which is simple.

Hindi	Reads	Means
माँ / माता जी	maan / maataa jii	mother
पिता जी / पापा	pitaa jii / paapaa	father
भाई	bhaaii	brother
बहन	bahan	sister
बेटा	beTaa	son
बेटी	beTii	daughter
पति	pati	husband
पत्नी	patnii	wife

Even here Hindi is more specific than English when it matters: बड़ा भाई baRaa bhaaii is an elder brother and छोटी बहन chhoTii bahan a younger sister, and Indians almost always specify, because relative age governs who defers to whom.

Now the grandparents, where the first split appears.

• दादा daadaa, father's father; दादी daadii, father's mother.
• नाना naanaa, mother's father; नानी naanii, mother's mother.

And now the full set of uncles and aunts. Read this table slowly; it is the heart of the lesson.

Hindi	Reads	Exactly who	English calls them
ताऊ	taauu	father's elder brother	uncle
ताई	taaii	his wife	aunt
चाचा	chaachaa	father's younger brother	uncle
चाची	chaachii	his wife	aunt
मामा	maamaa	mother's brother	uncle
मामी	maamii	his wife	aunt
बुआ	buaa	father's sister	aunt
फूफा	phuuphaa	her husband	uncle
मौसी	mausii	mother's sister	aunt
मौसा	mausaa	her husband	uncle

Ten Hindi words collapse into two English ones. And notice the structure: the male and female of each pair are formed from the same root with the -aa and -ii endings you learned in Module 3. चाचा and चाची, मामा and मामी, ताऊ and ताई. Learn the five men and the women come almost free.

Key idea: Hindi kinship terms distinguish paternal from maternal and elder from younger, so English uncle corresponds to taauu, chaachaa, maamaa, phuuphaa, and mausaa depending on the exact relationship.

Why Indian English says cousin brother

Hindi has no word for cousin. What it has is a system: take the sibling word and modify it to show the line of descent.

• चचेरा भाई chacheraa bhaaii, the son of your चाचा, that is, your father's brother's son.
• ममेरा भाई mameraa bhaaii, the son of your मामा, your mother's brother's son.
• फुफेरी बहन phupherii bahan, the daughter of your बुआ.
• मौसेरी बहन mauserii bahan, the daughter of your मौसी.

Note the adjectives चचेरा, ममेरा, फुफेरा, मौसेरा, which are -aa adjectives and agree exactly as you would expect: चचेरा भाई but चचेरी बहन.

Now you understand a feature of Indian English that puzzles outsiders. When an Indian speaker says my cousin brother, they are not making an error. They are translating a real and unavoidable distinction: Hindi requires them to say whether this cousin is male or female, and it treats cousins as a species of sibling. English offers only a gender-neutral word that carries no such information, so Indian English invented a compound to fill the gap. It is a solution, not a mistake.

The in-law vocabulary is equally fine-grained: ससुर sasur (father-in-law), सास saas (mother-in-law), भाभी bhaabhii (brother's wife), जीजा jiijaa (sister's husband), देवर devar (husband's younger brother), ननद nanad (husband's sister).

One habit of use matters more than any single word. Indians address relatives by their kin term, not by their name. You call your elder brother भैया bhaiyaa or भाई साहब, never by his given name; you call your father's younger brother चाचा जी. Using an elder's name to their face reads as disrespectful. This is why the kin terms are so heavily used, and why they extend outward to strangers, as you saw in Module 2 with भैया, दीदी, आंटी, and अंकल.

Food

Hindi	Reads	Means	Hindi	Reads	Means
खाना	khaanaa	food, to eat	चाय	chaay	tea
रोटी	roTii	flatbread	पानी	paanii	water
चावल	chaaval	rice	दूध	duudh	milk
दाल	daal	lentils	दही	dahii	yoghurt
सब्ज़ी	sabzii	vegetable, a vegetable dish	अचार	achaar	pickle
पनीर	paniir	fresh cheese	चटनी	chatnii	chutney
नमक	namak	salt	चीनी	chiinii	sugar
मिर्च	mirch	chilli	मसाला	masaalaa	spice, spice mix
आम	aam	mango	केला	kelaa	banana

Two words you will see on every menu in India: शाकाहारी shaakaahaarii, vegetarian, and मांसाहारी maansaahaarii, non-vegetarian. Indian restaurants and packaged foods label themselves this way as a matter of course, and the distinction carries far more social weight than it does in most of the West.

Taste adjectives are worth having ready. तीखा tiikhaa is hot with chilli, and it is not the same word as गरम garam, which is hot in temperature. मीठा miiThaa is sweet, नमकीन namkiin salty or savoury, खट्टा khaTTaa sour, and स्वादिष्ट svaadishT delicious. यह बहुत तीखा है। yah bahut tiikhaa hai. This is very spicy. खाना बहुत स्वादिष्ट है। khaanaa bahut svaadishT hai. The food is delicious.

Now a construction that inverts English. Hindi does not say I am hungry; it says that hunger has struck you, with you in the dative को form you met in Lesson 10.

• मुझे भूख लगी है। mujhe bhuukh lagii hai. I am hungry. Literally, hunger has attached to me.
• मुझे प्यास लगी है। mujhe pyaas lagii hai. I am thirsty.
• मुझे ठंड लग रही है। mujhe ThanD lag rahii hai. I am feeling cold.
• क्या आपको भूख लगी है? kyaa aapko bhuukh lagii hai? Are you hungry?

The verb is feminine, लगी, because भूख and प्यास are feminine nouns and they are the grammatical subject. You are only the recipient. The same inside-out logic runs through मुझे पसंद है, I like, and it is one of the more distinctive habits of the language.

Useful table phrases: एक चाय दीजिए। ek chaay diijiye. One tea, please. मेन्यू दीजिए। menyuu diijiye. The menu, please. थोड़ा और पानी दीजिए। thoRaa aur paanii diijiye. A little more water, please. बिल दीजिए। bil diijiye. The bill, please. बस, धन्यवाद। bas, dhanyavaad. That is enough, thank you.

A cultural note that will save you confusion at somebody's home. Indian hospitality expects the host to press food on the guest and the guest to decline once or twice before accepting. और लीजिए aur liijiye, take some more, will be said repeatedly, and बस bas, enough, is not treated as a final answer. This is not rudeness on either side; it is a script both parties know. Take a little more, praise the cooking, and everyone is content.

Key idea: Hindi menus divide the world into shaakaahaarii and maansaahaarii, tiikhaa means chilli-hot as opposed to garam which means temperature-hot, and hunger and thirst use the dative construction mujhe bhuukh lagii hai, with the sensation as the grammatical subject.

The bazaar

Now shopping, and a set of phrases that will pay for the whole course the first time you use them in a market.

Hindi	Reads	English
यह कितने का है?	yah kitne kaa hai?	How much is this?
बहुत महँगा है।	bahut mahangaa hai.	That is very expensive.
थोड़ा कम कीजिए।	thoRaa kam kiijiye.	Please reduce it a little.
आख़िरी दाम क्या है?	aakhirii daam kyaa hai?	What is your final price?
यह दिखाइए।	yah dikhaaiye.	Please show me this one.
ठीक है, ले लेता हूँ।	Thiik hai, le letaa huun.	All right, I will take it.
नहीं, रहने दीजिए।	nahiin, rahne diijiye.	No, leave it. (walking away)
क्या यह मिलेगा?	kyaa yah milegaa?	Is this available?

Two polite imperatives do most of the work here and are worth memorizing on their own: दीजिए diijiye, please give, and लीजिए liijiye, please take. Both are the -इए forms you met in Module 2, built from देना and लेना.

Now the honest cultural guidance, because bargaining is a skill with rules and getting them wrong is worse than not bargaining at all.

• Where it is expected: street markets, cloth and craft shops, souvenir stalls, roadside vendors, and auto-rickshaws without a running meter. The first price quoted is an opening position, not an insult.
• Where it is not: supermarkets, chain stores, malls, restaurants, pharmacies, railway counters, and anywhere displaying एक दाम ek daam or the English words fixed price. Attempting to bargain there marks you out immediately.
• The tone: friendly, mildly theatrical, never aggressive. Smiling disbelief at the first price is part of the ritual. So is walking away, which is a legitimate move and frequently produces a better offer called after you.
• The proportion: do not grind a vendor down over the equivalent of small change. Haggling hard with someone visibly poorer than you over a trivial sum is bad manners in any language, and Indians notice.

A short exchange to model: यह कितने का है? Five hundred rupees, says the shopkeeper. बहुत महँगा है। थोड़ा कम कीजिए। Four hundred, he says. तीन सौ? you offer. साढ़े तीन सौ, he answers, three hundred and fifty. ठीक है, ले लेता हूँ। Everyone is satisfied, and note that you have just used the numbers, the fractions, the polite imperative, and the habitual present from four different lessons in one conversation.

Key idea: Bargaining belongs in street markets and craft shops and nowhere with a fixed price, the tone is friendly rather than combative, walking away is a legitimate move, and diijiye and liijiye carry most of the politeness.

Common misconceptions

• Hindi kinship terms are just formal versions of uncle and aunt. They encode which side of the family and relative age, information English simply does not carry.
• Cousin brother is broken English. It translates a genuine Hindi distinction: chacheraa bhaaii is specific in a way that cousin is not.
• तीखा and गरम both mean hot, so they are interchangeable. तीखा is chilli-hot; गरम is temperature-hot. Ordering गरम चाय gets you hot tea, not spicy tea.
• I am hungry translates word for word. Hindi says mujhe bhuukh lagii hai, with hunger as the subject and you as the recipient.
• You should bargain everywhere in India. Only where prices are not fixed; trying it in a supermarket or a pharmacy is a tourist error.

Recap

• Hindi distinguishes paternal and maternal relatives: daadaa and naanaa, chaachaa and maamaa, buaa and mausii.
• English uncle corresponds to five Hindi words, and the male and female of each pair share a root with -aa and -ii endings.
• There is no word for cousin; chacheraa bhaaii and mauserii bahan explain Indian English cousin brother and cousin sister.
• Menus divide into shaakaahaarii and maansaahaarii; tiikhaa is chilli-hot and garam is temperature-hot.
• Hunger and thirst use the dative construction; bargaining belongs in markets and not in fixed-price shops, and diijiye and liijiye are the essential polite imperatives.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Kinship. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Indian cuisine and food traditions: India. britannica.com
3. University of Chicago. (n.d.). Digital South Asia Library: McGregor Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. dsal.uchicago.edu
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Indian English. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

Ask a Tamil-speaking engineer in Chennai, a Malayali nurse in Kerala, a Naga student in Nagaland, or a Trinidadian of Indian descent where they learned the Hindi they speak, and a great many of them will give you the same answer: films. Not school, not family, not a textbook. Films.

For most of the twentieth century, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai was the single largest engine spreading conversational Hindi to people who did not grow up speaking it. It carried the language across a linguistically divided country and out to audiences in the Soviet Union, the Middle East, East Africa, Central Asia, and the Caribbean. If you want to understand why Hindi has the reach it does, the answer is only partly political and mostly cinematic.

And there is a second reason this lesson belongs at the end of the course. Film Hindi closes the loop we opened in Lesson 1. In the cinema and above all in the songs, the boundary between Hindi and Urdu simply dissolves, and you can hear, in the space of a single love song, exactly why linguists insist that these are one spoken language wearing two literary costumes.

How Hindi cinema got here

India's first full-length feature, Raja Harishchandra, was made by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913, silent and mythological. The turning point came in 1931 with Alam Ara, the first Indian sound film, and it arrived already carrying songs. That single decision set a pattern that has held for almost a century: the Hindi film is a film with music inside it, not a film with an occasional soundtrack.

Today India produces more feature films per year than any other country, roughly one and a half to two thousand across all its languages. Hindi cinema is the largest single-language slice of that, though it shares the field with enormous Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali industries, and the popular habit of calling all Indian film Bollywood irritates people in every one of those industries.

The name itself is worth a note. Bollywood is a portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood coined by journalists in the 1970s. Plenty of people inside the industry dislike it, on the reasonable grounds that a hundred-year-old tradition with its own aesthetics should not be named after somebody else's. You will hear both Bollywood and the more neutral Hindi cinema, and the second is safer in serious conversation.

Two features of the classic Hindi film are worth knowing because they explain what you will see.

• The masala film. The word मसाला masaalaa, spice mix, describes a film that blends romance, comedy, action, family melodrama, and half a dozen songs into one three-hour package with an interval in the middle. Western critics long treated this as incoherence. It is a deliberate form, built for an audience that came for an afternoon, not for ninety minutes.
• Playback singing. Actors do not sing. Professional singers record the songs and the actors lip-sync to them. The singers are stars in their own right, and the greatest of them, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, and Asha Bhosle, are among the most recorded voices in the history of music. A generation of Indian filmgoers could name the singer behind every face on screen.

Key idea: Hindi cinema has carried songs since Alam Ara in 1931, works in the masala form with playback singers rather than singing actors, and did more than any policy to spread conversational Hindi across India and to audiences abroad.

Where Hindi and Urdu become one language

Here is the point that ties this lesson back to the first one. Film Hindi is not standard Sanskritized Hindi. It is Hindustani, the shared spoken register, and its emotional vocabulary leans heavily Persian and Arabic.

The reason is historical and concrete. For decades the writers and lyricists of Hindi cinema were trained in the Urdu literary tradition, and many of them wrote their scripts in the Urdu script, which the actors then had transliterated. The great film lyricists, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Shakeel Badayuni, and later Gulzar and Javed Akhtar, were Urdu poets working in cinema. The ghazal, a Persian and Urdu verse form, went straight from the poetry gathering onto the soundtrack.

The result is that the vocabulary of Hindi film love songs is overwhelmingly the Persian shelf you met in Lesson 1.

Hindi in songs	Reads	Means	The Sanskrit-shelf word
दिल	dil	heart	हृदय hriday
इश्क़ / मोहब्बत	ishq / mohabbat	love	प्रेम prem
ज़िंदगी	zindagii	life	जीवन jiivan
आसमान	aasmaan	sky	आकाश aakaash
ख़ुदा	khudaa	God	ईश्वर iishvar
नज़र	nazar	glance, gaze	दृष्टि drishTi
दर्द	dard	pain	पीड़ा piiRaa
दोस्त	dost	friend	मित्र mitr

Every word in the left column is Persian or Arabic. Every word in the right column is Sanskrit, entirely correct Hindi, and almost never what a lyricist reaches for. Nobody writes a love song about their हृदय. The heart in a Hindi song is always दिल.

So when someone asks whether Hindi and Urdu are one language or two, the honest answer includes this: in the cinema they are demonstrably one, and hundreds of millions of people on both sides of a national border have spent a century watching the same films and singing the same songs without noticing a boundary at all.

Key idea: Film Hindi is Hindustani written largely by Urdu-trained poets, which is why the emotional vocabulary of songs, dil, ishq, zindagii, khudaa, is Persian and Arabic rather than Sanskrit, and why the cinema is where the Hindi-Urdu distinction visibly dissolves.

The festival year

India's calendar is crowded, multi-religious, and mostly lunar, which is why the dates move against the Gregorian year. Here are the ones you will be asked about.

Festival	Reads	When	What happens
दिवाली / दीपावली	Divaalii / Diipaavalii	October or November	The festival of lights: rows of oil lamps, fireworks, sweets, new clothes, worship of Lakshmi, and in much of the west a business new year
होली	Holii	February or March	The spring festival of colours: coloured powder thrown in the streets, a bonfire the night before
दशहरा / विजयादशमी	Dashahraa / Vijayaadashamii	September or October	Rama's victory over Ravana; giant effigies burned, after nine nights of Navraatri and Ramlila performances
रक्षाबंधन	Rakshaabandhan	August	A sister ties a राखी raakhii thread on her brother's wrist; he pledges protection
ईद	Iid	moves through the year	The two Eids of the Islamic calendar, marked with feasting, new clothes, and visiting
गुरु नानक जयंती	Guru Naanak Jayantii	November	The birth anniversary of the first Sikh Guru
ओणम, पोंगल, बैसाखी, दुर्गा पूजा	Onam, Pongal, Baisaakhii, Durgaa Puujaa	various	The great regional festivals of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Bengal

Two of these deserve a sentence of their own. दिवाली is the one that has travelled: it is a public holiday in several countries and lights up the whole subcontinent for five days. The lamps are दीये diiye, small clay oil lamps, and the sweets are मिठाई miThaaii, which arrive in boxes at every door.

होली is the one with a phrase attached. On Holi, strangers throw coloured powder, गुलाल gulaal, at each other in the street, and the licence for this is a sentence every Indian knows: बुरा न मानो, होली है! buraa na maano, Holii hai! Do not take offence, it is Holi! Notice the negative: न rather than नहीं, exactly as Lesson 11 predicted for a subjunctive.

Greetings are easy and worth memorizing, because you will get to use them.

• दिवाली मुबारक हो! Divaalii mubaarak ho! Happy Diwali!
• शुभ दीपावली! shubh Diipaavalii! Auspicious Diwali!
• होली मुबारक! Holii mubaarak! Happy Holi!
• ईद मुबारक! Iid mubaarak! Eid Mubarak!
• नया साल मुबारक हो! nayaa saal mubaarak ho! Happy New Year!

One last register observation, and it is a small joy. मुबारक mubaarak is an Arabic word meaning blessed, and Hindus use it to wish each other a happy Diwali just as Muslims use it at Eid. शुभ shubh is a Sanskrit word meaning auspicious, and it appears on wedding invitations of every community. Neither word stays inside the religion it came from. That is Hindi doing what it has always done.

Key idea: The Indian festival year is lunar and multi-religious, with Diwali, Holi, Dussehra, Raksha Bandhan, and Eid among the largest, and the greeting formulas mubaarak ho and shubh cross religious lines freely.

Using films as a study tool

You now have a first semester of Hindi and one enormous free resource. Use it deliberately rather than passively.

• Watch with Hindi audio and English subtitles first, then rewatch a single scene without them. Five minutes rewatched three times teaches more than three hours watched once.
• Use songs above dialogue at the beginning. Songs repeat, they are slower, the diction is clearer, and lyrics are easy to find and read in Devanagari, which turns listening practice into reading practice.
• Listen for the grammar you know. You can now hear a habitual present, a future in गा, a नहीं before a verb, and a ने construction. Catching one of those in a line of dialogue is a genuine milestone.
• Expect the Persian vocabulary. When a song word is not in your Hindi textbook, it is usually on the Persian shelf. Look it up; those words are half of the emotional vocabulary of the language.
• Do not expect to understand everything, or even most of it, yet. Comprehension of film dialogue is a second-year achievement. Aim for islands of understanding and let them grow.

Common misconceptions

• Bollywood means all Indian cinema. It refers to the Hindi-language industry in Mumbai; the Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali industries are separate and large.
• Hindi film songs are in pure Hindi. They are in Hindustani, and their emotional vocabulary is heavily Persian and Arabic: dil, ishq, zindagii, khudaa.
• Actors sing their own songs. Playback singers record them and actors lip-sync; the singers are stars in their own right.
• Indian festivals fall on fixed dates. Most follow the lunar calendar, so Diwali and Holi move against the Gregorian year.
• मुबारक is only used by Muslims and शुभ only by Hindus. Both words cross communities freely; Diwali is wished with mubaarak all the time.

Recap

• Indian sound cinema has carried songs since Alam Ara in 1931, and the masala form with playback singing defines the classic Hindi film.
• Hindi cinema spread conversational Hindi across a linguistically divided India and to audiences abroad.
• Film Hindi is Hindustani, written largely by Urdu-trained lyricists, which is why song vocabulary is Persian and Arabic.
• Diwali, Holi, Dussehra, Raksha Bandhan, and Eid anchor a lunar, multi-religious festival year, greeted with mubaarak ho and shubh.
• Films and especially songs are the best free listening resource available to a Hindi learner; use short scenes repeatedly rather than whole films once.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Bollywood. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Diwali. britannica.com
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Holi. britannica.com
4. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Hindi cinema. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

The big picture

We began this course with a fact that surprises almost everyone: India has no national language. It is worth ending with the same fact, because now you know enough to understand what it means and why it matters. Hindi is the largest language of the largest country on Earth, and it is one language among many in a place where a great many people, roughly half the population, do not speak it at all and have no obligation to.

This final lesson does three things. It maps the linguistic landscape Hindi sits in, honestly, including the political tensions that come with being the biggest language in the room. It gathers up the honorific system that has been running quietly through every module, because using it well is what separates correct Hindi from courteous Hindi. And then it takes stock: what you can now do, what waits in Hindi II, and how to keep going.

Four families, twenty-two schedules, and a thousand mother tongues

The 2011 Census of India recorded 121 languages with more than ten thousand speakers each, and grouped some 1,369 distinct mother tongues underneath them. That is not a country with a language; it is a subcontinent with a linguistic ecosystem. Those languages belong to four unrelated families.

Family	Roughly	Where	Members
Indo-Aryan	about 78 percent of Indians	north, west, and east	Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Assamese, Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Nepali
Dravidian	about 20 percent	the south	Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam
Austroasiatic	about 1 percent	central and eastern India	Santali and the other Munda languages
Tibeto-Burman	about 1 percent	the Himalayas and the northeast	Bodo, Manipuri, and many smaller languages

Sit with the second row for a moment, because it is the one outsiders most often get wrong. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam are not related to Hindi. Not distantly related; not related at all, as far as anyone can demonstrate. The gap between Hindi and Tamil is wider than the gap between English and Russian, which are at least both Indo-European. Tamil has its own two-thousand-year literary tradition, older in continuous written use than almost anything in Europe. Calling Tamil a dialect of anything, or assuming a Tamil speaker owes Hindi some deference, is both factually wrong and, in southern India, genuinely offensive.

The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution lists twenty-two languages for official recognition and development: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Individual states set their own official languages on top of that.

The scripts are almost as various as the languages, and here your work in Module 1 pays an unexpected dividend. Devanagari serves Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Konkani, and Sanskrit. Bengali and Assamese share a script; Punjabi uses Gurmukhi; Gujarati, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam each have their own; Urdu, Kashmiri, and Sindhi use Perso-Arabic; Santali has Ol Chiki. But nearly all of the Indian scripts descend from the ancient Brahmi script, which means nearly all of them are abugidas built on the same logic you already learned: consonants with an inherent vowel, matra signs, conjuncts. The shapes differ; the system does not. Learning Devanagari has quietly taught you how a dozen other scripts work.

You can see the whole arrangement on a banknote. Every Indian rupee note prints its denomination in English and Hindi on the front and in fifteen other languages on the back.

Key idea: India's languages fall into four unrelated families, twenty-two hold constitutional recognition, and the southern Dravidian languages are not related to Hindi at all; most Indian scripts descend from Brahmi and share Devanagari's abugida logic.

The official language settlement, honestly

When the Constitution was written, Article 343 made Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language of the Union and provided that English would continue alongside it for fifteen years, until 1965, after which Hindi would stand alone. The date came, and the country nearly came apart over it.

In Tamil Nadu, the prospect of Hindi becoming the sole language of central government produced mass protests through 1965. People died. The government responded with the Official Languages Act, amended to guarantee that English would continue as an associate official language indefinitely, and that no change would be made without the consent of the non-Hindi states. That settlement has held for sixty years and remains the basis of Indian language policy: two link languages, neither displacing the other.

Alongside it runs the three-language formula, articulated in the 1968 National Policy on Education and reaffirmed in later policies. The design is symmetrical and generous:

• In non-Hindi-speaking states, schoolchildren learn the regional language, English, and Hindi.
• In Hindi-speaking states, they learn Hindi, English, and a modern Indian language, preferably a southern one.

And here is the honest part, which a course written for adults should say plainly. The second half has never really been implemented. Schools in the Hindi belt rarely teach Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, or Malayalam; where a third language is taught it is usually Sanskrit. Southern states have long pointed out that the burden of the formula falls almost entirely on them, and Tamil Nadu has declined to adopt it at all, following a two-language policy of Tamil and English since the 1960s. The argument recurs in Indian politics every few years and it is not settled.

None of this should discourage you from learning Hindi. It should simply calibrate how you talk about it. Hindi is enormously useful across northern, central, and western India, widely understood in cities everywhere thanks to cinema and migration, and warmly received almost anywhere when a foreigner attempts it. It is not a passport to every conversation in the country, and a learner who understands that will make a far better impression than one who does not.

One date to know: Hindi Divas, 14 September, marks the Constituent Assembly's 1949 decision on Hindi's official status, and is observed with essay competitions and official ceremony. The Central Hindi Directorate, केंद्रीय हिंदी निदेशालय, under the Ministry of Education, produces teaching materials and dictionaries for exactly the purpose you are using this course for.

Key idea: Article 343 made Hindi an official language of the Union with English alongside it; the 1965 anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu secured English indefinitely, and the three-language formula, generous in design, has been applied unevenly in practice.

Honorifics: the courtesy system in one place

Every module has added a piece of this. Here it is assembled, because respect in Hindi is not a single word but a system running through pronouns, verbs, names, and even the body.

Device	How it works	Example
आप	the respectful you, always with plural verb agreement	आप कैसे हैं?
जी	attached to names and kin terms, and before haan and nahiin	राम जी, माता जी, जी हाँ
Plural for respect	a plural verb about one respected person	पिता जी आए हैं। My father has come.
Oblique plural pronoun	उन्होंने rather than उसने about an elder	उन्होंने कहा। He said. (respectfully)
Kin terms for strangers	address anyone by an appropriate family word	भैया, दीदी, आंटी, अंकल, भाई साहब, बहन जी
Titles	before a name in writing and formal speech	श्री shrii, श्रीमती shriimatii, सुश्री sushrii, साहब saahab
The -इए imperative	the polite command that carries what please carries in English	बैठिए, आइए, दीजिए, सुनिए
Not using names	elders are addressed by relationship, never by given name	भैया, not the brother's name

Two habits go beyond words. The first is that many Indians greet an elder or a revered person by touching their feet, पैर छूना pair chhuunaa or चरण स्पर्श charaN sparsh, to which the elder replies with a blessing: जीते रहो jiite raho, may you live long, or आशीर्वाद aashiirvaad. As a foreign learner you are not expected to do this, and attempting it clumsily can be awkward, but you should recognize it when you see it and not be startled.

The second is that the whole system is loosening, especially among urban Indians under thirty, who use तुम freely with friends and colleagues, mix English into every sentence, and would find some of the older formality stiff. That is real, and you will meet it. But it does not change the advice this course has given since Module 2, because the cost of the two errors is asymmetrical. Being slightly too formal makes you sound polite and a little old-fashioned. Being too familiar makes you sound rude. Default to आप and जी, and let people invite you closer.

Key idea: Hindi respect is a system, not a word: aap with plural agreement, jii on names, plural verbs about elders, kin terms for strangers, and the -iye imperative, and the safe default for a learner remains the formal end of it.

What you can now do

Take stock, because you have covered a great deal.

• You can read and write Devanagari: the vowels and matras, the full consonant grid, conjuncts, the nasal marks, the numerals, and the schwa deletion rules.
• You can hear and describe the two contrasts English does not use, aspiration and retroflexion, and you know what to listen for in a recording.
• You can greet, introduce yourself, ask and answer questions, and choose your pronoun correctly.
• You can assign gender to most nouns from their endings, form plurals, put nouns into the oblique before postpositions, and make adjectives and possessives agree.
• You can build sentences in the habitual present, the future, the perfective past, and the habitual past, negate them, and recognize the ने construction and explain why it exists.
• You can count, tell the time, handle money, name your family precisely, order food, and bargain.
• You have roughly five hundred words of everyday vocabulary and a real understanding of where Hindi sits in the world.

What Hindi II holds

The next course picks up exactly where this one stops. Expect:

• The full aspect system. The continuous you have only glimpsed, plus the perfect: मैंने देखा है, I have seen.
• Compound verbs. One of the loveliest things in Hindi. A second verb attaches to the first to shade its meaning: खा लो khaa lo, eat it up; समझ गया samajh gayaa, I got it; बता दीजिए bataa diijiye, do tell me. Native speakers use these constantly and learners who lack them sound flat.
• Causatives. A beautifully regular system that turns one verb into three: पढ़ना paRhnaa (to read), पढ़ाना paRhaanaa (to teach, that is, to cause to read), पढ़वाना paRhvaanaa (to have someone taught). Learn the pattern once and it applies across the vocabulary.
• चाहिए chaahiye for needing and ought, another dative-subject construction: मुझे पानी चाहिए, I need water.
• Relative clauses with the जो and वो correlative pair, conditionals with अगर and तो, the passive, the imperative system in full, and a great deal more of ने.
• Around fifteen hundred more words, and your first unadapted reading.

How to keep going

• Handwrite Devanagari every day. Ten minutes of copying keeps the script fluent. Reading transliteration instead of script is the habit that stalls learners permanently.
• Never learn a noun without its gender. Store it in a phrase, अच्छा घर or अच्छी किताब, so the gender travels with the word.
• Use films and songs deliberately, as Lesson 15 set out: short scenes rewatched, lyrics read in Devanagari.
• Read something real every week. Hindi Wikipedia, children's books, and the online editions of Hindi newspapers all give you graded difficulty for free.
• Find a person to talk to. This matters more than any other item on this list. Hindi speakers are, almost without exception, delighted by a foreigner making the attempt, and forgiving of every error including the ने ones.
• Forgive yourself the ने construction. It takes a year. You will be understood the whole time.

One last thing, and then you are done. The word नमस्ते, which opened Module 2, works as a goodbye as well as a hello. So: आपसे मिलकर बहुत ख़ुशी हुई। aapse milkar bahut khushii huii. It was a great pleasure to meet you. आपकी हिंदी बहुत अच्छी है। aapkii hindii bahut achchhii hai. Your Hindi is very good. शुभकामनाएँ! shubhkaamnaaen! Best wishes! फिर मिलेंगे। phir milenge. We will meet again. नमस्ते।

Common misconceptions

• Tamil and the other southern languages are relatives of Hindi. They belong to the Dravidian family and are not demonstrably related to Hindi at all.
• Hindi replaced English as India's official language in 1965. The opposite: the anti-Hindi agitations led to English being retained indefinitely as an associate official language.
• The three-language formula is applied evenly. Hindi-belt schools rarely teach a southern language, and Tamil Nadu follows a two-language policy instead.
• Learning Devanagari only helps with Hindi. Most Indian scripts descend from Brahmi and share its abugida logic, so you have learned how a dozen writing systems work.
• The honorific system is dying, so it can be ignored. It is loosening among urban young people, but too formal reads as polite while too familiar reads as rude, so the formal default still wins.

Recap

• India's languages belong to four unrelated families; twenty-two are scheduled, and the Dravidian languages of the south are unrelated to Hindi.
• Article 343 made Hindi an official language of the Union; the 1965 agitations secured English alongside it permanently.
• The three-language formula is symmetrical in design and uneven in practice, a live political argument to this day.
• Hindi respect works as a system: aap, jii, plural agreement, kin terms for strangers, and the -iye imperative.
• Hindi II brings the full aspect system, compound verbs, causatives, chaahiye, relative clauses, conditionals, and the passive.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). India: languages. britannica.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Dravidian languages. britannica.com
3. Government of India. (n.d.). National portal of India. india.gov.in
4. Government of India, Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Language policy and the Central Hindi Directorate. education.gov.in
5. Wikimedia Foundation. (n.d.). Languages of India. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org