EkGuru › Learn Hindi › Daily Hindi › Day 7
च छ ज झ are made with the middle of the tongue against the palate. ट ठ ड ढ are the retroflex set: the tongue curls back towards the roof. This second group is the sound of Hindi, and it is the one that does not exist in most European languages.
Curl your tongue back and say 'ta'. It should sound wrong to an English ear. That wrongness is correct.
| English | Hindi | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| ch as in 'church', but lighter | च | cha |
| ch with a puff of air | छ | chha |
| j as in 'jam' | ज | ja |
| j with breath behind it | झ | jha |
| ny as in 'canyon'; rare on its own | ञ | nya |
| hard t — tongue curled back to the roof | ट | ta |
| the same, with a puff of air | ठ | tha |
| hard d — tongue curled back | ड | da |
| the same, with breath | ढ | dha |
Substituting English t and d, which land between the Hindi dental and retroflex sets and are heard as neither.
This is day 7 of 7 in the sounds and script phase (days 1–7), whose job is hearing Hindi accurately and reading Devanagari slowly. It assumes you have done day 6. It closes this phase. If any of it feels shaky, that is worth a second pass before moving on — the next phase builds directly on it. Day 8 begins the first sentences phase.
About 30 to 40 minutes if you do the task properly rather than reading past it. Script days are slower than they look: recognising a letter takes a few seconds, writing it takes a minute, and the writing is what makes the recognition stick. The speaking part is not optional decoration — saying it aloud badly is worth more than reading it correctly, because your mouth learns nothing from your eyes. There are 9 new words today. If that is too many, take the first three and leave the rest; 9 half-known words are worth less than three you can produce. Missing a day is not a reason to stop — the sequence matters, the calendar does not.
Devanagari is easy to get slightly wrong when it is typed by hand — a missing matra, the wrong nukta. If something here looks off to you, trust a native speaker over this page and please tell us so it gets fixed — it takes a moment and a real person reads it. Romanised spellings are a guide to the sound, not a standard: there is no single official way to write Hindi in Latin letters.
Today's task is a speaking task. Doing it alone is better than not doing it, and doing it with someone who corrects you is worth about five times as much.
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