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त थ द ध न are dental: the tongue touches the upper teeth, as in Spanish or Italian. प फ ब भ म are made with the lips. With these you have all thirty-three consonants in five logical families.
Say ट and त one after another until you can hear the difference reliably. This pair does more damage to learner intelligibility than any other.
| English | Hindi | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| n with the tongue curled back | ण | na |
| soft t — tongue against the upper teeth, as in Spanish | त | ta |
| the same, with a puff of air | थ | tha |
| soft d — tongue against the teeth | द | da |
| the same, with breath | ध | dha |
| n as in 'net' | न | na |
| p as in 'spin' — no puff | प | pa |
| p with a puff; in loanwords often f | फ | pha |
| b as in 'bat' | ब | ba |
| b with breath behind it | भ | bha |
| m as in 'man' | म | ma |
Hearing ट and त as the same sound. They are as different in Hindi as p and b are in English.
This is day 2 of 7 in the first sentences phase (days 8–14), whose job is saying true things about yourself without assembling them word by word. It assumes you have done day 8. It sits in the middle of the phase, which is where most of the actual learning happens and where most people quietly stop. Day 10 continues from here.
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 11 new words today. If that is too many, take the first three and leave the rest; 11 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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