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Hindi has separate words for relations English lumps together — and there is a reason.
English says 'uncle' and Hindi asks which one. चाचा is your father's younger brother, ताऊ his elder brother, मामा your mother's brother, फूफा your father's sister's husband, मौसा your mother's sister's husband. Each has a matching feminine term. The same precision applies to cousins, in-laws and grandparents.
This is not decoration. In a joint family system these distinctions carry real information about who is senior to whom, who lives in the same household, and who has what obligation. The vocabulary encodes a social structure, which is why it survives even in families that no longer live that way.
Two terms do a great deal of everyday work beyond the family. भाई (brother) is used warmly for any man of roughly your age, and refusing that use sounds cold rather than precise. दीदी (elder sister) is used for any older woman you are friendly with. Getting comfortable with both makes ordinary interactions much easier.
And a note on address: children are called बेटा (son) and बेटी (daughter) by adults generally, not only by parents. Being called बेटा by a shopkeeper is affection, not confusion.
| English | Hindi | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Mother | माँ | maa |
| Father | पिता | pita |
| Elder brother | भाई | bhai |
| Elder sister | दीदी | didi |
| Son | बेटा | beta |
| Daughter | बेटी | beti |
| Wife | पत्नी | patni |
| Husband | पति | pati |
| Friend | दोस्त | dost |
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.
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