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The first thousand words, where they come from, and the free vocabulary your own language may already give you.
Frequency beats interest. The first two hundred words of any language carry a startling share of ordinary conversation, and in Hindi they are the ones on this site's phrasebook: the pronouns, होना and करना, the numbers to twenty, the question words, and about forty nouns you meet daily.
Hindi vocabulary comes from four visible layers, and knowing which is which saves you time. The Sanskritic layer supplies formal and written Hindi — प्रदेश, कार्यक्रम, विश्वविद्यालय — and is what makes newspapers hard. The Persian and Arabic layer supplies an enormous amount of everyday speech — किताब, दोस्त, वक़्त, शुक्रिया, मुश्किल — and is shared with Urdu. The English layer is larger than most learners expect and completely legitimate: स्टेशन, डॉक्टर, मोबाइल, स्कूल are the normal words, not lazy substitutes. And the inherited layer is the oldest core: घर, पानी, हाथ, आँख.
That fourth layer is where speakers of related languages get free vocabulary. Persian, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay, Swahili, Thai and Tamil all share words with Hindi through Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic contact. An Indonesian learner already half-recognises guru, dunia, bahasa, cinta and negara. Most learners never find out they have this advantage.
| 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.
Reading gets you the grammar. Speaking is the part that only happens with another human. EkGuru tutors are native Hindi speakers in India who teach one to one over video — no group classes, no subscription.
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