EkGuru › Learn Hindi › By first language › Korean
Your first language decides which parts of Hindi are easy and which are slow, and almost no course takes account of it. This page does. It is written for someone who already speaks Korean and wants to know what that is worth before spending a year finding out.
Identical where it counts. Korean is subject-object-verb and so is Hindi: 저는 밥을 먹습니다 and मैं चावल खाता हूँ have the same shape, element for element. The rebuilding-every-sentence problem that English speakers face simply does not arise for you.
Three structural gifts that almost no course will tell you about. Word order, above. Particles: 은/는, 이/가, 을/를 and 에 do precisely the work Hindi's ने, को, से and में do, in the same position after the noun. And grammatical politeness — Korean encodes respect in the verb ending, and so does Hindi, so the 요/습니다 versus 반말 instinct is exactly the आप/तुम/तू instinct. Korean's three-way stop distinction is a fourth: your ear already separates plain, aspirated and tense consonants, which means क versus ख costs you nothing while it defeats English speakers for months.
Voicing. Korean does not distinguish voiced from voiceless the way Hindi does — ㄱ is somewhere between g and k depending on position, while Hindi keeps क and ग permanently separate. That is your real sound work. Grammatical gender is the other: Korean has none at all, and Hindi marks it on nouns, adjectives and verbs together, so it must be built from nothing.
| What | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Voicing, not aspiration | You already have aspirated versus plain. What is new is that Hindi also contrasts voiced क/ग, प/ब, त/द independently. This is the mirror image of the English speaker's problem. |
| Retroflex ट ठ ड ढ | No Korean equivalent. The tongue curls back. Expect a few weeks. |
| ㄹ splits into two | Korean's single liquid becomes Hindi's separate ल and र, which are different letters in different words. |
| No final-consonant neutralisation | Korean neutralises final stops; Hindi releases them fully. दोस्त ends in a real t. |
| Feature | How it compares |
|---|---|
| Particles map onto postpositions | 은/는/이/가/을/를 behave like ने/को. Same job, same position. |
| Honorifics transfer directly | The 요/습니다 register is आप; 반말 is तुम. You will handle this more naturally than any European learner. |
| Gender is genuinely new | Korean has no grammatical gender. Learn every Hindi noun with its gender attached from day one, or relearn several hundred later. |
| No counters | Hindi has nothing like 개, 명, 마리. Numbers attach directly to nouns. A rare simplification. |
Looks like: tea in both. In practice: a true cognate — both trace to the same Chinese root through different routes. Several more like it exist along the old trade paths.
Notice that the order is not the order a general course would use. That is the whole point of organising this by your first language: the sequence that works depends on what you already have.
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.
It depends entirely on what you are comparing. Three structural gifts that almost no course will tell you about. Word order, above. Particles: 은/는, 이/가, 을/를 and 에 do precisely the work Hindi's ने, को, से and में do, in the same position after the noun. And grammatical politeness — Korean encodes respect in the verb ending, and so does Hindi, so the 요/습니다 versus 반말 instinct is exactly the आप/तुम/तू instinct. Korean's three-way stop distinction is a fourth: your ear already separates plain, aspirated and tense consonants, which means क versus ख costs you nothing while it defeats English speakers for months.
Voicing. Korean does not distinguish voiced from voiceless the way Hindi does — ㄱ is somewhere between g and k depending on position, while Hindi keeps क and ग permanently separate. That is your real sound work. Grammatical gender is the other: Korean has none at all, and Hindi marks it on nouns, adjectives and verbs together, so it must be built from nothing.
Not to speak. Many learners work in romanised Hindi for months. If you want to read signs, messages or anything written, the script is phonetic and consistent, and most learners read simple words within a few weeks.
Nobody can give you an honest number, because it depends on hours per week far more than on your first language. What this page can tell you is which parts will be quick for you and which will be slow, which is more useful than a figure.
Everything above can be read. The sound work in particular cannot be self-assessed — you cannot hear your own errors, which is precisely why they fossilise. A tutor is the only mechanism that fixes that, and an hour a week is enough.
Find a Hindi Guru Free Hindi guidesSame language, different practicalities — lesson times and prices differ by country:
Four pages written specifically for speakers of this language — not general Hindi advice with the language name swapped in.