EkGuru › Learn Hindi › By first language › Marathi
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 Marathi and wants to know what that is worth before spending a year finding out.
Identical. Marathi and Hindi are both Indo-Aryan, both verb-final, both postpositional. You are not learning a new grammar — you are learning a close cousin's version of one you have.
Almost everything, including the script: Marathi is written in Devanagari, so you can read Hindi aloud on day one with no study at all. Word order, postpositions, gender and honorifics all carry across. A very large shared vocabulary. Marathi speakers reach conversational Hindi faster than any group except Nepali and Urdu speakers, and often underestimate how close they already are.
Three genders becoming two. Marathi has masculine, feminine and neuter; Hindi has only masculine and feminine, so every Marathi neuter noun has to be reassigned — and there is no rule, so it is memorised. Marathi's ळ and its distinct च/ज affricates have no Hindi counterpart and should be dropped. Some very common words differ in ways that cause real confusion rather than mild amusement.
| What | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Drop ळ | Hindi has no retroflex lateral. Use ल. |
| The च and ज affricates | Marathi distinguishes dental and palatal versions; Hindi has one of each. |
| Otherwise, you are set | The consonant and vowel inventories overlap almost entirely. |
| Feature | How it compares |
|---|---|
| Three genders become two | Every Marathi neuter must be reassigned to masculine or feminine in Hindi, individually. This is the main work. |
| Script already known | Devanagari is the same. Reading is immediate. |
| Postpositions match | Marathi's case suffixes and Hindi's postpositions behave alike. |
| The ने construction exists in both | Marathi has its own ergative pattern. Similar, not identical — worth checking the differences with a tutor. |
Looks like: look related and both concern learning. In practice: Marathi शिकवणे is 'to teach' while Hindi सीखना is 'to learn'. Close cousins produce this trap constantly, and it is more embarrassing than a word you simply do not know.
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. Almost everything, including the script: Marathi is written in Devanagari, so you can read Hindi aloud on day one with no study at all. Word order, postpositions, gender and honorifics all carry across. A very large shared vocabulary. Marathi speakers reach conversational Hindi faster than any group except Nepali and Urdu speakers, and often underestimate how close they already are.
Three genders becoming two. Marathi has masculine, feminine and neuter; Hindi has only masculine and feminine, so every Marathi neuter noun has to be reassigned — and there is no rule, so it is memorised. Marathi's ळ and its distinct च/ज affricates have no Hindi counterpart and should be dropped. Some very common words differ in ways that cause real confusion rather than mild amusement.
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.