Hindi is unusually welcoming to a beginner who is willing to be imperfect. Sentences are forgiving, everyday speech borrows English freely, and hundreds of millions of people are used to hearing the language spoken with an accent. The catch is that your verb changes depending on your own gender, so there is no way to practise without committing to a form.
The correction almost every learner meets in their first conversation.
It is your own gender that changes the verb when you are the subject. English gives you no reflex for this, and it shows up in the very first sentence you try to say.
Aap, tum and tu carry respect, familiarity and intimacy, and each takes different verb endings. Using tu with a stranger is not casual, it is rude.
The verb comes last and the little words come after the noun rather than before it, so "in the house" is built back to front from an English speaker's point of view.
Nobody in Mumbai is speaking textbook Hindi. Real speech slides between Hindi and English mid-sentence, and that counts as speaking it.
| Say this | When |
|---|---|
| ये हिंदी में क्या कहते हैं?ye hindi mein kya kehte hain | What do you call this in Hindi. The question that grows your vocabulary fastest. |
| फिर से बोलिएphir se boliye | Please say that again. Polite, and you will need it early and often. |
| अच्छाachha | Good, okay, oh really, I see. Tone does all the work, and it is everywhere. |
| ठीक हैtheek hai | "That is fine." Agreement, closure, and a way to move a conversation along. |
| मतलबmatlab | "I mean" or "meaning". Buys you a second to rephrase, exactly like the English filler. |
Gendered endings are the habit worth forming first, so corrections name what changed and why rather than just showing a fixed sentence.
Borrowed English words are normal speech, not a failure. When there is a natural Hindi word, you will be offered it rather than told off.
On Pro, your speech is scored per sound, which helps with the retroflex consonants and the aspirated pairs English collapses into one.
This language is in beta: it works end to end, and it has had far fewer real conversations behind it than Spanish or Japanese. If something sounds wrong, tell us from inside the app.
Not to speak. Plenty of fluent Hindi speakers in India read it rarely, and messaging is full of Hindi typed in Latin letters. Learning the script later is much easier once the words are already in your ear.
No, that is how a great many people in Delhi and Mumbai actually talk. Dosti will not punish a borrowed English word, and it will offer you the Hindi one when there is a natural one to use.
In everyday conversation, barely at all. They share grammar and most common vocabulary, and diverge in formal registers and in writing. If you speak one, you can largely hold a conversation with someone speaking the other.
Two minutes, no account, and no judgment about mixing in English.
Start speaking Hindi