The first time you heard a person speaking Hindi, you probably got surprised and amazed at how deep the sound is. And I bet that you didn’t understand anything during that time. You are reading this article probably because you’re planning to learn Hindi but no idea of it. Is this easy? Do I need to perfect my pitch? Is it tonal or not?
Maybe now, you’re wondering if it’s possible for you to make the appropriate sounds when speaking Hindi. Don’t worry,the language might sound complicated, but it’s not — needless to say that Hindi isn’t a tonal language. It’s even easier than you think.
Hindi is written phonetically, meaning, you’ll write it similar on the way how you pronounce the letters, and that’s a big advantage in learning any language. On the other hand, there are some Hindi sounds which aren’t familiar with English speakers. One example is by adding the “h” sound to some words, so there’ll be sounds like da and dha, ka and kha, etc. But those additional sounds aren’t really a big deal since it’s not difficult to make an “h” sound, isn’t it?
But before we talk more about the Hindi language, let’s take a quick discussion on what is tonal language and why do people get confused if Hindi is tonal or not.
What Is a Tonal Language?
On the recent article “Is Arabic a Tonal Language?” I further explained the meaning of a tonal language. To recapitulate, a Tonal Language uses a pitch tone to determine the meaning of words, meaning, a single word or syllable which is spoken in different tones has various meanings. One example is the Hmong word “paw” which have several meanings such as ball, female, to throw, to see, thorn, or your father’s mother, depending on the pitch used.
Looking back at Hindi, the language doesn’t use any kind of tone to determine the meaning of a word — that’s why Hindi will never be a tonal language. And since you know now that it’ll be pretty much easier to learn compared to tonal languages, I will give you some idea about the Hindi language.
The Hindi Language
Hindi is one of the top 5 languages in the world, together with English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. It is spoken by nearly 425 million as their first language, and for about 120 million people speaks Hindi as their second language.
In India, Hindi is the official language alongside English. There are various local languages in India — Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, and Assamese, Hindi is still used by the largest number of people in the country.
Now let’s talk about the history of Hindi. Have you ever heard of “Sanskrit?” It is an ancient Indian language that is so important as Greek and Latin when it comes to historical and cultural impact. Sanskrit is still used up until today and considered as the holy language of the Vedas — the oldest known literary works and the foundation of Hinduism. So when you’re learning Hindi, you’ll probably learn hundreds of Sanskrit words.
The Hindi Alphabet
Although Hindi can possibly be written in Latin form, it’s still best to learn the Hindi writing system.
Modern Hindi is written in a form of Devanagari script. The name itself comes from two Sanskrit words, “Deva” which means “God” and “Nagari” which means “urban origin.” The Devanagari script was originated from Brahmi script back in 5th century BC together with ten other Indian languages. If you’re used to using the Latin alphabet, you might be overwhelmed when learning Devanagari since it’s more complex and sophisticated. But once you’re familiar with it, you’ll be able to sound out similar languages like Nepali.
Vowels and vowel diacritics
Consonants
There are 11 vowels and 35 consonants in the standard Hindi alphabet — yes, that’s a lot more compared to the English alphabet. On the other hand, the traditional Hindi alphabet has 13 vowels and 33 consonants, a lot more compared to the standard Hindi alphabet.
What’s the difference? In the traditional Hindi, the letters अं [am] and अः [ah] are considered as vowels but counted as consonants in the standard Hindi. The two letters ड़ [rr] and ढ़ [rh] are then counted as consonants in the standard, too.
And talking about lines, you probably notice the horizontal line on top of the letters. That line plays an important role in Hindi. The formed words using different letters are connected by this horizontal line. You’ll notice, too, that 24 out of the 36 consonants has a vertical right stroke, such as ख [kh], घ [gh], ण [n]. The purpose of the strokes is to mark a full stop. In addition, you will probably encounter some dots above letters. A dot is used for nasal sounds.
Why Learn Hindi?
There are nine official languages in India — and the most commonly spoken in the North is Hindi. Although the country has some knowledge of the English language, it’s still best to learn Hindi for better exploration of the Indian culture.
Hindi is the direct descendant of Sanskrit — the ancient Indian language. Knowledge of the Hindi language will help you learn fast wit Sanskrit, Nepalese, Urdu, Bengali, and Gujarati since they all have some similarities with the Hindi language, written or verbal. Having good Hindi skills will also help you communicate with people in Nepal — India’s neighbor.
In addition, the Hindi language has hundreds of dialects in diverse regions. Although they’re different with one another, all of those dialects use the same script. As a conclusion, you’ll be able to converse with different locals once you know how to speak and write Hindi.
Is Hindi Easy to Learn?
Is it hard to learn Hindi? Well, it depends on the learner. If you already know English, then it’ll be easier because you’ll find several familiar words in English which are definitely Hindi or originated from Hindi. Here are some examples that you probably know:
Yoga Karma
Cheetah Bungalow
Avatar Looting
Jungle Thug
Guru
And while English uses these Hindi words, Hindi also uses lots of English words — they’re written in Hindi but pronounced as they are in English. For example, डॉक्टर is pronounced as “doctor” and स्टेशन is pronounced as “station.” Other examples are:
Car Court
Bus Judge
Train Tennis
Motor Football
Railway Cricket
Hospital
That being said, if you want to say “my sister works as a doctor,” then you’ll probably hear the English word without seeing it in written form.
Similar to European languages, Hindi is written from left to right — quite easy compared to those written from right to left. If you’re used to reading THIS, then it’ll be easy for you to read written Hindi. And if we’ll talk about reading here, I would say that Hindi is fairly easy to read since the words are written similar to the way how they’re pronounced. Each Hindi character has a particular sound,
Another factor that makes Hindi easy to read is that it doesn’t have any articles (a, an, the.) On the contrary, the sentence structure of Hindi is way different compared to English, so it’s possible that you’ll be muddled until you get used to write Hindi.
Tips on Learning Hindi
If you’ve finally decided to learn the Hindi language, here are some quick tips that will surely guide you on your journey.
1. Always ask Google Translate. When learning Hindi (or any other language), your friendly Google Translate will be your best friend all throughout the good and bad times. Trust me, I’ve been there.
2. Remember to make a list of the “difficult” things. In this way, it won’t be hard for you to tackle all your weak points. Try to make some time improving them at least once a week.
3. Drop the articles. Take note that Hindi doesn’t use the, a, and an. That’ll save you from writing more!
4. It’s time to be formal. Hindi has three levels of formality, such as the English word “You” which is aap, tum, and tu in Hindi.
5. Show respect when answering. In Hindi, the post-fix ji is added to the end of names and responses such as answering with Yes and No. So if you’re making a response in a formal situation, haan (yes) and nahin (no) will become haan-ji and nahin-ji.
6. Verbs in the end. If English is an SVO language (Subject-Verb-Object), Hindi is a SOV language (Subject-Object-Verb). Always remember to put the verbs last in order to follow the correct grammar in Hindi.
7. Learn Devanagari. Of course, learning Hindi won’t be complete if you skip the alphabet. I agree that you can use the Latin alphabet, but you’ll probably encounter more Hindi words on your learning process. So invest some time to master the Devanagari script.
On your journey, you’ll definitely find more interesting facts about the Hindi language. Those will encourage you to know more about Indian culture. And once you’ve finally mastered Hindi, I suggest that you pass your knowledge to your children, to your grandchildren, and so on.
