How this course works
Hindi — हिन्दी — is spoken by around 600 million people and is the most widely spoken language in India. Together with Urdu, which is the same language in spoken form, it reaches most of northern South Asia.
What you will be able to do
By the end you will read and write Devanagari, pronounce the sounds English lacks, greet people, introduce yourself, build sentences in the present tense, count, shop, and ask directions. You will not be fluent — no six-week course delivers that — but you will be past the script and able to keep learning from real material.
How the course is arranged
| MODULE | WHAT IT COVERS |
|---|---|
| The script | Vowels, consonants, vowel signs, conjuncts |
| Words and sentences | Pronouns, honorifics, word order, the present tense |
| First conversations | Greetings, introductions, questions, politeness |
| Everyday Hindi | Numbers, family, food and shopping, time and directions |
| Reading practice | Putting it together, and where to go next |
A quiz closes each module. You need 70% to pass and may retake it freely.
How to study
Write every letter by hand. Devanagari letters differ by small strokes, and the hand learns them faster than the eye.
Say everything aloud. Hindi distinguishes aspirated from unaspirated consonants, and retroflex from dental. Neither distinction exists in English, and neither becomes reliable through silent reading.
Thirty to forty minutes per lesson. The script module is the foundation for everything after it.
THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT DEVANAGARI Unlike English, Hindi spelling is almost perfectly phonetic. Once you know the letters, you can read any word correctly on sight — including words you have never met. The effort is front-loaded and then it is over.