Who you are and where you are from
🎯 Introduce yourself fully, and meet the sentence shape of Hindi.
🗣️ Say these out loud
- मेरा नाम अनिल है — mera naam Anil hai 🔊 MAY-ra naam a-NIL hai My name is Anil. मेरा for a male speaker's masculine noun; a girl still says मेरा नाम because नाम itself is masculine.
- मैं मुंबई से हूँ — main Mumbai se hoon 🔊 main mum-BYE say hoon I am from Mumbai. से se = from. It comes after the place, not before — Hindi puts its little words behind.
- मैं विद्यार्थी हूँ — main vidyarthi hoon 🔊 main vid-YAR-thee hoon I am a student. छात्र chhaatra is the other common word; both are from Sanskrit.
- मुझे हिंदी आती है — mujhe Hindi aati hai 🔊 MOO-jhay HIN-dee AA-tee hai I know Hindi. Literally 'to me Hindi comes'. Hindi often says feelings and skills this way.
- थोड़ी-थोड़ी — thodi-thodi 🔊 THO-ree THO-ree a little, a little Doubling a word softens it. मुझे थोड़ी-थोड़ी हिंदी आती है — I know a little Hindi.
- आपका नाम क्या है? — aapka naam kya hai? 🔊 AAP-ka naam kya hai What is your name? क्या kya = what, and it stands where the answer will stand.
Read every line aloud twice before moving on. The mouth learns a language, not the eye.
🔍 The verb waits until the end
Hindi is subject–object–verb, the opposite of English. 'I Hindi speak' is the correct order. Every Indian language on this page works this way, and so do Japanese and Korean — English is the unusual one.
- मैं हिंदी बोलता हूँ = I Hindi speak (I speak Hindi)
- वह किताब पढ़ती है = she book reads (she reads a book)
- Because the verb is last, a Hindi listener waits for the end of the sentence to know what happened.
- A postposition follows its noun: मुंबई से (from Mumbai), मेज़ पर (on the table).
🌍 Among the people
Hindi and Urdu are the same spoken language with two scripts and two vocabularies for formal words — Sanskrit for Hindi, Persian and Arabic for Urdu. Two people speaking simply cannot tell which they are speaking.
🔁 Practise today
- Write your introduction in five sentences, verb last each time.
- Turn these into Hindi order: 'I read books.' 'She eats rice.' 'We play cricket.'
- Learn मेरा, तुम्हारा, आपका — my, your, your (respectful).
