LESSON NOTES

All About S1 #3
Painless Hindi Grammar

CONTENTS
2 Grammar

# 3
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GRAMMAR

The Focus of This Leson is Basic Hindi Grammar

Welcome to our explanation of basic Hindi grammar! Now, we know that the mere mention of
grammar is enough to make your palms sweat and perhaps bring back some not-so-good
memories of your old high school language classes. But don't worry - we're here to give you a
basic overview of Hindi grammar using language that's easy to understand - no drawn-out,
long-winded explanations to be found here! Learn Hindi grammar quickly while having fun at
the same time!

Before we take a look at Hindi grammar though, let's quickly go over the basics of English
grammar first. By understanding more about how English works, you'll be able to see how it is
similar or different from Hindi grammar.

First, let's take a look at sentence order.

English is what we call an SVO language, which means that sentences come in the order of
subject - verb - object. Let's illustrate this with an example.

English Sentence Order

subject verb object

Shyam writes letter

The subject, or the one doing the action, is "Shyam." The verb, or action, is
"writes." The object, or the one 'receiving' the action, is "letter." This is an example of a
sentence in an SVO language.

Hindi is a SOV language, as shown in the table below.

Hindi Sentence Order

By using the sentence: याम प लखता है। (Shyam patra likhta hai)

subject object verb

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याम (shyam) प (patra) लखता है (likhta hai)

Shyam letter writes

Characteristics of the Hindi Language

Now let's take a look at some characteristics of Hindi by comparing them with English. First,
we'll talk about features that are much simpler than their English counterparts.

The main differences are that we place verbs at the end of the sentence (like in German) and
that Hindi (like other Indian languages) uses postpositions instead of prepositions.

Hindi uses Hai at the end of the sentence, which literally means "exist" with addition to the
main verb. It again changes with the person as below:

1. First person - hu

2. Second Person -ho

3. Third person - hai

Verbs

When you look up verbs in the dictionary, you will find they all end in ना (naa). When you

remove this, you have the stem. For example, जाना (jaanaa) is the verb for "to go." The stem

of this verb is जा (jaa). In order to make the first person, present tense of this verb, you add ता

(taa) or ती (tii) depending on if you are a man or a woman.

For Example:

If a man wanted to say "I go," then he would say मैं जाता ँ। (main jaaTaa huun), but if a

woman wanted to say "I go," she would say मैं जाती ँ। (main jaatii huun).

Tense

First, let's start with tense. Tense is a method that we use in English to refer to time - past,

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present, and future. If you are a native English speaker, you might not even be aware of how
many tenses there are in English. Let's think about the future tense for a moment. The
sentence "I jog" in the present tense becomes "I will jog," or even, "I'm going to jog" (and they
have slightly different meanings! Did you ever notice?) Hindi, too, has three main tenses:

1. Future tense (भवयकाल। )

2. Present tense (वतमानकाल। )

3. Past tense (भूतकाल। )

For Example:

1. याम प ल खता है । (Shyam patra likhta hai) - Here, "Shyam writes a letter" is a
sentence with लखता as a verb in simple present tense and a stem verb लख (likh),

which means "to write." To make it simple future tense, we just need to add गा (ga)

and remove ता (ta) from the end of the verb and remove है (hai). As in the below

example:

2. याम प ल खे ग ा। , (Shyam patra likhega) "Shyam will write a letter."

So how do we change this to the past? Simple! We just modify our stem verb लख (likh) as

लखा (likha) by just adding the matraa "।" (aa) to the verb. As in the below example:

1.

Nouns and Gender

Hindi has two genders, masculine in which a noun always ends in the sound [a], and
feminine nouns, which end in the sound [i]. Simple classes of masculine gender include all
male human beings and male animals, while feminine gender includes all of the female
human beings and female animals. Not only that, but common things, non-living articles, and
abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to a rule. Hindi shares this
characteristic with one of the closest languages, Urdu, and many other Indo-European
languages such as Spanish, French, and

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1. Vyakti vachak sangya ("proper noun") - e.g., Delhi, Gandhi, Ramayan, Geetanjali,
Himalaya, Tajmahal

2. Jati vachak sangya ("common noun") - e.g., more ("peacock"), pustak ("book"),
mahila ("lady"), baalak ("boy"), baalika ("girl")

3. Bhav vachak sangya ("abstract noun") - e.g., bachpan ("childhood"), satya ("truth"),
sundarata ("beauty"), namrata ("politeness")

4. Samudaay vachak sangya ("collective noun") - e.g., sena ("armed forces"), sabha
("assembly"), mandali ("group")

5. Dravya vachak sangya ("material noun") - e.g., sona ("gold"), loha ("iron"), paani
("water")

"English" ह द Romanized

"I" मै mai

"you" तम tum

"you"(formal) अाप aap

"he" वाे vo

"she" वाे vo

"we" हम hum

"we" (exclusive) हम hum

"you" (plural) तम लाेग tum log

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"they" वाे लाेग vo log

Singulars and Plurals

Remember learning all of the complicated rules for forming plurals in English when you were
in grade school? We first learn that you add "-s" to a word to make it plural, but then one
exception after another follows, such as words like "knives," "candies," and "mice." Well now,
think about this: Hindi words also change to reflect plurals.

1. Masculine, ending in -a:

Singular: लड़का, ladka ("boy") Plural: लड़क,े ladke ("boys")

2. Masculine, ending in other vowel (very few):

Singular: गु, guru ("teacher") Plural: गु, guru ("teacher")

3. Masculine, ending in a consonant:

Singular: दाे त, dost ("friend") Plural: दाे त, dost ("friends")

4. Feminine, ending in -i:

Singluar: लड़क, ladki ("girl") Plural: लड़कया, ladkiya ("girls")

5. Feminine, ending in a consonant:

Singular: कताब, kitab ("book") Plural: कताबें, kitabe ("books")

6. Feminine, ending in -a or -u:

Singular: अायापीका, adhyapika ("female teacher") Plural: अायापीकाएं, adhyapikae ("female

teachers")

Making Questions

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Think for a moment about how you make questions in English. You have to change the order
of the sentence!

For Example:

1. "He is a student," becomes, "Is he a student?"

In Hindi, it's extremely easy to create questions. A neutral yes or no question can be formed
by placing an optional ा at the beginning of a sentence, while more Hindi interrogative

useful words are:

Interrogative Words

Hindi Romanized "English"

काैन kaun "Who?"

ा kyaa "What?"

ाें kyon "Why?"

कैसा kaisaa "How?"

कब kab "When?"

कहाँ kahaan "Where?"

कतने kitne "How many?"

कसका kiskaa "Whose?"

कतना kitnaa "How much?"

Let's look at one more example:

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1. (ा ) त म द  जाअाे ग े ?

kya tum Delhi jaoge?

"Will you go to Delhi tomorrow?"

Just add ा to the sentence त◌ु म द  जाअाे ग े (tum Delhi jaoge), which means "You will

go to Delhi."

So simple, isn't it!

That wasn't so bad, was it? We hope that this overview has given you a good idea of some of
the unique characteristics of Hindi. Keeping these in mind will give you an idea of what to
look out for and will prepare you as you dive further into the world of Hindi grammar!

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