The whole grammar

Hindi is written in Devanagari, from left to right, under a headline that joins the letters of a word. It is not an alphabet in the English sense: each consonant letter already contains a short a, and every other vowel is a small sign attached to it. क is ka, का kā, कि ki, की kī. Spelling is close to the sound, with one big exception — the hidden a that is written and often not said — and a handful of sounds that English does not tell apart: two t’s, two d’s, and a breath that turns one word into another.

A Hindi sentence is built the other way round from an English one: the verb comes last, after the object, and the little words that English puts before a noun come after it. मैं चाय पीता हूँ is “I tea drink am”. The verb “to be” closes most simple sentences, and it changes with the subject: हूँ, है, हैं, हो in the present, था, थी, थे, थीं in the past. Questions keep the same order and simply add a question word.

Hindi numbers are the one place where the language asks for pure memory: every number from one to a hundred is a word of its own, and the patterns between them help only a little. The clock has words of its own for the quarters and halves — सवा, साढ़े, पौने — and two special words, डेढ़ and ढाई, for half past one and half past two. Above a thousand, Indian counting goes on in lakhs and crores rather than millions, and the commas in the figures move to match.

A Hindi noun carries three things an English noun does not. It has a gender, masculine or feminine, even when it names a table or an idea, and that gender decides the adjective, the possessive and the verb. It has a plural that depends on its gender and its ending: लड़का → लड़के, किताब → किताबें. And it has an oblique form, used before every postposition: कमरा but कमरे में.

Hindi pronouns ask two questions English never asks. The first is about respect: there are three words for “you” — तू, तुम and आप — and each has its own verb forms. The second is about distance instead of gender: यह is he, she or it nearby, वह he, she or it further away, and only the verb tells you whether it is a man or a woman. Possessives such as मेरा agree with what is owned, and मुझे is the form behind “I like”, “I need” and “I know”.

Hindi adjectives come in two kinds, and the ending tells you which kind you have. Those ending in -ा — अच्छा, बड़ा, नया — change with the noun they describe, into -े and -ी. All the others — सुंदर, लाल, साफ़ — never change at all. There are no endings for “-er” and “-est”: “bigger than” is “than … big”, with से, and “the biggest” is “than all big”, सबसे बड़ा.

Where English has prepositions, Hindi has postpositions: they come after the noun. कमरे में is “room in”, मेज़ पर “table on”. And they change the noun in front of them into its oblique form — the reason it is कमरे में and not कमरा में. A handful of single words (में, पर, को, से, का, तक) do most of the work, and many more are built from के plus a noun or adverb: के लिए, के साथ, के बाद.

Hindi builds its present from two pieces: a form of the verb that agrees with the subject, and a form of होना, “to be”, at the very end. वह बोलता है is “he speaks” — literally “he speaking is”. For what is going on at this moment there is a second present with रहा: वह बोल रहा है, “he is speaking”. The split is close to English “I speak” against “I am speaking”, and the second piece in both is the same हूँ, है, हो, हैं you already know. What English does not have is the gender: a woman says मैं बोलती हूँ, a man मैं बोलता हूँ.

The Hindi past is built on one form, the perfective participle: आया, बैठा, खाया. On its own it is the simple past, “came”, “sat”, “ate”; with है after it, the perfect; with था, the pluperfect. The surprise is ने. A verb that takes an object marks its subject with ने in these tenses, and then the verb stops looking at the subject and agrees with the object: a man says मैंने चाय पी, with पी feminine because चाय is. Get this one rule right and the rest of the area is forms and practice.

The Hindi future is one word with three layers: the stem, a vowel that shows the person, and -गा, -गी or -गे for gender and number. मैं जाऊँगा, “I will go”; वह जाएगी, “she will go”. There is no separate word for “will”, and no ने in any future. The same forms of होना also make guesses about the present — वह घर पर होगा, “he is probably at home” — and a second construction, जाने वाला है, says that something is about to happen.

Hindi has an imperative for each level of “you”: जा for तू, blunt or intimate; जाओ for तुम, between friends; जाइए for आप, polite. Choosing the wrong one is a mistake of manners, not of grammar, and it is the one people notice. Next to the imperative stands the subjunctive, मैं जाऊँ?, “shall I go?”, which is the future without its -गा and covers suggestions, wishes and possibilities. Both lead into conditions: अगर … तो for a real “if”, and the forms in -ता for an “if” that did not or cannot happen.

Hindi has three words for “not”, and each has its place. नहीं is the ordinary one, standing before the verb: मैं चाय नहीं पीता. मत is for commands: मत जाओ, “don’t go”. न is the quiet one, used with the subjunctive, in polite requests and in “neither … nor”. In the present a negative sentence usually drops its है, which changes the look of the verb. And “never”, “nobody” and “nothing” are built from कभी, कोई and कुछ plus a plain नहीं.

English modal verbs are small and fixed; the Hindi ones are a mixed family. सकना, “can”, follows the bare stem: मैं बोल सकता हूँ. चाहना, “to want”, follows an infinitive: मैं जाना चाहता हूँ. The rest turn the sentence round: the person takes को, and the verb agrees with something else. मुझे जाना है, “I have to go”, is literally “to me, going is”. This “to me” pattern — with चाहिए, पड़ना and लगना — is one of the most useful things in Hindi, and the one English speakers find strangest at first.

A large part of the Hindi verb system is built from two words. A noun or adjective plus करना or होना makes a new verb: इंतज़ार करना, “to wait”; शुरू होना, “to begin”. A bare stem plus जाना, लेना or देना makes a compound that adds a shade of meaning — finished, for yourself, for someone else: सो गया, “fell asleep”; खा लिया, “ate (it all up)”. The second verb carries tense and agreement, and it also decides whether the sentence takes ने. That last point is where most mistakes come from.

Hindi verbs come in families. खुलना, “to open” (the door opens), has a partner खोलना, “to open” (someone opens the door), and often a third, खुलवाना, “to have it opened by someone”. English uses one verb for all three and adds words; Hindi changes the verb, and with it whether the sentence takes ने. The passive is built differently again — a past participle plus जाना: यहाँ हिंदी बोली जाती है, “Hindi is spoken here” — and belongs mostly to formal speech and writing.

English builds a great deal with “-ing” and “to”: swimming is fun, I came to help, having eaten, while singing. Hindi has a form for each of these, and every one of them is built on the verb stem: the infinitive in -ना used as a noun, -कर for one action before another, -ते हुए for two at once, -आ हुआ for the state an action leaves behind, and -ते ही for “as soon as”. None of them carries a tense of its own: the verb at the end of the sentence does that.

Hindi joins clauses in two ways. Some words simply stand between two clauses, as in English: और, लेकिन, या, क्योंकि, कि, ताकि. Others come in pairs, one in each clause: जब … तब for time, जो … वह for relative clauses, जहाँ … वहाँ for place. The first halves all begin with ज; once that pattern is clear, a whole family of sentences opens up.

English reports speech by shifting tenses and pronouns: “I am tired” becomes “she said she was tired”. Hindi does much less. The report is joined with कि, the tense stays as the speaker used it, and the pronouns may stay as the speaker said them or change to fit the reporter — both are normal. What needs care is the verb and its postposition: कहना takes से for the person told, बताना takes को, and पूछना takes से.

Some of the commonest words in Hindi are not nouns or verbs but small particles that attach to whatever they stress. भी adds (“also”, “even”), ही narrows (“only”, “exactly”), तो draws a conclusion or sets one thing against another, and -वाला turns almost anything into a describing word: the vegetable seller, the red one, the train to Delhi. They are short, they are everywhere, and their meaning depends on where they stand.