How Long Does It Take To Learn Hindi

The Hindi language is one of the primary languages of Bharat. It'southward as well one of the most spoken languages on the planet with 270 million native speakers. The Language belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European linguistic communication tree. This means that Hindi is actually related to English, although very remotely.

Hindi is non as difficult to learn equally languages such as Korean and Arabic, but it'due south non washed in a weekend either. If y'all were to report effectually 1 hour a day, condign fluent in Hindi could take about 3 years or more. Just it's possible to get there faster as well. Or it could have a very long time.

In reality, a lot of different factors go into answering this question. It depends non only on the Hindi linguistic communication and your study method, information technology likewise depends on you.

In this article I'll try getting into some of those factors!

Your Groundwork, The Languages You Speak And Your Education All Play A Part In How Long It Takes To Learn Hindi

Yes, first an foremost, it's about yous. Who are you, where are you from, what do you do? This might, maybe, sound like your beginning coming together with the in-laws, simply in fact these are important questions to ask when considering how long it'll take y'all to learn Hindi.

If you're an English-speaking American who only knows English language, you merely won't be in the aforementioned situation as a Bangladeshi who speaks Tamil, English and Thai besides. The more exotic Hindi is to you, the longer it'll take you lot to get it under your peel. And for monolingual Americans, Hindi just might be very exotic.

If yous know one or two other languages, though, your mind is already open up for the possibility of other languages. This might sound strange, but people who only speak one language just have a much harder fourth dimension adjusting to foreign languages. Why do they have to say it that manner? Or why can't they just say it with the same give-and-take order as in English? These are questions that monolinguals learning their first strange language ofttimes ask.

So you don't have to be fluent in a language related to Hindi, similar Bengali, to have an advantage. Dutch or Swahili as well, volition be an advantage.

And then there's your educational groundwork. I'm non talking about "whether you studied linguistics or not". This is more a question of being used to written report at all. People who take experience with keeping a schedule and a written report routine, taking notes and memorizing new fabric volition take an reward over those who don't. It's quite simple actually.

It doesn't mean that you tin can't larn Hindi if yous didn't do well in physics class. Sure you tin, it's just likely that someone with a more than bookish background will be a few steps ahead.

How Long Does It Accept To Learn The Hindi Devanagari Alphabet? (It's Faster Than You Think)

When because learning the Hindi language, a lot of people immediately find themselves put off by the sight of the Hindi alphabet, Devanagari.

While it'south very cute and exotic looking to virtually new learners, it's besides something that puts off a lot of beginners and sometimes even makes them decide not to study Hindi. They simply call up it's too difficult.

This is such a shame. Deciding non to larn Hindi because of the alphabet is like deciding not to climb a mountain because you need to pass by a minor loma to get there.

The Devanagari is non an all-encompassing writing system similar Chinese with thousands of unique characters. Nor does it, like Arabic, exclude vowels, making pronunciation hard to figure out. The Hindi alphabet is simply a set of letters respective to a gear up of sounds. When you learn them by heart, you can read and write in Hindi.

The Hindi alphabet can exist learned in under 2 weeks! (I've written an commodity on How To Learn The Hindi Alphabet, that y'all might find useful).

Call back near it: When y'all learn a new language, yous need to acquire several thousands of words past eye in order to speak it fluently. It's very possible, and non very difficult if just you give it fourth dimension. Only still, a few thousand seems like a lot! To learn the Hindi alphabet, you but demand to acquire 48 messages.

48, that's information technology.

Then, in curt: The Hindi alphabet is not one of the factors that will seriously dull y'all down when learning Hindi

Hindi Grammer Isn't The Worst, But It's Different

The Hindi linguistic communication is quite different from English. Different, however, is not the same as difficult, and Hindi grammer is actually non that bad.

The cases in Hindi are significantly easier than it'south the case with Slavic languages like Russian or Shine.

Hindi besides has genders, similar in French where some nouns are feminine and others are masculine, which affects how, for example, adjectives are used. In Hindi, however, the gender can be easily figured out only from looking at word endings, so there's no mystery.

Hindi also has no articles. At that place are no "The" and "A" in Hindi, significant that a sentence will be simpler to construct. It might, however, take a little more than getting used to!

The same tin be said for prepositions. Hindi has none; But information technology has postpositions. A postposition comes later on the substantive whereas a preposition comes earlier. Yous'd say something like "get the car within" instead of "get inside the car". Except that there are no articles, so really information technology would be "get car inside".

And then no, Hindi grammer is not that difficult. Simply it's different, and fifty-fifty though you won't take whatever huge difficulties in understanding how Hindi grammar works, it'll take some time getting used to.

The Pronunciation of Hindi Is Not That Bad, But It'll Add To The Total Time

Hindi has 48 different messages which is almost twice equally many as in English. The main reason for this is that nigh consonants in Hindi have two variants. An aspirated version and an unaspirated version.

And then what's the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants? Aspirated consonants are pronounced with a small puff of air coming out of your rima oris. Unaspirated consonants are pronounced without this puff of air, or with very little air.

We have the same sounds in English even though nosotros don't distinguish betwixt them. Endeavour holding your hand in front end of your rima oris and say the two word "school" and "cake". Notice that the k-sound in "school" has no puff of air whereas "block" does. "School" is pronounced with an unaspirated consonants whereas "block" is pronounced aspirated.

All in all: Hindi pronunciation is non that difficult to learn, just since y'all'll have to focus on certain slight differences, it might have a niggling longer to get it right.

On the plus side, however, the Hindi alphabet is phonetic. This means that everything you lot read in Hindi will be pronounced exactly the fashion it is spelled. This is much easier than in English, where pronunciation can sometimes be completely different from the spelling.

Hindi Vocabulary Is Exotic, And You'll Demand To Focus On Each Give-and-take To Memorize Information technology

Hindi vocabulary might take some time simply due to the fact that it bears no resemblance to English language.

If you were to learn Castilian, German or French, much of the vocabulary would sort of make sense. The give-and-take "business firm" is "casa" in Spanish. Y'all'd quickly be able to make the clan of a firm being a "lilliputian example that you lot alive in". In German language, it's "Haus", which needs no explanation, and in French it's "maison" which volition remind y'all of masonry, the act of building houses.

In Hindi, the word for "house" is "makan" (मकान).

It'south not a difficult word to pronounce, and information technology'south neither long, nor complicated. Only it's different. It most probable doesn't remind you of anything, and this simple fact will mean that information technology'll have you longer to learn it and get used to it.

In Hindi, yous'll demand to be reminded of new vocabulary a lot more oftentimes in order for them to finally stick. You'll probably exist able to benefit from thinking about some associations, using mnemonic techniques or writing notes, but all of these activities volition mean that learning vocabulary volition take a lot longer.

I've written an article most "How To Remember Words" where I get into a few of these techniques.

How Long Linguists Say It Takes To Acquire Hindi

The Foreign Service Institute is an American government establishment that teaches foreign languages to US diplomats and envoys. They teach a significant number of languages and have decades of experience on the affair.

In guild to plan out their intensive instruction programs, they've grouped all the languages that they teach into four categories based on how long they guess that it'll accept an average English speaker to acquire the language to a level of "loftier working proficiency".

While the FSI'due south estimates are based on an intensive classroom learning setting, and you're most likely studying Hindi in another manner, the number is all the same useful in comparison the time it takes to learn Hindi to other languages.

The get-go group if for category one languages. These are the languages that are relatively close to English, such as Danish, Dutch and Norwegian, but also languages of the Romance language family, such as French and Spanish. These all take around 5-600 classroom hours to learn to fluency according to FSI.

The Second group is for languages that are either slightly more complicated or just a little more exotic. Hither we find Indonesian, Swahili, merely also High german. These languages, according to FSI, take around 900 classroom hours to learn.

In the Third group, which is where nosotros detect Hindi, nosotros'll as well run across such languages as Thai, Russian and Hungarian. This category is for languages that are quite different for an English speaker and that requires a piffling more than time. At 1100 classroom hours needed, these take nearly twice as long as a language such as French.

And finally, the fourth grouping comprises Chinese, Korean, Arabic and Japanese. These languages have a long fourth dimension. In fact, the FSI estimates that they'll take 2200 classroom hours for an average English language speaker in order to attain a high level of fluency.

But let's become back to Hindi: Hindi is in the third category which FSI says takes 1100 classroom hours. It shares its category with Russian and Thai (and a lot of other languages) but I'd actually argue that Hindi might exist a little easier to larn than these two languages. Let'south go on that in mind.

How Long It Takes To Learn Hindi: A Few Cases

The 1100 hours that the FSI estimates that information technology takes to acquire Hindi should probably exist taken with a grain of salt. I assume that you are a self-student, which means that your study process is hard to compare to the FSI classroom setting.

FSI's numbers are also based on the supposition that the study process is very well planned, adapted to each learner and very consistent.

Then in that location'due south the question of the level of Hindi that y'all aim for. FSI has a goal of "Loftier working proficiency" which is a very high level of fluency. Your goals may not exist the same, and most learners would exist satisfied with a little less, meaning that you can save some time. Let'southward aim for the lower advanced level.

But all of these factors (including all of the previous points mentioned in this commodity) make it very difficult to say exactly how long information technology will take you to larn Hindi. I will, however effort listing a few scenarios below.

A learner who knows what he or she is doing and who consistently studies an hr a twenty-four hours: If this is you and you're gradually adapting your learning methods to fit your level in the best possible style, you lot tin reach a lower avant-garde level of Hindi in nearly two years.
Someone who is putting in the piece of work, but who's trying a few learning methods out along the way and studies an hour on most days: If you're a little unsure most how to get about learning Hindi, but you're still studying on most days, you lot tin can get to the lower advanced level of Hindi in 3 or perhaps 4 years.
A less consistent learner who keeps coming back to studying Hindi afterwards short pauses: If yous're in a situation where you take breaks of several days at present and over again, and if you're non studying in a varied and adapted style that fits you, you might be in for a longer run. Inconsistency is 1 of the biggest pitfalls in language learning, and depending on how long you're away from your studies, you might need to spend your study sessions reviewing rather than learning new material. If this is you, information technology might take yous as long equally 6-8 years to acquire Hindi.
A learner that lacks motivation and consistency and has long hiatuses from studying Hindi and who has an inefficient approach: In this case, getting to a lower advanced level of Hindi is non very likely at all. If you proceed eventually coming dorsum to studying the Hindi language, you might have reasonable results in a decade or more, but people in this situation are much more likely to somewhen give up and never learn Hindi. People who do stop upward fluent, ordinarily do so because they've changed their study routine.

The Near Important Variable: You lot

In the finish: Learning Hindi comes down to ane cistron that's fifty-fifty more than important than everything else mentioned:

Y'all.

Are you motivated enough to sticking with studying the Hindi language every day for months and years before getting a glimpse of your goal?

Will y'all put in the piece of work each and every mean solar day and consistently keep studying?

Learning Hindi takes dedication and patience. Most people end up giving up earlier reaching their goals, so it's of import to know what to expect before getting started. Now you lot have an idea.

On the other hand, finally getting to the point where yous realize that y'all've now become fluent in the Hindi language is worth all of these efforts.

So if you lot're ready, start learning Hindi today!