Start Learning Hindi for Free

It’s hard to know how to start something. Especially when you are taking on a large task like trying to learn a language. If you have have never learned a language before it’s a challenge to know where to start. You might begin spinning your wheels and put a lot of effort into one task, such as memorizing vocabulary only to find weeks or months later that it hasn’t been as effective as it could have been. But the reality learning Hindi is not that hard and you can start learning Hindi for free!

That’s why my desire with Hindi Unlocked is to help you learn Hindi in the simplest, fastest and most efficient way possible. I don’t want to see you waste time and money on language learning practices that don’t give you large returns. It’s my passion to see you succeed on your Hindi Learning journey, so let’s do this!

Begin at the Beginning

I suggest that you follow my road map for learning the Hindi Language and begin with my 30 Day Hindi Challenge. Start learning Hindi absolutely free and get started learning the language today. The great thing about the 30 Day challenge is that you begin by spending just two minutes a day learning Hindi. When making a new habit it’s often hard to start because we set the requirements too high and we end up making it too difficult to start.

Make it easy

If you want an activity to become a habit make it easy. That’s why we ask you to spend just two minutes a day studying Hindi during the 30 day challenge. But you will find that by the end of the challenge you are spending a lot more time learning than just two minutes, and within a month it will be a habit! If you want to learn more about the two-minute rule then I highly suggest that you read the post on it by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits.

“If you want an activity to become a habit make it easy.”

James Clear said something similar to this…

Build vocabulary

Obviously one of the first places to begin in learning a language is with the vocabulary. In order to speak Hindi fluently you will need to build a broad base of words in your vocabulary. But you don’t want to just learn any words, especially not at the beginning of your Hindi learning journey. Many language learners make the mistake of trying to learn every new word they may come across. Some strategies require you to look through a newspaper and highlight every word you don’t know. This is a technique that could be helpful for advanced learners but it will only frustrate beginners and make them less productive.

You are instead going to want to learn the most common words in the language. You can start with the most common 100 words in Hindi and then move on to the most common 1000 words. (1200-2500 words may be all you need to have a working command of the language.) The strategy of learning the most common words in Hindi helps you to quickly get to a place of fluency. You can then begin to speak Hindi on a basic level while continuing to expand your vocabulary.

Vocabulary Memorization Tools

As far as the memorization of Hindi vocabulary words go there are many options. The tried but true method of paper flash cards never hurts! You can also try out some flash card programs which use spaced repetition algorithms in order to remind you to study a word again before you forget it, causing it to remain in your long term memory. A couple of good programs for this are Anki and Memrise which are also free.

You can also browse through our words on Hindi Word of The Day and follow them on Instagram. I do warn you that not all these words are in the most common 1000. It’s more of a fun thing for Hindi learners to expand their vocabulary. So you may want to come back to it when you are at an intermediate level.

Learn Hindi Grammar

Many people seem to be afraid of grammar. It’s got a bad rap to the extent that learners focus on vocabulary and memorizing phrases while totally ignoring grammar. But the truth is grammar isn’t scary, it’s powerful. Grammar is the key that unlocks languages. If I gave you a Hindi sentence and told you to memorize it you would have a single tool that you could use in a single situation. But by learning the grammar you have the power to create your own sentences from the building blocks of vocabulary and grammatical structures which allows you to say practically anything in any situation!

“Grammar isn’t scary, it’s powerful.”

Jonathan Rider

In our free Hindi course, the 30 Day Hindi Challenge you get a taste of my methodology for teaching grammar. It’s what I like to call a layered approach. You begin with the most basic and fundamental structures of the Hindi grammar and start to drill and practice it. As you become more comfortable with a grammatical construction we start to layer on more complexity by adding new grammatical rules. For example you start off by learning to say “I eat”, then you progress on to saying “I eat food”. After that we learn how to say “I eat bread” in Hindi and then plug in other food words. Then we move on to “I do not eat bread.” See how it works?

Grammar That Unlocks Hindi

Also this isn’t grammar for grammar sake. It’s grammar that unlocks the language by giving you the rules, which are keys. And by learning the rules you can get exponential use out of your vocabulary. For example if you just learn a sentence as a vocabulary word (to be used in a single situation) then you only know how to use that sentence there. But if you learn the 4 basic Hindi tenses and I give you a brand new verb which you have never even heard before you can automatically begin to use that verb in all 4 tenses with all the Hindi pronouns and create hundreds if not thousands of sentences instantly.

After learning all the grammar keys and vocabulary in the 30 day Hindi Challenge (Which is just 2 or 3 words a day) you will be able to form and understand more than 1500 Hindi phrases. Isn’t that insane! So don’t be afraid of grammar, embrace it! If you are really interested in going deep with Hindi Grammar check out our Beginner Hindi Grammar Course!

Start Reading and Writing Hindi

Some language learners want to jump right in to start learning to read and write Hindi. I think choosing when or if you should learn to read or write a language depends upon several factors. First what language are you learning? For example learning to read Mandarin is probably more work than just learning to speak it! Second, what do you want to get out of it? Do you just want to be able to communicate and speak to others or do you truly want to become well-versed in the language?

“Learning to read Hindi is easy so you really don’t have an excuse.”

Jonathan Rider

Start Reading Hindi Early On

In the case of Hindi I think every Hindi Learner should start learning to read Hindi closer to the beginning of their Hindi learning journey. The first reason for this is that learning to read Hindi is easy so you really don’t have an excuse. Yes really, start reading Hindi now! It’s not hard. The Hindi script is phonetic which means each character is always pronounced the same way (with a few minor exceptions), this makes it much easier to learn than say English. In fact you can start reading a few basic words in as little as five minutes with my free eBook Read Hindi in Five Minutes!

Reading improves pronunciation

In addition to being easy, learning to read Hindi greatly helps with your pronunciation. I’ve seen a lot of learners that have continued to learn with the crutch of transliterated Hindi when they don’t have too and continued reliance on that ‘Hindi in English Script’ can actually handicap you. Hindi has many phonemes (sounds in the language) that do not exist in English, but are clearly represented by one Hindi character. So learning the script ensures that you will pronounce each word you read in Hindi correctly. This especially helps because Hindi has 4 T like sounds and 6 D like sounds! So I encourage you to not put off learning to read the Hindi Script. Finish the 30 Day Hindi Challenge and then move on to our Beginner Hindi Script Course.

Start Learning Hindi Now

Regardless of what you decide to do, you will never become proficient in Hindi unless you start! So begin at the beginning! If you are worried about your budget start learning Hindi with our free resources. Learn some Hindi vocabulary then start learning to read Hindi. After that move on to learning the grammar of the Hindi language which will unlock the keys to speaking Hindi. Don’t wait anymore, start learning Hindi now!