Learn English through Hindi
हिन्दी के माध्यम से English सीखें
Every lesson explains English by comparing it directly to Hindi grammar and vocabulary — word order, case marking, formal speech, and more — instead of translating through English.
All Lessons
Greetings & Formality
अभिवादन और औपचारिकता
Hindi marks respect with a layered 'you' system — तू, तुम, and आप. English collapses all of that into a single word, 'you', and that flattening is itself the thing to learn.
Personal Pronouns & 'to be'
सर्वनाम और 'to be' क्रिया
Hindi pronouns pick up postpositions like को, से, and ने to mark object, source, or agent, while English pronouns barely change at all — but English's verb 'to be' turns out to be irregular in a way Hindi's tidy होना doesn't prepare you for.
Simple Present Tense
वर्तमान काल (सामान्य रूप)
Hindi's present tense fully conjugates by person, number, AND gender (खाता हूँ vs. खाती हूँ) — English strips almost all of that away, leaving just a single -s for third-person singular as the one surviving conjugation.
Articles: a, an, the
उपपद: a, an, the
This is one of the biggest structural gaps between Hindi and English — Hindi has never needed a word like 'a' or 'the', so this entire category of decision-making is new territory.
Plural Nouns
बहुवचन संज्ञाएँ
English pluralizes with a single default suffix, -s, almost every time. Hindi's plural endings depend instead on the noun's gender and how it ends, so there's no one suffix to map directly onto English's -s.
Numbers 1–10
गिनती 1–10
One through ten is the one stretch of numbers where English and Hindi are evenly matched — both are simply lists of unrelated words to memorize, with the real divergence between the two systems waiting just past ten.
Numbers 11–100
गिनती 11–100
Past twenty, English settles into a clean, repeating tens-then-units pattern — Hindi never does this. Every number from eleven to ninety-nine is its own fused, semi-irregular word, making this the rare stretch where English is actually more predictable than Hindi.
Family
परिवार
English dropped grammatical gender entirely — no gendered verb endings, nothing on the noun itself. Hindi keeps gender alive in its verbs, and also keeps a distinction English lost: which side of the family a relative comes from.
Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
संकेतवाचक सर्वनाम: यह, वह, ये, वे
English demonstratives split along two dimensions at once — near versus far, and singular versus plural — and Hindi actually makes the very same split on its own pointing-words, though it adds a further twist once a postposition gets involved.
Possessives: my, your, his, her, and 's
संबंधवाचक शब्द: मेरा, तुम्हारा, उसका/उसकी, और 's
English marks possession two different ways depending on whether you're using a pronoun or a full noun — where Hindi runs both through essentially the same का/की/के mechanism, agreeing with the thing owned rather than the owner.
Prepositions of Place: in, on, at
स्थान के पूर्वसर्ग
English relation-words come before the noun, the reverse of Hindi's postposition habit — and English's three-way in/on/at split doesn't map cleanly onto Hindi's में/पर system either.
There is / There are
है / हैं
English uses the dummy subject 'there' to announce that something exists — a grammatical placeholder Hindi doesn't need, since Hindi can simply state existence with है/हैं and let the location and the thing itself carry the meaning.
Can & Basic Modal Verbs
सकना और आधारभूत भाव-क्रियाएँ
'Can' behaves nothing like a regular English verb — it never takes -s, never needs 'to', and pushes the real action verb after it, echoing the shape of Hindi's सकना construction, though सकना adds a gender agreement English's 'can' never bothers with.
Sentence Structure
वाक्य संरचना
English word order isn't as free as Hindi's — and the reason why is the single most useful grammar fact on this page.
Past Simple Tense
भूतकाल (सामान्य भूतकाल)
English's past tense collapses down to a single form for every person — no he/she/it exception this time — but a large set of common verbs refuse to follow the regular -ed pattern, while Hindi's past tense goes a completely different route: it doesn't care about person at all, but it does care about gender.
Object Pronouns
कर्म कारक सर्वनाम
English swaps in a completely different-looking word for the object form of a pronoun — me, him, her — rather than building it from the subject form the way Hindi does.
Prepositions of Time: in, on, at
समय के पूर्वसर्ग: in, on, at
The same three prepositions from the Place lesson return for time — but the logic for choosing between them shifts completely, from size of space to size of time period. Hindi speakers will recognize the underlying instinct: Hindi also varies how it marks time expressions, just through postpositions and words like में, को, पर, and बजे rather than three interchangeable words.
Present Continuous
वर्तमान निरंतर काल (Present Continuous)
English distinguishes 'what's happening right now' from 'what happens generally' with two entirely different verb forms — a distinction Hindi also makes, through its own रहा/रही/रहे + है construction.
Comparatives & Superlatives
तुलनात्मक और सर्वोत्तम रूप (Comparatives & Superlatives)
English builds comparisons two different ways depending on how long the adjective is — a split with no real Hindi equivalent, since Hindi handles every comparison the same way regardless of word length, using से ('than') and सबसे ('than all').
Imperative (Commands)
आज्ञासूचक वाक्य (Commands)
English gives commands with the bare verb and no subject at all — a real contrast with Hindi, which still marks who's being commanded through the verb ending itself, just as तू/तुम/आप shape every other sentence.
Modal Verbs: must, should, have to
सहायक क्रियाएँ: must, should, have to
English has three separate ways to express obligation, each carrying a different shade of strictness — and Hindi actually draws a similar three-way distinction, though it builds each one on a dative subject (मुझे, तुम्हें) plus the infinitive, rather than a subject plus modal verb.
Question Formation: Do/Does and Wh-Words
प्रश्न बनाना: Do/Does और Wh-शब्द
English inserts a helper word, do or does, into questions that have no other helping verb — a purely grammatical requirement that Hindi handles very differently, with an optional, invariant question-marker instead.
Negation: don't, doesn't, isn't
निषेध वाक्य: don't, doesn't, isn't
Just like questions, English negation needs the helper verb do/does for ordinary verbs — but 'to be' and modals negate directly, without any helper at all. Hindi skips this split entirely and negates every verb type the same way.
Adverbs of Frequency
बारंबारता सूचक क्रिया-विशेषण (Adverbs of Frequency)
English adverbs of frequency have a surprisingly strict favorite position in the sentence — right before the main verb — while Hindi's frequency words settle right after the subject instead, a difference that follows naturally from Hindi placing its verb at the very end of the sentence.
Future: going to
भविष्य: 'going to'
English's 'going to' future is transparently built from a motion verb — the same literal move-toward-an-action logic Hindi itself uses in constructions like जा रहा हूँ, though Hindi splits the job between जाना (for people making plans) and वाला होना (for everything else).
Reflexive Pronouns
प्रतिवर्ती सर्वनाम (Reflexive Pronouns)
English marks 'doing something to oneself' with a dedicated, person-matched set of -self words, while Hindi often skips a reflexive pronoun altogether — reaching instead for an experiencer construction, or, when it does use a reflexive, relying on a single invariant word (खुद / अपने आप) that never changes for person, number, or gender the way myself/himself/themselves do.
Present Perfect Tense
पूर्ण वर्तमान काल (Present Perfect)
The present perfect (have/has + past participle) describes a past action whose effect still matters right now — a distinction Hindi actually marks in a strikingly similar way, using its own perfective participle plus है ('is') for present relevance versus था ('was') for past relevance.
Present Perfect vs. Past Simple
पूर्ण वर्तमान बनाम सामान्य भूतकाल
The clearest signal for choosing between these two tenses is whether a specific time is mentioned — English treats this as an absolute rule, where Hindi's है/था choice leans the same direction but isn't nearly as strict.
Future: will vs. going to
भविष्य: will बनाम going to
English keeps two future forms alive side by side to mark whether a decision was made now or earlier — and Hindi actually draws a related distinction of its own, between the plain future suffix (-ऊँगा/-एगी) and the वाला/वाली होना construction for a pre-formed plan.
First Conditional
प्रथम सशर्त वाक्य (First Conditional)
The first conditional describes a real, likely future possibility — if this happens, that will follow — and Hindi's अगर...तो construction maps onto it neatly, though English's strict ban on will inside the if-clause is stricter than Hindi's own habits.
Modal Verbs of Possibility: might, may, could
सम्भावना सूचक सहायक क्रियाएँ: might, may, could
These three modals hedge a statement without committing to it, and Hindi has two common ways to do the same job — the सकना auxiliary (सकता/सकती/सकते है) and the adverb शायद — each mapping onto English's might/may/could slightly differently.
Passive Voice
कर्मवाच्य (Passive Voice)
English builds the passive with be + past participle, backgrounding the doer of an action much the way Hindi's own जाना-based passive construction does.
Relative Clauses: who, which, that
संबंधवाचक उपवाक्य: who, which, that
English attaches extra information to a noun with a relative clause placed directly after the noun — Hindi instead prefers a two-part जो...वह (jo...vah) correlative construction, where the relative clause can even move to the front of the sentence.
Reported Speech
अप्रत्यक्ष कथन
Reporting what someone said pushes English's verb tense one step further into the past — a shift Hindi's own reported speech, marked simply with कि ('that'), usually skips entirely.
Phrasal Verbs: An Introduction
वाक्यांश क्रियाएँ: एक परिचय
English combines a verb with a small particle (up, out, off) to build a new, often unpredictable meaning — the closest Hindi comes is its own compound verbs (verb + verb, like छोड़ देना), though the resulting shift in meaning is nowhere near as unpredictable.
Gerunds vs. Infinitives
-ing रूप बनाम to + क्रिया
After certain verbs, English demands the -ing form; after others, it demands 'to' plus the verb — a split Hindi doesn't make at all, since Hindi's own verbal-noun form (the -ना infinitive, like तैरना) stays exactly the same no matter which verb precedes it.
Question Tags
पुष्टिवाचक प्रश्न (Question Tags)
English tacks a small mirrored question onto the end of a statement to seek agreement — Hindi does something similar with a single, unchanging tag like ना or है ना, without needing to rebuild anything from the sentence itself.
Second Conditional
द्वितीय सशर्त वाक्य
The second conditional describes an unreal or unlikely present situation — a hypothetical, not a real possibility — and closely parallels Hindi's own अगर...होता/ता, तो construction, which likewise uses a special non-literal-past verb form to mark unreality.
Present Perfect Continuous
वर्तमान पूर्ण सतत काल
This tense stacks two ideas you already recognize separately — the present perfect's 'still relevant now' and the continuous's 'ongoing action' — into a single form emphasizing duration, something Hindi handles by simply pairing its regular continuous form with a से ('since/for') time phrase.
Past Perfect Tense
पूर्ण भूतकाल
The past perfect (had + past participle) marks the earlier of two past events — a distinction Hindi already makes grammatically with its own चुका था construction, so this tense tends to feel more familiar than most other English tenses.
Passive Voice: All Tenses
निष्क्रिय वाच्य: सभी काल
English builds every passive tense from the same be + past participle pattern, only ever changing be. Hindi's own passive works in a surprisingly similar way: it uses जाना (to go) as an auxiliary next to a participle, and it's जाना that shifts tense while the participle itself stays fixed — one of the rare places where English and Hindi grammar line up almost directly.
Third Conditional
तृतीय शर्तिया वाक्य
The third conditional talks about an unreal past — something that didn't happen and can no longer be changed — the furthest English's hypothetical system reaches, and a meaning Hindi's own अगर...तो conditional also has to stretch to cover.
Reported Speech: Questions & Commands
अप्रत्यक्ष वाणी: प्रश्न और आदेश
Reporting a question or a command reshapes the English sentence completely, not just the tense — question word order disappears, and commands turn into a to-infinitive — while Hindi barely has to reshape anything at all.
Modal Verbs of Deduction: must, can't, might have
अनुमानसूचक मोडल क्रियाएँ: must, can't, might have
These modals let you reason aloud about something you're not certain of — deducing what must be true, what can't be true, and what might have happened — a job Hindi hands to होगा and its past-shifted forms.
Relative Clauses: Non-Defining, whose/where/when
संबंधसूचक उपवाक्य: गैर-निश्चयात्मक, whose/where/when
A comma before a relative clause changes its job entirely in English — from narrowing down which noun you mean to simply adding a side comment about a noun already identified — a distinction Hindi's जो...वह structure doesn't mark with punctuation at all.
Phrasal Verbs: Separable vs. Inseparable
फ़्रेज़ल क्रियाएँ: पृथक्करणीय बनाम अपृथक्करणीय
Some phrasal verbs let their object slide between the verb and the particle, while others refuse to be split at all — a distinction that has to be learned per verb, with nothing in Hindi's own fixed verb-final word order to compare it against.
Past Habits: used to and would
भूतकाल की आदतें: used to और would
English has a dedicated construction for 'this used to happen regularly, but not anymore' — a nuance Hindi's ordinary habitual past (करता था) doesn't automatically separate out on its own.
Causative Verbs: have/get something done
प्रेरणार्थक क्रियाएँ: have/get something done
English marks 'I arranged for someone else to do this' with a compact have/get + object + past participle structure, while Hindi builds the same idea directly into the verb itself through its own causative morphology.
Advanced Comparatives: as...as, the...the
उन्नत तुलनात्मक वाक्य रचनाएँ
Beyond simple -er/more comparisons, English has a structure for equal comparison and a paired structure for two things changing together — both with close Hindi parallels once you see the pattern.
Discourse Connectors: however, although, despite
प्रवचन संयोजक शब्द
These formal-register connectors mark contrast and concession in writing and careful speech — each with a distinct grammatical requirement that doesn't map onto a single Hindi word.
Mixed Conditionals
मिश्रित शर्ती वाक्य
Real events don't always respect the clean past/present split the second and third conditionals assume — mixed conditionals let a past condition affect the present, or a present truth explain a past outcome.
Inversion for Emphasis
बल देने हेतु शब्द-क्रम व्युत्क्रम
Fronting a negative or limiting word at the start of a sentence forces the subject and auxiliary to swap places — a formal, literary flourish with a loose echo in how Hindi reorders words and adds particles for emphasis.
Cleft Sentences: It was...who / What I need is...
विभाजित वाक्य (Cleft Sentences)
Cleft sentences split a plain statement in two to spotlight exactly one piece of information — a structural way of adding emphasis that Hindi often achieves with a single emphatic particle instead.
Modal Perfect: should have, could have, would have
भूतकालिक भाव-सूचक क्रियाएँ (Modal Perfect)
These three modal-plus-have combinations reflect on a past that didn't happen — a missed obligation, an unused ability, or an unfulfilled decision — each carrying a distinct emotional shade.
Nominalization & Formal Register
संज्ञाकरण और औपचारिक शैली
Formal English writing prefers turning verbs into abstract nouns — a compression habit that makes academic and official English feel denser than the same idea spoken casually.
Idioms & Collocations
मुहावरे और संयोजक शब्द (Collocations)
Native-level fluency means recognizing fixed word partnerships whose meaning can't be built from the individual words — and Hindi's own rich मुहावरा tradition gives you the right instinct for spotting them, even when the imagery differs completely.
Subjunctive Mood
विध्यर्थक भाव
A small pocket of formal English grammar uses the plain, unconjugated verb form even for he/she/it — a fossil of an older verb mood that survives specifically after suggestion and demand verbs, much like Hindi shifts the main verb into its own subjunctive-like जाए/करे/हो forms after a कि-clause of wish, suggestion, or demand.
Ellipsis & Substitution
लोप और प्रतिस्थापन
Fluent English constantly drops repeated words rather than restating them — a habit that requires holding the missing information in mind rather than seeing it spelled out, not unlike the way Hindi lets a single भी ('also/too') or a dropped verb carry meaning that would otherwise need a full repeated clause.
Advanced Phrasal Verbs & Multi-word Verbs
उन्नत वाक्यांश-क्रियाएँ
Some English verbs stack two particles at once, or blend with a preposition into a three-part unit — pushing the phrasal-verb habit from earlier levels to its most compressed form, a role that Hindi's own compound verbs (संयुक्त क्रिया) fill with a main verb plus a light verb instead.
Register Switching: Formal vs. Colloquial English
औपचारिक बनाम बोलचाल की अंग्रेज़ी
The final C1 skill isn't a new grammar rule — it's knowing when to deploy everything learned so far. English shifts vocabulary, contractions, and structure between formal and colloquial registers roughly as sharply as Hindi shifts between तत्सम-भारी शुद्ध हिंदी and रोज़मर्रा की, अंग्रेज़ी-मिश्रित बोलचाल की हिंदी.
Discourse Markers & Hedging
प्रवचन सूचक शब्द और मृदुकथन
Advanced English softens strong claims with a set of hedging words — arguably, presumably, to some extent — letting a speaker commit to an idea without overstating its certainty, the same diplomatic role Hindi hands to शायद and लगता है.
Participle Clauses
कृदंत उपवाक्य
Advanced English compresses two related actions into one sentence by turning the second verb into a participle — a tightly packed construction that closely echoes Hindi's own ते हुए (present participle, 'while doing') and करके (absolutive, 'having done') constructions.