Practise Hindi with a native speaker, and give them English conversation practice in return. Roughly 345 million people speak Hindi natively, so partners are easy to find; the useful discipline is showing up on time.
Endonym
हिन्दी
Script
Devanagari, written left to right
Spoken in
India, Nepal, Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago
First thing to learn
नमस्ते — "Hello / I bow to you"
US Foreign Service Institute estimate for an English speaker starting from zero
~36 weeks
Distant from English
Hindi distinguishes sounds English treats as identical - retroflex versus dental t and d, and pairs of stops where one is said with a puff of air and one without. Get the wrong one and you have said a different word.
Knowing this in advance changes what you do with a partner. Grammar drills on Hindiwill not fix a habit your first language gave you — only producing the sentence out loud and being corrected will. That is the specific thing an exchange gives you and an app does not.
A language exchange dies when nobody has anything to talk about. Take these into the call and you will fill the first half without silences.
Say नमस्ते (nuh-mus-TAY) as your first line, then ask your partner when they would use it and when they would choose something more formal.
Ask your partner to write your own name in हिन्दी, then explain which sounds in your name do not exist in Hindi.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in India. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Hindi first, then again in English.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in Nepal. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Hindi first, then again in English.
Ask your partner for one sentence that exposes the hard part: Hindi distinguishes sounds English treats as identical - retroflex versus dental t and d, and pairs of stops where one is said with a puff of air and one without.
Switch to English and ask your partner to explain their own language's hardest feature to you. This is the half where you pay for the practice, so take it as seriously as your own turn.
You are not here to improve your English — you already have it. Practise Hindi with someone who speaks it natively, and pay for it by answering their English questions properly. Fluent English speakers are the scarcest resource on an exchange, which is why you will match quickly.
There is a very large pool of Hindi speakers who want English conversation practice. They are also the most natural partner for the reverse trade, because they can offer fluent Hindi in exchange.
36 weeks of full-time study to working proficiency, on the US Foreign Service Institute scale - distant from english. Hindi distinguishes sounds English treats as identical - retroflex versus dental t and d, and pairs of stops where one is said with a puff of air and one without. Get the wrong one and you have said a different word.
Around 345 million native speakers, concentrated in India, Nepal, Mauritius. English has already borrowed shampoo, jungle, bungalow from it, so you are not starting from nothing.
Devanagari, written left to right. Because the script is not the one you read in now, reading and speaking improve at different rates and are worth practising separately rather than hoping conversation covers both.
नमस्ते (nuh-mus-TAY) - "Hello / I bow to you". नमस्ते is respectful in almost every situation. Namaskar is more formal still, and folding your hands while saying it reads as warmer than the word on its own.
shampoo, jungle, bungalow, yoga, khaki and veranda all reached English from Hindi - 6 words you can use on day one.
Free matching, free voice calls, free video calls. One twenty-minute call is enough to know whether it works for you.
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