How to learn Hindi? Well, for one thing, you need to learn the Hindi rules of gender. Unlike English, all nouns in Hindi have gender. It is not hard to figure out that boys, men and male animals would have the masculine gender or that girls, women and female animals would have the feminine one. More than that, inanimate objects also have gender. They are masculine or feminine depending on nothing more than convention. Other languages that have masculine and feminine genders include the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian. Some languages, such as German and Latin, also have a neuter gender. Hindi does not have a neuter. That makes how to learn Hindi a little easier, at least.
In Hindi, adjectives convey the gender of the noun they modify. That is a typical characteristic of languages that have genders for their nouns. What is less common is that in Hindi verbs also agree with their subjects with respect to gender.
Learning Hindi requires you to learn the gender of nouns. The best way to do so is to think about gender whenever you add a noun to your vocabulary. Learn the gender immediately when you encounter a new noun. Practice the gender as you practice your lists of vocabulary words. Eventually, you will know the gender of nouns without having to pause to think of it.
You will certainly make mistakes with gender as you make mistakes with other aspects of learning any language. Correct the mistakes and move on. Learning the gender of nouns is an unavoidable but doable requirement for how to learn Hindi.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:24 am
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