Is Hindi Hard To Learn? (Answered!)

Hindi is considered a very difficult language to learn. For native English speakers in particular, it will be entirely unfamiliar. Learning any language is difficult, but this is especially true of Hindi. It has tricky enunciation, cadence and tone. That said, it’s far from impossible, and with time and patience, anyone can learn it.

Language learning is a long, difficult process that will take a lot of time.

How easy a given language is to learn of course depends on what languages you already speak.

For English speakers, though, Hindi is always going to be a tricky one to learn and a very difficult one to master—but it’s entirely within your ability.

Let’s find out more.

How difficult is Hindi to learn?

In short, Hindi is very difficult to learn for an English speaker.

There is no sugar-coating this. Learning any language, however closely related it may be to your own, is always difficult.

When you take a language like Hindi, which may as well be entirely unrelated to English, the difficulty becomes much greater.

Understanding language families is a good rule of thumb for understanding how difficult learning a given language can be.

English is Germanic in origin, while Hindi belongs to an entirely different branch of the Indo-European language family.

So, there is some cause for relief as English and Hindi are part of the same language family.

However, the Indo-European language family is enormous, comprising languages from Europe, to the Iranian plateau, and the north of the Indian subcontinent.

So, the relationship is, at best, very tenuous.

The separation of subfamilies means that English and Hindi are naturally very far from one another.

For a native of one to learn the other, it is always going to be difficult and to take time.

There are many subtle elements of Hindi that are difficult for native English speakers.

There are many words that sound very similar but have subtle differences, and enunciation can be hard to master.

The grammar is almost entirely different, with the placement of sentence components in different places.

You also have to contend with its writing system and alphabet.

With all this said, language learning is something we are all capable of to more or less the same degree.

You will have to take time to do it, but learning Hindi is something you are perfectly able to do.

The biggest question is going to be how long you can expect it to take to fully master the language—so let’s turn to that.

How long does it take to learn Hindi?

There are a couple of ways we can look at this question.

Let’s first take the simple route of how much pure studying you can expect to do to be able to speak Hindi to a good degree.

The FSI categorizes languages into five groups based on their relative difficulty to learn for an English speaker, with category five being the most difficult.

Hindi is a category four language, meaning that it should take about 44 weeks of studying to learn.

So, in other words, there are languages that are much harder for English speakers to learn, but at the same time, Hindi is more difficult to learn than most languages for English speakers.

Once your 44 weeks of study are up, though, you are far from done.

After that, most language teachers would say that you’d need to spend a couple of years at least in the country, speaking the language every day, to be able to get to the point of fluency or native level.

This will usually take up to five years, with some variation depending on you and your circumstances.

In other words, learning Hindi is going to take a lot of time!

Is Hindi harder than Mandarin?

Hindi is generally not considered to be harder than Mandarin for an English speaker.

This, however, does not really say much about the difficulty of Hindi.

Mandarin is widely considered to be one of if not the single most difficult language for an English speaker to learn. Mandarin is a category five language.

So, while Hindi is indeed extremely difficult for English speakers to learn, it’s not as difficult as some languages.

You should take that as encouragement—again, many others have learned Mandarin before you, so learning Hindi is entirely within your reach!

Is Hindi the hardest Indian language?

Depending on whom you ask, you might hear that Hindi is among the easiest Indian languages to learn.

There are many complex reasons for this, and this is not a hard and fast rule.

Learning Hindi is certainly easier than, say, Bengali or Guajarati.

India, though, is home to a staggering 398 languages.

It’s an enormous place with virtually infinite linguistic and cultural diversity, so it’s very hard to give a clear answer to a question like this.

Purely in terms of the resources out there which are available for learning Hindi, you’ve got a considerable leg up over other Indian languages.

Learning Hindi is undoubtedly an immensely rewarding experience that you will benefit from in many ways.

However, the reward is proportional to the effort.

There are no shortcuts with learning Hindi or indeed any language, so if you are serious about it, you’re going to need to take real time to get to grips with it.

Once you’ve studied, immersing yourself in the language is the next step to achieving something approaching fluency.

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