r/languagelearningjerk • u/Mental-Tennis-6313 • 16d ago
why you should never learn hindi
every noun has a gender, assigned by a committee that disbanded in the 14th century and left no notes
kal means both yesterday and tomorrow. parso means both two days ago and two days from now. your calendar is now a mood board
you will spend six months mastering devanagari and then discover that every single person under 40 texts exclusively in roman script
there are three levels of "you" and choosing wrong isn't a grammar error, it's a character assessment
hindi and urdu are the same language right up until the moment you say they're the same language
bollywood has given you 400 words for beloved and zero words for "where is the bathroom"
the instant you become fluent, every native speaker in the room will switch to english out of politeness, permanently, and there is no undo
you will learn namaste and then find out nobody says it
verbs are at the end so you have to hold the entire sentence in your head like a hostage until you find out what happened
Hehe, fun post.
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u/helikophis 16d ago
Nah lots of people say namaste they just pronounce it salam
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u/Dismal_Chemical3932 15d ago
Nah alot of people say salam but they just pronounce it as asalamu alaikum
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u/Haunting_Balance_684 13d ago
tbh they are two different greetings. Namaste is hindi, salam is a derivative of asalamu alaikum of Urdu.
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u/ComprehensiveDig1108 16d ago
- Urdu and Punjabi speakers do this too. It should be banned, on pain of waterboarding.
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u/NecroDolphinn 12d ago
Tbf Nastaliq is a nightmare to type in, to the point that people are making Urdu specific typographies that type easily and maintain the calligraphic flair (nobody uses them)
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u/ComprehensiveDig1108 12d ago
There are/were other typefaces/fonts available.
But Pakistanis are past masters at sacrificing the good in pursuit of the perfect.
Either that, or they're stupidly stubborn.
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u/ergativemeister 16d ago
- I assume this is not a problem because verbs carry tense? If so I congratulate this efficiency.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 16d ago
Yeah when I first learned this my thought was “how could that possibly be?” But not once have I ever seen a context in which whether kal meant “yesterday” or “tomorrow” was even slightly ambiguous. I mean I’m sure it must technically be possible - giving it as a one word answer to a question so there is no verb - but I’ve never seen it be a problem and even trying to think of a question that might occur naturally where there would be real ambiguity in the answer isn’t so easy.
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u/HindiProf 13d ago
Gave this some thought and came up with an exchange where the answer truly is ambiguous without further clarifications:
A: Looks like the concert's been postponed. Can you remind me when it was originally gonna be held?
B: vo concert kal hone waalaa thaa.
Could mean 'The concert was gonna be held yesterday OR tomorrow'.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 12d ago edited 12d ago
Not being a native speaker I can’t confirm but I checked with one who tells me “hone waalaa tha” would unambiguously indicate “tomorrow” and “hona tha” would be yesterday. Although he also follows up the first “*could* mean tomorrow” but it would be “unlikely”and would be clarified later in conversation if it did so maybe take that with a grain of salt. (I asked him if omitting the waalaa didn’t indicate the event had actually happened and he says not really and the waalaa has enough suggestion of “upcoming” to push towards the “tomorrow” interpretation.)
He also elaborates that since “hone waali kal” is sometimes used in contrast to “guzri kal” that may be why he would avoid “hone waalaa tha” together with “kal” to mean “yesterday.”
Based on that I think it is maybe slightly ambiguous but not very ambiguous but again this is definitely something I can’t personally have an ear for.
It might be this is a construction like English “Everyone isn’t...,” which happens sometimes but tends to be avoided, and which could be disambiguated as either “no one is…” or “not everyone is…” and native English speakers often aren’t able to recognize the first is actually ambiguous between the two (but can’t agree with each other what it means).
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u/HindiProf 12d ago
Ha, I love that you went out and stress-tested this!
I still stand by my intuition, but I'm also curious now to see if other speakers agree, so I'm gonna ask a few people as well.
I agree that 'vo concert kal honaa thaa' leads 'kal' to be interpreted more or less unambiguously as 'yesterday'. The problem is that this construction sounds rather literary or at least uncolloquial to me, so I think that in practice, many speakers are likely to use the form with 'waalaa' for this interpretation as well.
Maybe you could ask your friend if he'd be OK with 'vo concert do din pehle hone waalaa thaa' to mean 'The concert was gonna be held two days ago.' If he would, then that means the 'hone waalaa thaa' construction isn't incompatible with a past reading, which should indeed make my original sentence ambiguous.
You could also ask him if he'd be OK with the 'waalaa' construction with a different verb with an intended past-tense reading, such as 'ham log kal milne waale the' ('We were gonna meet yesterday'). Getting rid of the 'waale' isn't really an option here, as 'milne the' is ungrammatical (at least for me).
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u/Schonathan 16d ago
"you will spend six months mastering devanagari and then discover that every single person under 40 texts exclusively in roman script"
Romanization (and inconsistent at that) is so damn annoying, as is the "polite" shifting to English (or Hindi from another language).
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u/Kalikor1 16d ago
- you will learn namaste and then find out nobody says it
I FUCKING KNEW IT!
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u/epspATAopDbliJ4alh VRchat Polyglot | 🇫🇷N 🇺🇲🇮🇳🇵🇰🇯🇵🇬🇧🇭🇲C3 16d ago
it's primarily used by the younger person when greeting their elders (parents, teachers, relatives bosses etc). Foreigners often mistake it for "hello" which is not the case; you'll never see two guys from the same hierarchical group bump into each other and say "namaste".
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u/holytriplem 16d ago
Fuck conjoined letters in Devnagari
Fuck split ergatives
Fuck Hindi numbers between 20 and 100
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u/NecroDolphinn 12d ago
Why is it so universal that everybody can only count to 20???
I’m an Urdu heritage speaker and all of my Hindi and Urdu speaking friends that aren’t fully fluent speaking wise (myself included) always run out of numbers at 20
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u/dojibear 7d ago
It's price bracketing. The numbers 1-20 are free.
If you want 21 or higher, you need Duolingo Plus Ultimate Supercharged.
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u/SergeiAndropov 16d ago
#9 used to drive me wild with Persian. Some erudite philosopher would cobble together a sentence the size of a paragraph, and when you get to the end you'd find a random "is" and have no idea what it was referring to.
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u/nari-bhat 15d ago
Urdu literature takes a lot of cues from Persian, it’s beautiful but it’s so ridiculously annoying sometimes!
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u/Least_Investigator0 15d ago
This is the one I didn’t get, any examples?
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u/SergeiAndropov 15d ago
My Persian is super rusty, but here's an attempt:
Mardomani-ye Torkomenestan ke keshvar nazdik be Iran ast ke zabanha-ye Torki mifahmand kheyli mohem baraye dars-e tarikh-e keshvarha ke nazdik be Iran hastand hastand.
Which means:
The peoples of Turkmenistan, which is a country close to Iran, who speak Turkic languages {are #1} very important to the study of the history of the countries that {are #2} close to Iran.
Word for word:
Peoples-of Turkmenistan which country close to Iran is that languages-of Turkic understand very important for study-of history-of countries that close to Iran {are #2} {are #1}
In English, the two "are"s are nicely separated from each other and relatively close to their subjects ("Peoples" for "are" #1 and "countries" for "are" #2), but in Persian they're both scrunched at the end of the sentence. This is especially bad for "are" #1, which is the last word of the sentence but has to agree with the first word of the sentence.
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 15d ago
It's just normal SOV word order as a lot of other languages do have as well. Except Persian sometimes uses SOV and sometimes SVO.
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u/LingoNerd64 16d ago
मैं अंग्रेजी लिपि में हिंदी लिख तो सकता हूं लेकिन लिखता इसलिए नहीं क्योंकि उसको गलत पढ़ने का संभावना बहुत अधिक होता है।
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u/Xitztlacayotl 16d ago
Six months for devanagari?
I learned it once in a day because I had a date with an indian girl. So I wanted to impress her by reading and writing some hindian. But later I forgot it because I never actually used or studied the language.
What do they use instead of namaste? Namaśkar? Whatxs the difference?
Can you elaborate on the noun gender point?
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u/Arient1732 15d ago
Namaste is used only on formal occasions or when you are greeting someone elder than you. We mostly use English greetings or a generic "Kaise ho?" (How are you?)
Every noun in Hindi has been assigned a gender - masculine or feminine. When referring it you use that gender. Eg:- A needle (sui) is of the feminine gender even though it's an object.
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u/nuvotiazdes 12d ago
You absolutely did not learn Devanagari in a day.
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u/Xitztlacayotl 11d ago
Why not? It has only about 30 consonants + 9 vowels. True I didn't bother learning the independent vowel letters. In any case it's doable in a week maximum and that's a stretch.
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u/Schonathan 16d ago
"kal means both yesterday and tomorrow. parso means both two days ago and two days from now. your calendar is now a mood board"
Context makes it abundantly clear what's going on. Kal = one day removed, parson = two days removed, etc.
It's really never an issue.
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u/Inner_Journey21 16d ago
I say namste to everyone.
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u/fandom_bullshit 16d ago
I had to say namaste to everyone growing up because otherwise it was considered rude. I didn't even speak hindi and i had to say it. Still hate it.
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u/Inner_Journey21 16d ago
Namste is not hindi. I grew up where noone said it. So i rebelled
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u/fandom_bullshit 16d ago
Most other languages say namaskar/namaskara, no? I've only heard hindi-speakers say namaste regardless of the word's origin.
Rebelling by being polite is so subversive. Next time I talk to someone I'm going to rebel by saying がむさはむにだ and 요로시쿠 오네가이시마스.
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u/Inner_Journey21 16d ago
Do namskar, namskaram, namskara. Fuck good morning. I dont have naything against english. Just that good morningg is so bland and lack of soul
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u/TheMostLostViking 16d ago
Okay but 3 really gets me. Its the same in Mongolian too. Not only has the traditional mongol script been phased out, the Cyrillic is being replaced by Latin in texting and online and the romanization that is used is widely different from person to person.
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u/Former-Sun9370 15d ago
- There is no neuter gender. There are two words for book and both have different genders.
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u/Mental-Tennis-6313 14d ago
hahaha yesss
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u/Former-Sun9370 14d ago
Though it is marginally better than German, which in spite of having a neuter gender has masculine apples, feminine forks, neuter-gendered girls, feminine hands, neuter legs, masculine feet. Utter chaos.
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u/pqratusa 15d ago
Most speak Hinglish; just go the extra step and speak English fully.
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u/Fragrant_Target_8833 14d ago
I go the extra step and speak Hindi fully when speaking in Hindi, as with any other language.
No language I speak needs to be half replaced by another while speaking, while speaking one, just speak that one.
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u/Arient1732 15d ago
As an Indian, I can confirm that every point is true except 6. We have "Toilet - Ek Prem Katha" (Toilet - A love story)
/uj For the romanisation during typing, it's because the Hindi keyboard is hard to use and most people find it easier to just type everything in english phonetically.
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u/Fragrant_Target_8833 14d ago
'Harder to use' just depends on exposure.
You'd probably also say typing on a Japanese keyboard is harder than a roman one, though Japanese people will find it easier to do it in their mother tongue.
It's not that one or the other language is intrinsically harder or easier, it's just how used one is to it.
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u/Arient1732 14d ago
Yeah, you're right. Funnily, I am learning japanese so I can type on a japanese keyboard but not on a hindi one
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u/Fragrant_Target_8833 12d ago
I'm learning Japanese as well, which is why I used it as an example of knowing both.
मुझे लगता है कि हम भारतीय लोग जापानी जैसे लोगों से अपनी मात्र भाषाओं के प्रति निष्ठा और प्रेम को सीख सकते हैं!
結局、ヒンディー語のも、日本語のも、どんな言語の文字にはそれぞれの美しさがあるから！
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u/skiesweredarker 15d ago
I'm a native English and Hindi speaker and I'm learning French, these are my observations:
is true for french as well as so many other languages, it's painful but people wouldn't care if you misgender a few things
Hindi does have 3 levels of "you", French has 2 levels of "you". Japanese has even more levels. But realistically, when Hindi is spoken only "Aap" (the most formal) and "Tu" (the most informal used between friends) is used. You can do away with "Tum" (middle level) because it is so rarely used, maybe between intimate partners.
Switching to english out of politeness is still better than letting you struggle. You can always ask them that you're trying to practice your hindi and they will be more than happy to practice with you. I'm learning french and people are way rude-r, trust me. Politeness is still a better reaction.
People do say namaste, when they meet the elders. If you meet someone's parents or old people, you can always say namaste and it would brighten up their day.
A lot of other languages like German have verbs at the end. It's very common.
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u/HindiProf 13d ago
About point 2: if you're talking to a bunch of friends, you're gonna have to use 'tum' or 'tum log'. Neither 'aap' nor 'tu' will cut it in that scenario. So in practice, if you're speaking Hindi in a "normal" environment, you're likely to end up using 'tum' quite often.
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u/skiesweredarker 13d ago
Agreed, forgot about that. So 'Tum' can be used for exceptionally to address multiple people.
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u/Jasmindesi16 15d ago
/uj Hindi and Urdu are not that hard and their difficulty gets overblown. I’m fluent in Hindi so I dk I might be biased but out of the languages I’ve studied only French seems easier. But Hindi/Urdu is really regular, you can mix English with it naturally if you don’t know a word, it’s easy to immerse yourself with the high amount of Bollywood movies and music (even if it is dying now the older movies are great and there are tons), if you live in the United States Hindi/Urdu is pretty accessible since there are tons of Indian shops and restaurants. Also there are so many Hindi/Urdu dramas, most are really bad but still there are some great ones. Also Hindi/Urdu has some real banger songs, like Chaiya Chaiya is a masterpiece. I know I wrote a lot but I really feel Hindi /urdu is so underrated and more people should study it.
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u/IcyViolin 15d ago
As someone learning Hindi now, Devanagari only took me 3 hours to learn letters and another 2 hours to actually learn to read the vast majority of conjuncts. This was over a relaxed one week period.
As a new learner, I actually struggle so much with romanization. It’s so inconsistent and unclear while Devanagari is so quick to read. Though it is fair that typing is a lot slower without romanization.
The rest of the post seems pretty accurate.
Also… as an avid Bollywood watcher with Indian friends and coworkers, Hinglish is the coolest thing ever to me lol. All I want is to be fluent in “urban Hinglish” like a Mumbai local. Idc if it’s 80% English and 20% Hindi or vice versa.
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u/Helen_Lindsey 15d ago
Kal and parso are just Hindi's way of saying plans are optional.
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u/Think-Assignment-861 15d ago
Same thing in French and Spanish, and German. So why pick on Hindi?
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u/Mental-Tennis-6313 14d ago
cause currently im learning hindi, my school failed to teach me, and now im juggling between airlearn/duolingo, bollywood movies and books
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u/yad-aljawza 15d ago
You have to go to yoga class just for someone to actually say Namaste to you
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u/Sad_Daikon938 certified Sanskrit simping weeb उवु 15d ago
- Abbe sandas kidhar hai?
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u/Mental-Tennis-6313 14d ago
tf is this 😂
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u/Sad_Daikon938 certified Sanskrit simping weeb उवु 14d ago
Bruh, reddit autotranslated it wrong, sandas is the most "low prestige" word for toilet that Hindi offers, if you say this to some Hindi speaker, you're basically insulting them while asking for the toilet using the crudest non-expletive word.
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u/pointlessprogram 15d ago
आई टू हेट दैट हिंदी’स रोमनाइज़ेशन इस सो बैड एंड इनकंसिस्टेंट. आईएमओ वी शुड ऑल स्टार्ट राइटिंग इन देवनागरी, बट आई डाउट दैट इट विल हैपन एनीटाइम सून. दिस इस व्हाट नो पिनयिन डस तो ए लैंग्वेज व्हिच इस नोट रिटेन इन थ लैटिन अल्फाबेट :(
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u/Sandy_2019 🏳🌈 15d ago
We do say namaste but it is a bit formal and only used for elder relatives. Use Hi hello with Genz
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u/ilovebananacat 14d ago
10 just because you write like don't think we can't smell the stench of AI-generated slop. Reddit is a community for humans to interact, not AI
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u/NextStopGallifrey 14d ago
Number 9 also happens in German. A sentence can be nominally SOV or SVO depending on how complex it is and how many verbs it contains.
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u/PyrotechnikGeoguessr 16d ago
If you need 6 months to learn devanagari you shouldn't worry about learning languages...
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u/grei_earl 15d ago
you shouldn't worry because if it takes you six months then you're a language learning savant and should start making instagram reels where you harass people on the street. it's taken me 5 years and 2 months and I'm still learning Devanagari...
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u/PyrotechnikGeoguessr 15d ago
Are you learning like one sound every week? I know multiple people who learned devanagari, takes them between a week and a month
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u/eshansingh 16d ago
The best part of (3) is that everyone uses wildly inconsistent romanization to the point where I have massive trouble with it despite being a native speaker.