Hindi is an Indo-European language, so the deep structure is more familiar to English speakers than the script suggests, but almost no vocabulary transfers. That makes raw vocabulary volume the binding constraint, which is the case spaced repetition is built for. Gendered nouns governing verb agreement add a second fact per word, worth carrying on the card itself.
Why spaced repetition suits Hindi
The Hindi writing system
Hindi is written in Devanagari, an alphasyllabary where each consonant carries an inherent vowel that is modified by marks around it. It is highly regular — once learned, spelling predicts pronunciation reliably, which is more than English manages.
What English speakers find hard about Hindi
- Retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled back, contrasting with dentals.
- Aspirated and unaspirated pairs that change meaning entirely.
- Grammatical gender governing adjective and verb agreement.
- Postpositions instead of prepositions, and the ergative construction in the past tense.
Cards you might meet
Generated from whatever theme you name — these are the kind of thing that comes back.
जुगाड़
an improvised fix using whatever is available
jugaad
ठीक है
okay, fine, alright
कल
yesterday — or tomorrow, depending on context
अच्छा
good; also "I see" as a discourse marker
मज़ा आया
that was fun, I enjoyed it
Hindi conjugation drills
Name a verb, pick the tenses, and get five fill-in-the-blank sentences with every answer marked — including near-misses where only an accent is wrong. Available tenses:
Present SimplePresent ContinuousPast SimplePast ContinuousFutureImperativeSubjunctive
What you get
- SM-2 scheduling with four grades and keyboard shortcuts
- Generated Hindi vocabulary on any theme you name
- Pronunciation for every card
- Conjugation drills across 7 tenses
- Writing feedback on your own sentences
- Photo vocabulary — name what is in front of you
Popular Hindi themes
everyday lifefoodfamilytravelfilm & media
Hindi questions
- Do I need to learn Devanagari?
- It is worth the week. Devanagari is regular and phonetic, and romanised Hindi is inconsistent enough that it slows you down permanently once you move past beginner material.
- Is Hindi the same as Urdu?
- Spoken colloquially they are largely mutually intelligible and share a grammar. They diverge in formal vocabulary — Hindi draws on Sanskrit, Urdu on Persian and Arabic — and they use different scripts.
- Which Hindi tenses can I drill?
- Present simple and continuous, past simple and continuous, future, imperative and subjunctive.