Pronouns

Hindi has three second persons, not two. Each has its own verb ending, its own dative and its own imperative.

The three yous

• आप — strangers, elders, anyone senior, most colleagues. Takes plural verbs. Safe everywhere, and used far more readily than French vous.
• तुम — friends, siblings, children, close colleagues. The ordinary familiar form.
• तू — not simply "more casual". It is intimate with a lover, a small child or a god, and a deliberate insult with anyone else. A learner should not reach for it.

No he or she

यह and वह mean "this one" and "that one" and cover he, she and it alike. Gender comes out in the verb instead, not the pronoun — which is the opposite of English.

The dative, and why it matters

Hindi puts the experiencer in the dative for anything that happens to you.

• मुझे भूख लगी है — "hunger has struck to me", I'm hungry.
• मुझे यह पसंद है — "this is pleasing to me", I like this.
• मुझे समझ नहीं आया — "understanding didn't come to me", I didn't understand.

In none of these are you the subject. This is the deepest structural difference between Hindi and English, and it recurs everywhere.

No verb "to have"

Possession is location:

• मेरे पास किताब है — "near me a book is" — I have a book.
• मेरा भाई है — "my brother is" — I have a brother. (relations use का, not पास)

Same chapter in: English · French · Spanish · Portuguese · German · Italian · Georgian · Russian · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Japanese · Malay · Turkish