Nouns, Nouns, Nouns! Do you know what nouns are? Well nouns are sometimes known as ‘naming words’ and that’s exactly what they are, names for things! Like; objects, places, emotions, animals, people etc! Today we’re going to have a little introduction to Nouns in Hindi and we’ll see how they work, so are you ready to get going? अच्छा acchaa - great! 

So what a better way to start than me introducing you to a handful of Hindi Nouns! We’ve seen a few of these before but some of them are new! So here goes…

किताब kitaab - Book (F)

पलंग palang - Bed (M)  

big>कुरसी kursee - Chair (F)

सेब seb - Apple (M)  

That’s easy enough right? Good! But Hindi nouns have a little trick hidden up their sleeve which makes them a whole lot more complicated, ready to learn what it is? Here goes… 

All nouns in Hindi have a gender; every noun is either Masculine or Feminine. Read that again because it’s important. Every single noun has a gender! This explains the funny (M)’s and (F)’s after each of the words above! But anyway, why does this gender of words matter? Well, let me assure you now that knowing the gender of Hindi nouns is essential for proper grammar and communication! 

So here’s the bad news; every time you learn a new noun in Hindi you must also learn its gender so that you can use it correctly. The good news? Well if you can master this gender issue then you’ll find so much Hindi grammar a lot easier!

The gender of many Hindi words are obvious to everyone with a brain (sorry to those of you without brains!). For example we have…

लड़का larkaa -  Boy (M) and लड़की larkee - Girl (F)

पिता pitaa - Father (M) and माता maataa - Mother (F) 

Can you see how words referring to female people are feminine and words referring to males are masculine? Easy hey! 

Unfortunately for most other nouns their gender does seem completly random. Let’s look at a few examples…

केला kelaa - Banana (M)

भेड़ bher - Sheep (F)

मेज़ mez - Desk (F)

घर ghar - House (M)

Can you see the weird-ness here? There’s nothing innately masculine about the words 'banana’ or 'house’, nor feminine about the words 'sheep’ or 'desk’ but in Hindi all these words have genders! 

As a very rough and general rule, words that end with the vowel आ aa are usually Masculine and words that end with ई ee are usually feminine. But there’s two problems with relying on this; one this doesn’t always hold (can you spot the one exception above?) and two it tells you nothing about words that end with any other letter!

So again, I stress to you, it’s really important that you do learn the gender of every noun as you go along, otherwise your sentences will not be grammatically correct! 

I hope this lesson has given you a good introduction, don’t forget to leave any questions in the comments section below if you have them!

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