"The easiest Indian language to learn" is asked by three different people: a parent abroad choosing a language class for a child, an English speaker with an Indian partner or a posting in India, and a student deciding between languages at school. The honest answer differs for each, and this page gives all three, with the nine most-learned Indian languages compared on the four things that actually decide difficulty (script, grammar, sounds and the material available), the time estimates that exist, and a first-month plan. The printable chart puts the comparison on one page.
Download the Indian languages comparison chart (PDF) (the nine languages on script, grammar, sounds, speakers and resources, the difficulty ranking for each kind of learner, and the first-month plan; two pages, free).
The short answer, for each learner
| Who is learning | The easiest Indian language | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A child growing up abroad with an Indian language at home | The home language, whichever it is | Thousands of hours of listening are already done; the class adds reading, writing and vocabulary to speech the child has. Choosing a "simpler" language throws that away |
| A child abroad with no Indian language at home | Hindi | The most children's classes, books, songs and films; the widest use in India; a phonetic script |
| An English speaker (partner, posting, interest) | Hindi, then Punjabi or Gujarati | Phonetic script, the most courses and apps, half a billion people to practise with; Punjabi and Gujarati share grammar and much vocabulary with Hindi |
| A Hindi speaker learning a second Indian language | Urdu (same spoken language, different script), then Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali | Shared vocabulary and sentence order; Marathi and Nepali use the same Devanagari script |
| A Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam speaker | Another Dravidian language | Shared grammar: Kannada and Telugu are close; Tamil and Malayalam are close |
The nine languages compared
| Language | Speakers (approx.) | Script | Grammar in one line | Sounds | Material for learners | Difficulty for an English speaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hindi | 600 million including second-language speakers | Devanagari: phonetic, 46 characters, two to three weeks to read | Subject-object-verb; two genders; postpositions after the noun instead of prepositions | Aspirated consonants (kh, gh, th, dh) and retroflex t and d take practice | The most of any Indian language: courses, apps, films, children's books, online teachers | Easiest |
| Urdu | 230 million | Perso-Arabic (Nastaliq), right to left: the hard part | The same spoken language as Hindi at the everyday level | As Hindi | Good | Easy to speak if you know Hindi; the script adds months |
| Punjabi | 125 million | Gurmukhi (India): phonetic, close in logic to Devanagari | Like Hindi, with tones (three) that change meaning | The tones | Fair; strong in Canada and the UK | Easy after Hindi; moderate alone |
| Gujarati | 60 million | Gujarati script: a Devanagari cousin without the top line | Like Hindi; fewer irregularities | Similar to Hindi | Fair; strong in the UK, the US and East Africa | Easy after Hindi; moderate alone |
| Marathi | 95 million | Devanagari (same as Hindi) | Hindi-like but with three genders and more verb forms | Similar to Hindi | Limited outside India | Moderate |
| Bengali | 270 million | Bengali script: 50 characters, several conjuncts | No grammatical gender (easier than Hindi); SOV; honorific verb levels | Rounded vowels; fewer aspirates than Hindi | Fair | Moderate |
| Tamil | 85 million | Tamil script: 12 vowels, 18 consonants, 247 combinations | Dravidian: agglutinative (suffix chains), no gender for things; a formal written register distinct from speech | Retroflex l and r; long and short vowels | Good, including Singapore and Sri Lanka | Harder |
| Telugu | 95 million | Telugu script: rounded, 56 characters | Dravidian, agglutinative; vowel endings on most words | Vowel length matters | Limited | Harder |
| Kannada | 60 million | Kannada script: close to Telugu's | Dravidian, agglutinative | Vowel length | Limited | Harder |
| Malayalam | 38 million | Malayalam script: the largest set of characters and conjuncts | Dravidian, with the most complex inflection of the four | Several sounds with no English equivalent | Limited | Hardest |
The US Foreign Service Institute, which trains diplomats, puts Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu in the same band of about 1,100 class hours (44 weeks full time) for professional working proficiency. The ranking in the last column is about the first year, not the destination: every one of these languages takes about the same time to master, and the difference is how soon you can hold a conversation.
Why Hindi is the usual answer
Four reasons, none of them that Hindi is a simple language (it is not: gendered nouns, verb agreement, the ergative construction in the past tense, and formal and informal "you" on three levels).
- The script is phonetic. Devanagari writes what is said and says what is written; a learner reads any word correctly after two or three weeks, which is not true of English, Urdu or Tamil's formal register. The method for children is in how to teach Hindi for beginners.
- The material. Hindi has more courses, apps, graded readers, children's television, films with subtitles and online teachers than the other eight combined, and material is what decides whether a self-learner continues past month two.
- The speakers. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible in speech, understood across north and central India and by diaspora communities everywhere, so practice partners are easy to find.
- The grammar is regular where it counts. Subject-object-verb order, postpositions and the present tense are learnable in weeks; the harder parts (gender, the past tense) can be used imperfectly for a long time without stopping a conversation.
The easiest foreign language for a Hindi speaker
The question runs the other way too. For a Hindi speaker, Urdu is the same language in speech; Nepali and Marathi share the script and much vocabulary; Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali are cousins with the same sentence order. Outside India, Persian (Farsi) shares thousands of words with Hindi and Urdu, and Japanese, Korean and Turkish share the subject-object-verb order and postpositions, which Hindi speakers find natural and English speakers find strange. Of the European languages, Spanish is the easiest for anyone who reads the Latin alphabet, including Indian students, for its phonetic spelling and regular grammar.
The first month, whichever language you choose
| Week | Do |
|---|---|
| 1 | The script: ten characters a day with sounds, written and said; the first 20 words (greetings, family, yes and no, numbers to 10) |
| 2 | The rest of the script; reading simple words aloud; 20 more words; "I am", "this is", "I want" |
| 3 | Present-tense sentences about yourself; questions (what, where, who); listening: a children's song or a cartoon episode daily |
| 4 | A five-minute conversation with a speaker (a grandparent, a tutor, an exchange partner); the first 100 words reviewed from memory |
Twenty minutes a day beats two hours on Sunday, exactly as in reading. For a child abroad, online Hindi classes explains what a good class teaches by age; the 60 phrases every beginner needs first are in common Hindi phrases.
Download the Indian languages comparison chart (PDF)
Where to get help
1-on-1 online Hindi classes for children growing up abroad and for adult beginners, with a tutor who holds a master's in Hindi: the script in the first month, speaking from the first class, reading and writing built on the Hindi the child already hears at home, and the formal and informal registers taught together. Two 30-minute classes a week for children, the recording after every class, US$10 to $13 an hour. The free 30-minute first class is a real lesson, in Hindi from the first minute.
Questions parents ask
1What is the easiest Indian language to learn?
2Which Indian language is easiest for an English speaker?
3Which Indian language should my child learn if we live abroad?
4How long does it take to learn Hindi?
5Is Tamil harder than Hindi?
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Shobha
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Teaching maths, science and English to children online since 2018. 500+ students, 20+ tutors, families in nine countries.