Hindi vs Urdu: which should you learn?

Estimates for a native English speaker, following the US Foreign Service Institute’s groupings. Languages the Institute does not rank are placed beside their closest relatives. Your own pace will differ.

• You want Bollywood, a huge domestic market, and a shared spoken base with Urdu.
• You will use it in India and Indian communities worldwide.

Watch out for: Devanagari script, grammatical gender and verbs placed last.

• You want spoken Urdu is very close to spoken Hindi, so one set of skills covers both.
• You will use it in Pakistan and parts of India.

Watch out for: a right-to-left script that joins letters.

Hindi. It takes longer than European languages. Grammatical gender, postpositions and verb-final order are the main new ideas. Spelling is very regular.

Urdu. a right-to-left script that joins letters

In both, the quickest fix for pronunciation is the same: hear a whole sentence, say it out loud and check how close you were. That is the loop 4ToSpeak runs on every sentence.

Hindi and Urdu are close relatives, so a lot carries over. Learn one, and the second takes noticeably fewer hours than starting from scratch. Start with whichever you will use sooner.

If you cannot decide, start both for a week at 15 minutes a day. After seven days you will know which one you look forward to, and motivation matters more than the difference in hours.

Start Hindi or start Urdu, both free with no card.