Hindi grammar (हिन्दी व्याकरण) is the grammar of Hindi language. Hindi is a direct descendent of Sanskrit. It is the national language and the official language of the Indian Union. It is an Indo-European language, and belongs to the Indo-Aryan group. Hindi looks up to Sanskrit for its formal and technical vocabulary, and Apabhramsha for its grammar. As Hindi and Urdu are variants of each other (i.e., the same language in the linguistic sense), the discussion here applies to both Standard Hindi as well as Urdu.

For reading about Hindi phonology, see Hindi#Sounds.

Hindi uses the devanagari script for writing. In this article, both devanagari script and IPA pronunciation are given for discussing the grammar.

Morphology

There are two principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:

• tatsam (तत्सम्) words: These are the words which have been directly lifted from Sanskrit to enrich the formal and technical vocabulary of Hindi. Such words (almost exclusively nouns) have been taken without any phonetic or spelling change. Among nouns, the tatsam word could be the Sanskrit uninflected word-stem, or it could be the nominative singular form in the Sanskrit nominal declination.
• tadbhav (तद्भव) words: These are the words that might have been derived from Sanskrit, but have undergone minor or major phonetic and spelling changes as they appear in modern Hindi. They also include words borrowed from the other languages.

Similarly, Urdu treats its own vocabulary, borrowed directly from Persian and Arabic, as a separate category for morphological purposes.

In the tables below, the tilde (~) indicates the nasalization of the vowel immediately preceding it. All / t / and / d / must be taken to be dental consonants unless their retroflex IPA symbols are specified otherwise (in which case, these stops would be retroflex consonants).

Nouns

In Hindi (and of course in Urdu too), there are only two genders. All male human beings and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "masculine") are masculine. All female human beings and female animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to convention, which must be learnt by heart by non-Hindi speakers if they wish to learn correct Hindi. The ending of a word, if a vowel, usually helps in this gender classification. Among tatsam words, the masculine words of Sanskrit remain masculine in Hindi, and same is the case for the feminine. Sanskrit neuter nouns usually become masculine in Hindi. Among the tadbhav words, if a word end in long / α: /, it is normally masculine. If a word ends in / i: / or / in/, it is normally feminine. Similarly, the gender is also tried to be preserved for words borrowed from Arabic and Persian. The categorization of Hindi words directly borrowed from English (which are numerous) is very arbitrary—but could be influenced by the ending.

Hindi is a poorly inflected language; the relationship of a noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions (i.e., prepositions that follow the noun). Hindi has three cases for nouns. The Direct case is used for nouns not followed by any postpositions, typically for the subject case. The Oblique case is used for any nouns that is followed by a postposition. Some nouns have a separate Vocative case. Hindi has two numbers: singular and plural—but they may not be shown distinctly in all declinations.

Nouns ending in / α: /

Nouns ending in / i: /

Nouns ending

Nouns ending in / u: /

Nouns ending

Nouns ending in a consonant

Nouns ending

Nouns from Persian

An example of a Hindi/Urdu masculine word of Persian origin is given below. By the Hindi speakers, it is usually declined like any other consonant ending masculine noun.

Adjectives

There are two kinds of adjectives in Hindi for morphological purposes—one, which end in consonant (and hence do not undergo any inflection) and the other, whose masculine form end in / α: / (sing.). The latter category of adjectives undergoes inflection to agree with the gender and the number of the noun they qualify. Such adjectives must be inflected whether they come before the noun (note that the adjectives precede the nouns) or as a compliment in the sentence. This inflection is shown below.

There is no definite article (the) in Hindi. The numeral ek (one) may be used for the singular indefinite article if it needs to be stressed.

Pronouns

Hindi has pronouns in the first, second and third person, all for one gender only. Thus, unlike English, there is no difference between he or she. More strictly speaking, the third person of the pronoun is actually the same as the demonstrative pronoun (this / that). The verb, upon conjugation, usually indicates the difference in the gender. The pronouns have additional cases of accusative and genitive. There may also be multiple ways of inflecting the pronoun, which are given in parentheses. Note that for the second person of the pronoun (you), Hindi has three levels of honorifics:

• आप (/ α:p /): Formal and respectable form for you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all formal settings and speaking to persons who are senior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying आप लोग (/ α:p log / you people) or आप सब (/ α:p səb /) you all).
• तुम (/ tum /): Informal form of you. Has no difference between the singular and the plural. Used in all informal settings and speaking to persons who are junior in job or age. Plural could be stressed by saying तुम लोग (/ tum log / you people) or तुम सब (/ tum səb /) you all).
• तू (/ tu: /): Extremely informal form of you, as thou. Strictly singular, its plural form being
  
  
  
  / tum /. Except for very close friends or poetic language involving God, it could be perceived as offensive in India.

In the columns for the Third Person, the first word indicates the usual form used in literary written Hindi, while the second form (after the slash) indicates the form used inthe normal spoken Hindi. The hyphen indicates that while writing, the postposition (if any) may be included within the word as a case marker. It suffices to say that the genitive case behaves like an adjective and has to be declined as such to match with the possessed noun. The Accusative can also be formed by adding the postposition ko after the oblique case. For those persons for whom one would normally use / α:p / if referred to as the second person, it is popular by convention to use the plural form (both pronoun and the verb) of the third person demonstrative. In north India, the / həm / form is popularly used for the first person singular too.

Verbs

Hindi has a peculiarity that not only the number, but also the gender of the noun or the pronoun may be shown by the verb. The infinitive form of any verb ends with / -nα: /. As in any other language, this form can be used as a noun (masculine gender, and declined likewise). There are three main tenses: present, past and future. Hindi uses both end-inflections in the verb-stem and auxiliary verbs for conjugation. It is interesting to note that like English, but unlike Sanskrit, Latin, French, German, Russian, etc., Hindi possesses the continuous tense for all—present, past and future. Similarly, the perfect tense can be formed using a number of auxiliaries. The present and the past participles can be used as adjectives (they undergo declination). The imperative mood and equivalents for English can / should / must / have to can also be found. Verbs can be transitive or intransitive. But on the whole, the verbal conjugation can be very, very complicated for English speakers.

The following table gives the conjugation for the verb करना / kərnα: / (to do)—indicative mood. The second column gives the conjugation in the second person with / tum /. To conjugate the verb with / tu: /, use the Third Person singular form. To conjugate the verb with / α:p /, use the Third Person plural form.

The present participle here is करता / / and the past participle is करा / / (with variant in this case as किया / /)—both must be declined like adjectives when needed. The Imperative Mood is an exception here because it has entirely different conjugal forms for / tum / and / α:p /. For the former, it is कर / /, and for the latter, it is करिये / / (with variations in this case as कीजिये / / and करें / /). The imperative form is a bit irregular, varying from verb to verb. Rest all the tenses almost always follow the pattern shown above.

Hindi has two voices—active and passive.

A stem change in the penultimate syllable of the infinitive form can lead to a semantic change in many verbs. e.g., बनना / bənnα: / (to be made, to become) → बनाना / bənα:nα: / (to make) → / बनवाना / bənvα:nα: / (to cause to be made).

Postpositions/Indeclinables

Hindi uses postpositions that follow the noun (rather than prepositions of English that precede the word). Some postpositions are compound ones. Some of them can be incorporated within the noun (usually, the pronoun) while writing, where they then act as a case marker. Some of them are listed below; those using the genitive case of the pronoun are indicated with "gen".

In addition, certain indeclinables can be used to denote specific location with / ke: /, equivalent to under, above, against, below etc. Urdu uses many prepositions directly borrowed from Persian, and also some from Arabic; e.g., -e- (of), as in sadaa-e-sarhad (lit., voice of the border—the name of the Bus service from Amritsar to Lahore and back).

Syntax

The general order of the words is SOV (i.e., Subject Object Verb). However, if the postpositions are properly attached with the nouns, the word order in Hindi becomes freer than in English, but not as free as in Latin or Sanskrit. So when one writes a SVO or even OSV sentence in Hindi, it appears grammatically correct, but seems as if having its source in poetry or a Bollywood song!

The postposition / ne: / acts as a case marker for the Subject (Nominative case), but it is optional. It can only be used if the verb is in the perfect aspect. If it comes after a pronoun (1st and 2nd persons), the direct case would be used. If it comes after a noun or a 3rd person pronoun, the oblique case would be used.

The adverbs are not declined. Adverbial phrases are more common, and can be formed by adding the postposition / se: / to the corresponding noun.