Linguistics, the scientific study of language, can be broken down into several subtopics. The most basic model only includes phonology (the actual sounds made), syntax (the formation of words and sentences), and semantics (the meaning). More complex models may also include morphology (strictly, the forming of words) and pragmatics (the influence of context on meaning in language).
Linguistics can also be paired with many other disciplines to form inter-disciplinary subjects, such as psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and many more. Personally I see no need to "choose" one view of linguistics over another - they all simply have different focuses. For my own personal enjoyment, I am most interested in psycholinguistics, since my major is psychology, and sociolinguistics, because examining how culture and language are interrelated intrigues me. For the purpose of language learning, probably the most helpful focus is applied linguistics, since it is already the study of how we can use linguistic knowledge to teach languages (and, by extension, self-teach languages).
I can examine the basic structure of Hindi through the simple linguistics model outlined above. For phonology, there are about 46 different sounds, although that number may be slightly higher or lower depending on who you ask. :) For syntax, words are formed by combinations of consonant+vowel (with a few exceptions), and sentences are formed differently than in English (for example, as far as I understand, Hindi verbs always go at the end). I cannot comment much on semantics because I have not started learning a lot of vocabulary yet.
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