I started learning to write in Hindi my first week of learning. Actually, the first few weeks were dedicated almost completely to the writing. I much prefer to write Hindi freehand rather than typing because, although I have never tried it, I have heard that the Hindi keyboard is difficult to use, and furthermore that it is difficult to use an English keyboard as a make-do Hindi keyboard. I think it must be because all Hindi consonants have an inherent assumed schwa vowel after them, so if you need to express two consonants together, you have to write a “half consonant” joined to the subsequent “full consonant”. In this way, Hindi combines letters together to form conjunct characters. I am assuming that to inform a computer that you want, for example, a combined H+Ra rather than a separated Ha+Ra, it must take extra steps. For this reason, most internet casual communication in Hindi is written in the English script. However, for my purposes, I am still learning the script since most Hindi textbooks are written in Hindi script with no transliteration.
I have started to see some syntactical and morphological patterns in Hindi. I know that all verbs have suffixes that determine number, gender, and formality. For example
Kharna - to eat
Kharti - I [fem.] eat
Kharta - I [masc.] eat
Kharte - You [formal, nongendered] eat
etc.
Fun side note: Kharna is also the noun for food so “Main kharna kharti hun” Means “I eat food” and “Kharna kharna” means “to eat food”.
Hindi also has some surprising syntax rules. The language really loves to express relationships between things, and there are some common little prepositions that signify those relationships. So I can’t just say, I am behind the table, I have to say something like “I (in relationship to the table) am behind. In Hindi that would be “Main table ke peeche hun.” Similarly, to express that I am American I say “Main America se hun.” which literally means “I America from am.”
Knowing about these grammar rules definitely does give me some clues when I try to read a script. From verb endings and pronouns alone I can figure out that in “vah mujhe kitaab deti hai", it is a single female doing the action [deti hai], and the I am the object of that action [mujhe]. The sentence means “she gives me the book”.
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