Narration, dialogue and description in Hindi
I can write a short narrative that reads as Hindi rather than as translation
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
The clothes drying in the sun were stirring in the breeze.
Hey, how come you're here?
He got up, opened the door and went out.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Hindi narrative runs on the simple perfective, with compound verbs at the turning points and the imperfective past for background. Overusing compounds flattens the prose; using none makes it flat in the other direction.
Written dialogue keeps the particles - ना, तो, अरे - because without them characters sound like textbook exercises. Register does the characterisation: a Sanskritised line marks a schoolmaster as surely as a description would.
Participial phrases before the noun do the work that a relative clause would do clumsily: धूप में सूखते कपड़े. This is where the participial relatives of B2 earn their place.
Russian syntax showing through: long sentences with the verb in the middle, and abstract nouns where Hindi would use a verb.
Apply this grammar in C2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesWriting Hindi with Russian sentence architecture.
Russian sentence architecture showing through
Verb-final, short clauses, participles instead of relative clauses.
Dialogue written without particles
Characters without na, to and are sound like exercises.
The clothes drying in the sun were stirring in the breeze.
A participial phrase before the noun, not a relative clause.
Hey, how come you're here?
Dialogue keeps its particles.
He got up, opened the door and went out.
Plain perfectives, with the vector only at the end.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in C2 course exercises
Kamta Prasad Guru's grammar, the standard prescriptive reference for Hindi morphology and syntax.
Yamuna Kachru's reference grammar; the descriptive account relied on for aspect, valency and clause structure.