Stories from the chai table
Why we built this, what didn’t work, and how to actually learn Hindi for the people you love.
Hinglish vs Hindi: what's the difference, and which should you learn?
Hinglish is the blend of Hindi and English that most urban Indian families actually speak — and almost no app teaches it. Here's what it is, why it isn't "lazy Hindi," and which register you should learn first.
Read more →How long does it take to learn Hindi? Honest timelines by goal
Basic family-conversation Hindi takes roughly 3–6 months of daily speaking practice; full fluency takes years. The honest breakdown by goal — dinner with in-laws, a wedding in Delhi, or reactivating your childhood Hindi.
Read more →100 most common Hindi phrases (that people actually say)
The 100 phrases real families actually say — at dinner tables, on WhatsApp, at weddings — romanized, translated, with a note on who you'd say each one to. Not a single boy eating an apple.
Read more →How to learn Hindi when you grew up hearing it
You understand every word of your parents' Hindi and still reply in English. That's normal, it has a name, and fixing it takes weeks of the right practice — not the years a beginner needs.
Read more →Best app to learn Hindi for beginners in 2026: I tested 6, then built my own
My partner is white, British, and was about to meet 40+ members of my extended family at our engagement party in Delhi. She wanted to do more than smile and nod. In January 2025 she gave me a…
Read more →I built a Hindi app for my wife. Here's why.
It was a Tuesday night in our kitchen. The kettle had just clicked off. Hannah was standing by the counter holding her phone out to me with the screen up, the way you hold up a moth you found in…
Read more →Why Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, and Pimsleur didn't work for my wife (and what we built instead)
If you're reading this, I'm guessing you've just closed Duolingo Hindi for the third time this month with the same feeling: this is not getting me closer to the actual humans I want to talk to.…
Read more →Learning Hindi for your partner's Indian family — a practical guide
Meeting Indian in-laws when you don't speak Hindi is one of those things English-language self-help books don't cover. There's no chapter on what to do when twelve aunties are simultaneously asking…
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