Building a Personal Hindi Learning System in Obsidian

My inaugural post is going to reflect on the system I’ve been using to learn Hindi. On my recent travels, my wife and I ended our trip with her family. In order to prepare myself, I wanted to really focus on learning Hindi. The books I had weren’t cutting it, constantly using Google Translate was a laughable approach to learning, and I was desperate. This post walks through the skeleton system I built for learning Hindi and how I keep my efforts focused.

Part 1: Finding What to Learn with “Present Narration”

My wife insisted I stay focused on learning Hindi in a straightforward process with simple grammar structures. The present continuous form was the best fit for this, as it lets you describe what you’re actively doing. For example “I am talking” (main bol raha hoon) or “I am washing” (main dho raha hoon) are actions I actively take around the house daily.

By narrating my present actions, it helps reinforce learning my routine activities in Hindi. In practice, I would take a moment throughout the day and “presently narrate” my day thus far. Speaking out loud in present continuous, I would recap every single action I took that day.

One of the interesting aspects of this approach is when I come across a new action I don’t know how to translate, I look it up and practice it immediately. As I find time (and find my phone), I add the new verb to my flashcard system.

Some examples of verbs I discovered this way:

dho - Wash
naha - Bathe or Shower
badal - Change
bol - Speak

Part 2: A Pragmatic Approach to Building Your Deck

The next approach I use is to look for upcoming events, whether interesting or not, that could be an opportunity for speaking Hindi. For example, I spent a week in my wife’s village and needed to speak Hindi to family. For this, I found a handful of common phrases and nouns that would help me say routine things like “I want salt” (mujhe namak chahiye). In this case, I wouldn’t have normally known the word salt (namak), so I added it to my Everyday Nouns note. Similarly by adding the phrase “I don’t feel like it” (mera man nahi hai), I could express my desire to not do something like eat another plate of food.

Choosing an event shouldn’t be overthought, this isn’t rocket science. If you need to grocery shop, plan your list and practice finding items or purchasing. Maybe you are going on a trip and need to ask for directions, or find the bathroom (classic example, I know). And as I mentioned before, I had an impending trip where I had to show my wife’s family that I was adapting, I was learning, and I was eager to support such a critical aspect of my wife’s life.

Some examples from my village visit preparation:

namak - Salt
sabzi - Vegetable dish
roti - Flatbread
Mera man nahi hai - I am not feeling like it
Kya aapne khaana kaaya - Did you eat food?

I find these approaches to be much more pragmatic than finding a large list of flashcards to work from so that I can not only practice with spaced repetition, but also practice in real life. Just keep it simple, keep it scoped, and don’t overwhelm yourself.

Part 3: Building the Engine in Obsidian

I had been using Obsidian for a couple months to organize my thoughts, journaling, and writing. At the same time, I was using Duolingo for learning Hindi and occasionally referencing one of the books. Duolingo wasn’t progressing fast enough or with relevant content, and my attention span wasn’t playing nicely with the textbook. That’s when I stumbled upon the Spaced Repetition plugin.

I use the Spaced Repetition plugin in Obsidian to manage my flashcards. My system relies on a simple #flashcard tag within each Obsidian note to generate the flashcards. Each session uses a spaced repetition algorithm (more on this in a future post if I feel like it) to present the right flashcards from the entire corpus of tagged notes.

When reviewing a flashcard, you decide how difficult the question was for you and it feeds back into the algorithm. I’d like to say I stay on top of the system and practice everyday, but I generally have quite a backlog of cards to review at any given time.

Folder Structure

In my Obsidian vault, I structure my Hindi flashcards by topic and part of speech. This allows me to focus my reviews and easily see what words or concepts I have for a given area.

My current structure is:

Adjectives
Connectors
Everyday Nouns
Grammar Patterns
Grammar Practice
Pronouns
Simple Phrases
Verbs

This structure evolved from a simple pattern. I began with verbs and conjugating them with the present continuous form to describe my day from Part 1. I recorded my grammar rules that I already knew. I then progressed to past future tense conjugations. After that I was ready to start making more complex sentences with objects, multi-part sentences, and simple phrases as discussed in Part 2.

Card Syntax and Directionality

When creating flashcards for language learning in Obsidian, the direction of the card is an important choice. The Spaced Repetition plugin offers two syntaxes that I use for different purposes.

Bi-directional Flashcards (:::)

For simple words or phrases that I want to recognize from either English or Hindi, I use the bi-directional ::: separator. For example, so:::Sleep generates two flashcards, one for “so” and one for “Sleep”. This is useful for building foundational vocabulary.

Examples from my vocabulary:

so:::Sleep
dho:::Wash
namak:::Salt
paani:::Water

Uni-directional Flashcards (::)

I use the uni-directional syntax with the :: separator for more complex concepts where I only ever need to recall in one direction. For example:

Present Continuous (I, masculine)::Main + [verb stem] + raha hoon

In this case, I only need to recall the Hindi grammatical structure from the English prompt, not the other way around. This makes it a more focused and effective learning tool for rules and patterns.

More examples from my Grammar Patterns:

Present Continuous (I, masculine)::Main + [verb stem] + raha hoon
Present Continuous (I, feminine)::Main + [verb stem] + rahi hoon
Expressing wants/needs::Mujhe + [thing] + chahiye
Yes/No questions::Kya + [statement]?

So, Was It Worth It?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. Ditching the one-size-fits-all apps forced me to build a system that fits my actual life. I’m learning the vocabulary I need for my next family dinner, not just random words about books and bananas. The result is that my progress has gone from stagnant to steady with a system I find myself returning to. I’ve been promoted from ‘Master of Confused Nodding’ to ‘Apprentice of Actually Following the Conversation.’ Sometimes.

The best part is that this system is alive. The taxonomy I have today will probably grow and adapt in a few months. I’m constantly finding new activities, and new real-world scenarios to build cards from. It’s not a perfect, finished product, but it’s a process that’s growing with me. And because it’s mine, I’m motivated to keep it going. After all, I still sometimes mix up “tomorrow” and “yesterday”.

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