Learn Hindi
Devanagari is the most learnable of the Indian scripts and it is worth the week it takes, because it is phonetic in a way English is not: a Hindi word tells you how to say it. iLexiBox begins with the letters and then with the matras, the vowel marks that attach to them, since it is the matras and not the letters that stop most beginners reading.
Start at Devanagari
The Hindi on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 210 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Hindi voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.
- 44letters
- 10digits
- 16pronunciation rules
- 100core words
- 20everyday phrases
- 20sentences
Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the course teaches them:
- का — the long-a matra ा is written AFTER the consonantकाम — work
- कि — the short-i matra ि is written BEFORE the consonant but spoken after itकिताब — book
- की — the long-ee matra ी is written after the consonantपानी — water
Then material that does not run out
Once you are reading, the level is the point. The Text Generator writes Hindi at the CEFR level, length, topic and format you ask for, so the step up is a setting rather than a new book. Speaking scores you word by word as you read aloud. The Conversation Partner talks back. The Translator explains a sentence instead of replacing it, and the Corrector marks what you wrote and says why.
Above the on-ramp sits the Path — a station map from A1 to C2 with grammar, vocabulary and checkpoint stations — and Words & Notes, where everything you save comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule in seven quiz styles.
2,373 photographs, 2,337 of them captioned in Hindi
The album is a photograph for every word, shelved by category, each caption written in Hindi and spoken in a real recorded voice rather than synthesised on the fly. It doubles as a game: see the picture, spell the word. Free to replay.
What Hindi actually costs a beginner
A matra can be written after its consonant, or above it, or before it — and it is always SAID after, so the short-i mark sits to the left of a letter that comes first in the mouth. The eye resists that for a while. Underneath it sit two distinctions English does not make and Hindi does: aspiration, where क and ख are different words rather than the same word said harder, and the retroflex series ट ठ ड ढ, made with the tongue curled back to the roof of the mouth. Neither can be read off the page, so each is a card with a recorded Hindi voice.
54 languages in the app, CEFR A1–C2.