Hindi for Bengalis · Part II, Ch. 5

Verbs and tenses

Bengali verbs change for person and honorific level: আমি খাই / তুমি খাও / সে খায়. Same root, different ending per person, no agreement with gender or number. Hindi works on a different axis. The ending for the present, past, and future tenses each carries its own agreement signature, and it tracks gender and number, not person.

This sounds like more to remember, but it's actually a smaller table than Bengali conjugation. Hindi's main tense system is three patterns, each with four agreement endings.

Ten verbs that carry most of the load

These ten cover most of the verb tokens in any Hindi sentence you read. Memorise the dictionary form (infinitive ending in -ना) and the stem (drop the -ना).

The three tense patterns

Most of the Hindi you'll hear is in one of three tense slots: habitual present, perfective past, or future. Each one composes the stem with a different ending. There's also a progressive (the "is doing X right now" form), which slots onto the same machinery.

Habitual present — "I eat"

Pattern: stem + ता/ती/ते + है/हैं/हूँ/हो. The -ता-suffix takes the agreement ending for gender and number; the है auxiliary takes the person-and-number form you learned in Ch. 1.

Future — "I will eat"

Pattern: stem + ूँगा/ूँगी/एगा/एगी/एँगे. The future is a single-word form — no auxiliary. The ending fuses person, gender, and number into one block.

Perfective past — "I ate"

Pattern: stem + या/ई/ए/ईं. With transitive verbs in the past, this is where ने arrives and the verb agrees with the object, not the subject (Ch. 3). With intransitive verbs, no ने, and the verb agrees with the subject as usual.

A few common verbs have irregular perfective stems: जाना → गया, करना → किया, होना → हुआ, देना → दिया, लेना → लिया, पीना → पिया. The agreement endings are still या / ई / ए / ईं, just attached to the irregular stem.

Progressive — "I am eating"

Pattern: stem + रहा/रही/रहे + है/हैं/हूँ/हो. रहा agrees with the subject; the auxiliary handles person. Common in songs and conversation.

Example: मैं खा रहा हूँ। "I am eating" (male speaker). वो जा रही है। "She is going."

The conjugation grid as one picture

Why this is actually less to memorise than Bengali

Bengali verbs change for person across each tense, giving you something like খাই / খাও / খাস / খায় / খান just in the present. Five forms per tense, three or four tenses, and each verb separate.

Hindi reduces this. The agreement endings are the same four (-आ / -ई / -ए / -ईं) across every verb, in every tense. The auxiliary है/हैं/हूँ/हो carries the person dimension, and you only learn that once. So once you have the four agreement endings and the four-form है auxiliary, almost every verb conjugation is mechanical.

Work one, then finish one

Worked. Conjugate देखना (to see) for "she will see". Stem: देख. Future ending for वह, feminine: -एगी. Combine: देखेगी. Full sentence: वह देखेगी। "She will see."

Your turn. Conjugate लिखना (to write) for the sentence "I wrote a letter" — given मैंने as the subject and पत्र ("letter", masculine) as the object.

(Answer: Stem लिख, perfective masculine singular ending -आ, gives लिखा. Because मैंने takes the ergative ने, the verb agrees with the object पत्र (masc. sg.) — which matches लिखा. Sentence: मैंने पत्र लिखा।)

Why this earns a place in your toolkit

Once you have the three tense patterns and the ten high-frequency verbs, you can read and produce most everyday Hindi. The big remaining items — subjunctives, compound verbs (कर लेना, जा सकना), passives — all sit on top of this base. You won't be fluent, but you'll be functional, which is the unlock most learners stall on.