Hindi builds an enormous number of idioms from body parts. नाक कटना — the nose being cut — means public humiliation, and honour is repeatedly associated with the nose in Hindi. कान भरना literally means filling someone’s ears, and describes the person who quietly turns a boss or a parent against a colleague or sibling.

This is the part that separates a learner from a speaker. The verb inside the idiom must agree with your sentence.

Look at नाक कटना becoming नाक कट गई, नाक मत कटवाना and so on. The idiom’s verb takes tense, gender and causative forms exactly like any other verb. Quoting it as नाक कटना inside a sentence is the equivalent of saying ‘he to lose face yesterday’ in English.

दाल में कुछ काला है — something black in the lentils — is the standard way to voice suspicion and is used constantly. सिर पर चढ़ना describes a child, junior or friend who has been indulged until they take liberties, and every Indian parent uses it.

हाथ तंग है is a graceful way to say you cannot afford something, and it is far more natural than saying you have no money. Indians use it to decline expenses without embarrassment on either side.

Idioms are a marker of education and fluency in Hindi in a way they are not in English. Using them well in an office or a family setting signals that you know the language properly, and Hindi-medium schooling drills मुहावरे as an examinable subject — children memorise lists of them and are tested on constructing sentences.

This means that if you deploy an idiom correctly, the reaction from a Hindi speaker is often genuine delight, because it is the last thing expected from a foreigner. It is disproportionately high-value learning.

Note the overlap with Urdu. Many idioms are shared across Hindi and Urdu entirely, and Persian-origin ones like चार चाँद लगाना carry a slightly more literary flavour than the earthier village-derived ones.

आँख and आँखों are nasalised, and the nasal is the whole difference between आँख and आक. मुँह is genuinely difficult — the nasal and the h run together in one syllable. चढ़ना contains ढ़, the aspirated flap. झोंकना opens with the aspirated jh and carries a nasal. Say idioms at speed as single units; delivered slowly they lose their character.

• Inserting an idiom in its dictionary form without conjugating the verb.
• Translating English idioms literally, which produces nonsense in Hindi.
• Missing the nasals in आँख and मुँह idioms.
• Using an insulting idiom about someone present.
• Saying idioms slowly and word by word rather than as one unit.

1. Take नाक कटना and conjugate it in three different tenses.
2. Learn five body-part idioms and their literal translations.
3. Use दाल में कुछ काला है in a sentence about a real situation.
4. Decline an expense using हाथ तंग है.
5. Find the English equivalent for four of the idioms above.