थोड़ा changes for gender because it ends in आ — थोड़ी चीनी but थोड़ा पानी. The others are invariant. Note that काफ़ी means both enough and quite a lot, so काफ़ी लोग आए means a fair number of people came, not that exactly enough came.

The -ओं ending turns a number into a collective meaning all of them: दोनों is both, तीनों all three, चारों all four. It extends upward — सैकड़ों means hundreds and हज़ारों thousands, used for indefinite large quantities exactly as English does.

जोड़ा means a pair and is used for shoes, socks and married couples alike, which produces the occasional joke.

पाव is genuinely useful at any vegetable market — पाव किलो टमाटर is a quarter kilo of tomatoes, and asking in these terms marks you as a local rather than a visitor. तोला survives entirely in the gold trade, and jewellers still quote in it alongside grams.

Cloth is often still sold by गज़ or by metre, and tailors work in both without difficulty.

Indian grouping runs thousand, lakh, crore, with commas placed to match: 1,00,000 and 1,00,00,000. Every salary, property price and box office figure in India uses this, and converting mentally becomes a daily reflex. One lakh is a hundred thousand, ten lakh is a million, one crore is ten million and a hundred crore is a billion.

Note that सैकड़ा means a hundred as a unit — used in cricket for a century and in trade for counting in hundreds.

Ordinals are regular after the first three — चौथा, पाँचवाँ, छठा, then number plus वाँ. Age uses साल का or साल की depending on gender: वह बीस साल की है for a woman.

Time expressions take the oblique, which learners routinely miss — आधे घंटे में rather than आधा घंटा में, and दो दिन में rather than दो दिन में being altered at all, since दिन is invariant.

One further quirk worth knowing is that Hindi counts inclusively in some fixed expressions. आठ दिन, literally eight days, conventionally means a week, and पंद्रह दिन means a fortnight. A shopkeeper promising delivery in आठ दिन is offering a week rather than eight days precisely, and taking the figure literally leads to unnecessary irritation on both sides.

काफ़ी and ज़्यादा both carry nukta sounds, the f and the z. करोड़ ends in the flapped ड़. सैकड़ों has the same flap plus a nasal. And पाव is two clean beats. When quoting prices or quantities, slow down deliberately — a misheard number costs more than a mispronounced word.

• Failing to inflect थोड़ा with feminine nouns.
• Converting lakh to million incorrectly.
• Reading 1,00,000 as a misprinted hundred thousand rather than one lakh.
• Using आधा घंटा में instead of the oblique आधे घंटे में.
• Assuming traditional units like पाव and तोला are obsolete. Both are in daily use.

1. Buy five items using पाव, आधा and सवा.
2. Convert three salaries and a population figure into lakh and crore.
3. Use दोनों, तीनों and चारों in sentences.
4. State four ages with correct gender agreement.
5. Put five time expressions into the oblique correctly.