Every Hindi noun is either masculine or feminine, including tables, rivers and abstract ideas. This is not decoration — the gender of a noun controls its adjectives, its verbs and its plural form, so a single wrong guess spreads errors right through the whole sentence. Fortunately the endings are far more predictable than most courses are willing to admit.
Gender: The Reliable Patterns
Roughly eighty percent of nouns follow these two rules.
Nouns ending in आ tend to be masculine. Nouns ending in ई tend to be feminine. That single pair of rules covers a large majority of everyday vocabulary.
There are firm exceptions worth memorising early: पानी (water) and आदमी (man) end in ई but are masculine. Beyond the endings, most abstract nouns ending in ट, ती or ता behave predictably, and Sanskrit borrowings ending in ता are feminine — सुंदरता, स्वतंत्रता.
Plurals — Two Systems
Masculine and feminine nouns pluralise differently, and within masculine there are two classes.
The rules in plain terms. Masculine ending in आ changes to ए. Masculine ending in anything else stays identical in the plural — घर is both house and houses, and only the verb reveals the number. Feminine ending in ई becomes इयाँ. Feminine ending in a consonant adds एँ.
The Oblique Case Nobody Warns You About
This is the rule that separates intermediate learners from beginners. When a postposition follows a noun, the noun changes form.
Singular masculine आ nouns shift to ए before a postposition. And crucially, all plural nouns take ओं before a postposition, regardless of gender — लड़कों, घरों, किताबों, लड़कियों. This ओं ending is one of the most reliable markers of correct Hindi, and skipping it is the most common intermediate mistake.
So कमरा में is wrong. It is कमरे में. And घरों में, not घर में, when you mean in the houses.
Gender propagates. Once you know किताब is feminine, the demonstrative, the adjective and the verb all follow: यह अच्छी किताब मेरी है. Get the noun’s gender wrong and three or four other words become wrong with it, which is why gender is worth learning with every new noun rather than afterwards.
Cultural Note
Gender assignment in Hindi is largely historical rather than logical, inherited from Sanskrit and reshaped by centuries of use. There is no reason why दाढ़ी (beard) is feminine, and native speakers cannot explain it either — they simply know.
Loanwords get assigned gender by their endings. English borrowings usually become masculine by default: फ़ोन, लैपटॉप, स्कूल. But those ending in ई often turn feminine, which is why party becomes पार्टी and takes feminine agreement.
A practical tip used by Indian children learning to write: when unsure of a noun’s gender, say it with बड़ा and बड़ी and see which sounds right. Exposure builds an ear for it faster than any rule table.
Pronunciation Tips
The plural endings carry nasals that must be audible. लड़कियाँ ends with the chandrabindu nasal, and किताबें nasalises the एँ. The oblique ओं is likewise nasalised — लड़कों is not ‘ladko’. Dropping these nasals is a common learner habit that makes plurals sound singular. And लड़का contains the flapped ड़.
Common Mistakes
- Saying कमरा में instead of कमरे में. Postpositions force the oblique form.
- Forgetting the ओं ending on plural nouns before a postposition.
- Assuming पानी and आदमी are feminine because they end in ई.
- Learning a noun without its gender, which breaks every agreement later.
- Dropping the nasal on plural endings, making किताबें sound like किताब.
Practice Exercises
- Sort twenty nouns you know into masculine and feminine using the ending rules.
- Pluralise ten nouns, five of each gender.
- Put five nouns into the oblique with में and को.
- Write three sentences where adjective, noun and verb all agree.
- Test yourself with बड़ा and बड़ी on any noun you are unsure about.