Two of these have travelled into English. जंगल became jungle, and it means any forest or wild scrub, not specifically a tropical rainforest. नदी is feminine, and this is not a grammatical accident — India’s rivers are addressed as mothers. गंगा मैया and यमुना मैया are ordinary ways to refer to them, and people bathe in, pray to and immerse ashes in rivers that are simultaneously sacred and, in the case of the Yamuna at Delhi, severely polluted.

चाँद is the standard compliment for a beautiful face — चाँद सा चेहरा, a moon-like face — and Hindi film lyrics have used it for eighty years without exhausting it. The moon also has a practical role: Karva Chauth, Eid and many Hindu festival dates depend on actually sighting it, so चाँद निकल आया is a sentence with real consequences attached.

बारिश is the word you will use most. मानसून exists but sounds like a weather report; ordinary people say बारिश हो रही है — it is raining.

School textbooks teach six ऋतु (seasons), a Sanskrit scheme that maps the year more finely than four. In practice North Indians talk about three.

Note the double meanings. गर्मी is both summer and heat, and सर्दी is both winter and the illness — मुझे सर्दी हो गई means I have caught a cold, not I have become winter. धूप is specifically sunshine falling on you, and it is treated as something to escape rather than seek; धूप में मत बैठो is advice, not a warning about sunburn.

Specific trees carry specific meanings. The पीपल and बरगद (peepal and banyan) are sacred and are rarely cut down, which is why you will see roads built around them. तुलसी (holy basil) grows in a pot in millions of Hindu courtyards and is watered as a daily observance. Marigold, गेंदा, is the flower of every garland, every wedding and every temple, because it is cheap, bright and lasts.

मिट्टी carries emotional weight too. अपनी मिट्टी means one’s homeland, and returning to it is a theme running through Hindi cinema and Partition literature alike.

पेड़ and पहाड़ both end in ड़, the flapped retroflex — the tongue curls back and snaps forward, closer to an American r than a d. Say ‘pe-ṛ’ and ‘pa-haaṛ’. चाँद is nasalised: the chandrabindu sends the vowel through the nose, and the word ends on a soft dental d. आसमान is four even beats with no stress. मिट्टी doubles the retroflex ṭ, so hold it briefly, and बारिश ends in the sh sound, not s.

• Pronouncing पेड़ with a hard d. The ड़ is a flap, and this is the single most common giveaway.
• Saying मुझे सर्दी है and meaning the season. It means you have a cold.
• Using मानसून in casual talk. Say बारिश.
• Treating नदी as masculine. It is feminine, so it takes नदी बह रही है.
• Assuming जंगल means dense rainforest. In Hindi it covers any wild or uncultivated land.

1. Describe today’s weather in three Hindi sentences.
2. Say पेड़, पहाड़ and बड़ा ten times, focusing only on the ड़ sound.
3. Name five things you can see outside your window in Hindi.
4. Use गर्मी and सर्दी each in two sentences — one about season, one about the body.
5. Learn the names of three trees in Hindi and find out whether any is considered sacred.