Hindi Vocabulary: Learn 948 Words and 867 Verbs with Devanagari Flashcards

Most "1000 words" decks are a flat frequency list. Hindi Vocabulary: 1000 Words (deck code QC0344, 948 cards) on Flip It is built differently: 81 cards of pronouns, question words, numbers and adjectives, then 867 verbs in the infinitive, from होना (to be) to ऊंचा फेंकना (to lob). If you already know your greetings and want the part of Hindi that actually carries meaning in a sentence, this is the deck.

Ten cards from the deck

Every card is English → Devanagari, with no romanisation. That is deliberate: you learn to read समझना as a word shape, not as "samajhna" in your head.

What the 948 cards cover

• Pronouns and question words (cards 1–14): मैं, तुम, वह, हम, वे, यह, क्या, कौन, कहाँ, कब, कैसे, क्यों, कौन सा.
• Quantifiers and numbers: सब, बहुत, कुछ, कम, दूसरा, एक through दस, सौ, हजार.
• 46 adjective pairs: बड़ा/छोटा, गर्म/ठंडा, भारी/हल्का, तेज/धीमा, पास/दूर, सही/गलत, पूरा/खाली, साफ/गंदा, सुंदर/बदसूरत, खुश/दुखी, आसान/मुश्किल, सस्ता/महंगा, अमीर/गरीब, गहरा/उथला.
• Core verbs first: करना, बनाना, जाना, आना, देखना, जानना, सोचना, लेना, देना, कहना, बताना, पूछना, चाहना, सीखना, समझना, बोलना, पढ़ना, लिखना.
• Then 800+ mid- and low-frequency verbs: खोजना (to discover), चेतावनी देना (to warn), विकसित करना (to develop), असहमत होना (to disagree), उद्धृत करना (to cite), अंकुरित होना (to germinate), टकराना (to collide), चकमा देना (to circumvent), लड़खड़ाना (to totter).

Two things to notice before you start

Hindi builds verbs out of nouns plus करना / देना / होना. Look at the back side of the cards and you will see the pattern everywhere: काम करना (work + do = to work), सजा देना (punishment + give = to punish), चेतावनी देना (warning + give = to warn), विकसित करना (developed + make = to develop), खड़ा होना (standing + be = to stand). When a card shows a two-word verb, memorise the noun and the light verb separately: you get a noun for free and you can predict dozens of other verbs.

Some English verbs collapse into one Hindi verb. The deck is honest about this: "to be" and "to have" are both होना, "to put" and "to keep" are both रखना, "to begin" and "to start" are both शुरू करना, "to give", "to let", "to provide" and "to pay" all map to देना. Rather than marking these as duplicates, treat them as the real lesson — Hindi expresses possession, permission and payment through context and postpositions, not through separate verbs.

A study plan that fits 948 cards

1. Week 1: cards 1–81 (basics) plus the first 40 verbs. This is enough to build sentences like मैं समझना चाहता हूँ. Aim for full recall before moving on.
2. Weeks 2–5: 30 verbs a day. Sort mentally into three buckets — simple verbs (जाना, पढ़ना), करना compounds, देना/होना compounds — and say the bucket out loud when you flip. The classification itself is the memory hook.
3. Reverse the cards once a week. Hindi → English is the mode that shows whether you can read Devanagari quickly, and it exposes the near-synonyms (बढ़ाना = to extend, but also to increase) that English → Hindi hides.

Search for QC0344 in the Flip It library once logged in. If you are collecting frequency decks, the same series exists for other languages — see our guide to learning Thai from the first 1000 words or Norwegian by frequency.