Hindi, Tamil, Bengali or Marathi: which language to learn for your India trip

There is no single language of India, and Hindi will not carry you everywhere. The right choice depends almost entirely on where you are going, and on what you want the words to do.

Foreigndly Guides · 9 October 2026 · 9 min read · who we are

The question every India traveller asks, which language should I learn, has no single answer, because India has no single language: the constitution lists twenty-two in its Eighth Schedule, and most states are drawn around one of them. Pick the wrong one and your carefully practised phrases meet blank politeness; pick the right one for your route and even ten words open doors that English keeps shut. This guide gives you the map, the trade-offs and a way to decide by itinerary.

The map in one paragraph

At the last full census, in 2011, roughly 528 million people gave Hindi as their mother tongue, a figure that folds in many related regional languages, followed by Bengali at about 97 million, Marathi at about 83 million, Telugu at about 81 million and Tamil at about 69 million. Hindi dominates a broad northern and central band: Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Bengali is the language of West Bengal, with Kolkata at its centre, and of neighbouring Bangladesh. Marathi belongs to Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai and Pune. Tamil is the language of Tamil Nadu, with Chennai and Madurai. Around those four sit many other state languages a traveller will meet: Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada in Bengaluru and Mysuru, Telugu in Hyderabad, Malayalam in Kerala, Odia in Odisha, Konkani in Goa.

Two linguistic families sit under all this. Hindi, Bengali and Marathi are Indo-Aryan, distant cousins of English, and share a large stock of vocabulary from Sanskrit. Tamil, along with Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, is Dravidian, an unrelated family. Learning Hindi helps you guess at Bengali and Marathi words; it does very little for Tamil.

Where Hindi reaches, and where it stops

Hindi is the default second language across much of the country, spread by schooling, migration for work and, perhaps above all, by Hindi cinema and television. Its reach falls off in a fairly predictable pattern.

The reasons for Tamil Nadu's position, and how to handle it, are set out on the Tamil field kit; Kolkata's mix is described on the Bengali field kit.

What English actually covers

English is, alongside Hindi, an official language of the central government, and it is the language of higher education, the courts and most business, and the working language of tourism. It is not, however, a language most Indians speak: at the 2011 census, roughly one person in ten reported speaking English as a first, second or third language. That tenth is heavily concentrated among people a traveller meets in hotels, airlines, offices and tour companies, which is why India can feel more English-speaking than it is. Step into a bus station, a village, a small eatery or a conversation with anyone over sixty outside the cities, and it thins quickly.

Indian English also has its own vocabulary, and decoding it is arguably the most useful language skill for a first trip. A few terms you will meet immediately:

• Hotel, in the south and in Maharashtra, often means a restaurant, not lodging. A sign reading Hotel over an open-fronted eatery is serving food.
• Veg and non-veg describe restaurants, menu sections and even the green and brown-red symbols printed on packaged food.
• Out of station means out of town. Prepone means bring forward, the opposite of postpone.
• Lakh is 100,000 and crore ten million, and numbers are written to match: 1,00,000.
• Today itself means today and no later; only adds emphasis, as in it is here only, meaning right here.
• On Indian Railways, WL on your ticket means waitlisted, RAC means reservation against cancellation, a shared berth that may be upgraded to a full one, and Tatkal is a quota of last-minute tickets released the day before travel at a higher fare.

The four languages side by side

The table shows the words you will use most in each, in script and in a rough romanisation. Even if you only learn one column, being able to recognise the others tells you when you have crossed a language line.

A few patterns jump out. Hindi and Marathi share a script, Devanagari, so learning one alphabet lets you read the signs of both, and of Nepali too. Bengali has its own script, also used with small changes for Assamese. Tamil's rounded script stands alone. The word for thank you is shared across three of the four, but in everyday life it is used less than in English in all of them; the kit pages explain what replaces it. Each language also has its own way of turning down a hawker, and in each case that phrase is worth more on a first trip than the word for hello.

Greetings, too, are not uniform even within one language. Namaste is understood everywhere, but a Muslim shopkeeper in Lucknow or Hyderabad may greet you with adaab or salaam alaikum, and in Punjab a Sikh greeting is Sat Sri Akal. Answering in kind is welcome; namaste is never wrong.

Choosing by itinerary

The honest rule is to learn the language of the place where you will spend the most time outside hotels. Some common routes:

• Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan, or the Ganges plain. Hindi, without hesitation. It is the language of every rickshaw, chai stall and train compartment you will sit in. Start with the Hindi field kit.
• Mumbai, Pune and the Maharashtra coast. Either works. Hindi gives you more mileage in Mumbai and carries on if you go north afterwards; Marathi is the one that earns real warmth, and it matters more in Pune, Kolhapur or a Konkan village. If Mumbai is the whole trip, learn Marathi greetings and Hindi practicalities. See the Marathi field kit.
• Kolkata, Darjeeling and the Sundarbans. Bengali for Kolkata and the delta, where it is spoken with obvious pride, though note that the hills around Darjeeling speak Nepali day to day.
• Chennai, Pondicherry and the temple towns. Tamil. Hindi is not a substitute here, and English is the real fallback.
• Kerala, Bengaluru, Hampi or Hyderabad. None of the four is the local language. English will do most of the work; Hindi helps in Bengaluru and Hyderabad far more than in Kerala. A handful of words of Malayalam, Kannada or Telugu, even just the local thank you, is worth looking up.
• A grand tour across several regions. Hindi as the backbone, plus the greeting and the polite no in each state you visit. Learning Devanagari pays off twice, in the north and in Maharashtra.

Effort, and what to expect for it

None of the four is quick to learn properly, but the first-trip goal is modest: greetings, numbers for prices, a polite refusal, directions and food. Hindi is the easiest to practise before you go, simply because there is so much of it in films, music and online lessons, and because so many Indians speak it as a second language that a foreign accent surprises nobody. Bengali and Marathi reuse a great deal of the same vocabulary, so a little Hindi gives either a head start. Tamil asks for the most new material, with unfamiliar sounds and long, stacked word endings, but it also earns the most surprised delight, because so few visitors try.

Reading is a separate decision. A traveller who learns to sound out Devanagari, which takes a few focused evenings, can read station names, bus fronts and shop signs across the north and in Maharashtra. Most railway station boards carry the state language, Hindi and English, so a station sign is a ready-made reading exercise wherever you are.

The short version

• One region, one language: learn the local one, even if only twenty words.
• Several regions in the north and west: Hindi plus Devanagari.
• Anywhere south of Maharashtra: English first, and the local greeting and thanks; Tamil if Tamil Nadu is on the route.
• Everywhere: learn to read Indian English, and learn the polite no before the word for hello.