-आ / -ई (Masculine / Feminine)
Hindi nouns and adjectives are either masculine or feminine, which affects verb endings, adjective forms, and postpositions
Example
लड़का अच्छा है, लड़की अच्छी है
The boy is good, the girl is good
Usage Notes
Every Hindi noun has a gender — even non-living things. पानी (water) is masculine, हवा (air) is feminine. There's no reliable rule for inanimate nouns — you learn gender along with the word.
Many masculine nouns end in -आ and many feminine nouns end in -ई, but there are plenty of exceptions. कमरा (room) is masculine, दवा (medicine) is feminine despite ending in -आ.
Automatically detected by the Desi Lingo browser extension when you click Hindi words on any webpage.
Related — Foundational Grammar
Hindi nouns, adjectives, and verbs change form for singular (one) vs plural (more than one)
Nouns change form before postpositions — direct case for subjects, oblique case before को, में, से, etc.
The base form of a verb — remove -ना from the infinitive to get the stem used in all verb forms
Verb forms used as adjectives — habitual (V-ता हुआ = 'doing') or perfective (V-आ हुआ = 'done')
Comparative (-तर) and superlative (-तम) suffixes, or ज़्यादा (more) and सबसे (most) in everyday Hindi