But We Learnt That Word Already.

I remember saying that more than once. I wasn't upset with my children. I was puzzled.

I was wondering how they'd forgotten it so fast, and where we'd even learnt it in the first place.

Some words were in the textbook. Others were in the mastery book. More appeared in worksheets, reading passages or oral practice. Every week brought new vocabulary, but the old words stayed behind in whichever book we'd happened to be using that day.

Soon, they were scattered everywhere. And retention was a far-off idea.

Looking back, I don't think children need more vocabulary lists. They need familiar words.

That was the idea behind My Hindi Dictionary. Every word a child stumbles over during their practice on The Hindi Lab is saved in My Hindi Dictionary, ready to be revisited whenever they need it at the click of a button.

Languages aren't built by learning a word once. They're built by returning to the same words again and again, until one day children stop trying to memorise them, stop translating them, and simply know them.

They simply become part of the language a child knows.