Learn Marathi for kids: getting started with Marathi Barakhadi & Varnamala
A practical guide for Marathi-speaking families: what the Varnamala and Barakhadi are, what order to teach them in, and how to keep Marathi alive in an English-schooling household.
The TinyLearn Team5 min read
Plenty of Marathi households are raising children who speak Marathi fluently and cannot read a word of it. School is in English, apps are in English, and मराठी stays a spoken language at home — until one day a seven-year-old cannot read a sign in their own city.
Written Marathi is very learnable if you start early. Here is how the pieces fit.
Varnamala and Barakhadi are two different things
Parents often use the terms interchangeably. They are separate stages, and the order matters.
Varnamala (वर्णमाला) is the alphabet — the individual letters. Vowels (स्वर): अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ अं अः. Consonants (व्यंजन): क ख ग घ ङ, च छ ज झ ञ, and so on.
Barakhadi (बाराखडी) is what comes next: each consonant combined with each vowel sign, laid out as a grid. Take क and you get का कि की कु कू के कै को कौ कं कः — twelve forms in a row, hence bara, twelve.
Varnamala is learning the letters. Barakhadi is learning to build syllables out of them — and it is the step that actually unlocks reading, because Marathi words are made of syllables, not bare consonants.
Marathi is not just Hindi with different words
Both use Devanagari, so a parent who knows Hindi has a large head start. But there are real differences, and glossing over them causes trouble later:
- ळ is a Marathi letter with no Hindi equivalent. It appears constantly — मराठी itself does not use it, but बाळ, डोळा and जेवळ do. Teach it as a first-class letter, not a footnote.
- च and ज have two pronunciations each in Marathi depending on the word, a distinction Hindi does not make.
- Vocabulary diverges more than the shared script suggests. पाणी is water in both; but plenty of everyday words differ entirely.
If your child is learning both Hindi and Marathi, teach them as two languages that share a script — not as one language with variants.
A teaching order that works
- Swar first — अ आ इ ई उ ऊ. Six to start, the rest later.
- The क row — क ख ग घ. A strong, distinct group.
- Rows with emotional payload — the म row gives आई, the ब row gives बाबा. Teach the letters your child already has a reason to care about.
- ळ early, because it is everywhere in Marathi and delaying it costs you.
- The remaining rows, one per week or two.
- Barakhadi, one consonant at a time — all twelve forms of क before touching ख.
Keeping Marathi alive when school is in English
The realistic threat is not that your child never learns to read Marathi. It is that Marathi gets quietly demoted to the language you use with grandparents.
What actually helps:
Keep one domain fully Marathi. Meals, or the bedtime hour, or the drive to school. A domain the language owns survives better than a general intention to speak more Marathi.
Read aloud in Marathi even before they can read. Children who are read to in a language read in that language far more readily later. Marathi picture books exist; use them.
Let them hear the script and the sound together. Recognition needs both. Tap-to-hear letters let a child connect the shape to the sound without an adult supervising every repetition.
Don't correct fluency out of them. A child mixing English words into a Marathi sentence is code-switching, which is what bilingual speakers do. Correcting it aggressively teaches them that speaking Marathi is stressful, which is exactly the outcome you are trying to avoid.
Write to them. A note in the lunchbox in Marathi. A birthday card. Real writing with a real purpose beats a worksheet.
What to expect, and when
For a child in a Marathi-speaking home doing ten minutes most days:
| Stage | Rough timeline |
|---|---|
| Swar recognised | 4–6 weeks |
| Most vyanjan recognised | 4–6 months |
| Full Varnamala | 8–12 months |
| Barakhadi for common consonants | 12–18 months |
| Reading simple words | 18–24 months |
A child hearing Marathi daily moves faster than these numbers. A child who only hears it on weekends moves slower. Both get there.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Marathi Varnamala and Barakhadi?
The Varnamala is the Marathi alphabet — the individual vowels and consonants. The Barakhadi is the next stage: a grid pairing each consonant with each vowel sign, giving twelve forms per consonant, such as क का कि की कु कू. Learn the Varnamala first.
At what age should a child start learning Marathi letters?
Children can start recognising Marathi vowels from around age 3, and work through the consonants between ages 4 and 6. Starting before formal schooling helps, because the script then arrives alongside English letters rather than years behind them.
What is the letter ळ?
ळ is a retroflex lateral consonant used in Marathi that does not exist in standard Hindi. It appears in very common words such as बाळ and डोळा, so teach it early rather than treating it as an exception.
How do I keep my child speaking Marathi when school is in English?
Give Marathi a domain it fully owns — meals or bedtime — read aloud in Marathi before your child can read, use audio-based practice for the script, and avoid correcting code-switching harshly. Consistency in one protected area beats occasional effort everywhere.
