What language do they speak in Mumbai?
A Mumbai railway station board lettered in Marathi, Hindi and English
Marathi is the official language of the state, Hindi is what most of the street actually speaks, and English will carry you through perhaps 80% of a tourist day — the other 20% is where a dozen memorised words earn their keep.
Three languages, three jobs
Marathi is the language of Maharashtra and of Mumbai's oldest neighbourhoods — Girgaon, Dadar, Parel, Mahim — and it is the language of government, municipal signage and school. Hindi, in a distinctly local register, is the lingua franca of the street, because a huge share of the city's drivers, porters, cooks, construction workers and shopkeepers came from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. English is the language of offices, menus, hotel front desks, museum labels, air-conditioned malls and the middle class, and it is genuinely fluent rather than phrasebook English.
Add Gujarati in the trading districts around Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi, Urdu around Mohammed Ali Road and Byculla, Konkani along the coastal Christian and Kathiawari-linked pockets, and Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam in Chembur, Matunga and Sion. What this means in practice is that most people you meet are already switching between two or three languages, so a mangled sentence causes no offence and no confusion — they will meet you halfway faster than a monolingual speaker anywhere in Europe would.
The Marathi that buys you goodwill
Ten words of Marathi will visibly change how an older shopkeeper in Girgaon or a temple attendant at Babulnath treats you. Namaskar for hello, with palms together. Dhanyavaad for thank you. Kiti for how much. Ho for yes, nahi for no. Kaay for what. Paani for water. Chaan for lovely, which is the word you use about somebody's food. Ek, don, teen, chaar, paach for one to five. Barobar for correct. Jaaych aahe, roughly I want to go, followed by a place name, gets you pointed in the right direction at any bus stop in the city.
Where Marathi pays best: markets in Dadar and Matunga, family-run khanavals and Malvani eateries, taxi drivers with a Maharashtra registration plate, temple staff, and anyone over fifty in the island city. Where it lands with a blank look: an auto driver in Andheri East who grew up in Gorakhpur. Do not try to correct anyone's language politics, and be aware that the visibility of Marathi on shop boards has been a live civic issue for years — municipal rules require Marathi in Devanagari script on signage, which is why every shopfront now carries it.
The Hindi that actually moves you across town
This is the functional set. Bhaiya to address a driver or waiter — literally brother, universally used. Kitna hua for how much is it. Meter se chalo, go by the meter, which is the single most useful sentence in the city and works because it signals you know the rules. Seedha for straight, and while bayen and dayen exist for left and right, absolutely everybody in Mumbai says left and right in English. Thoda aage for a little further. Bas, yahin rok do for stop right here. Chhota note nahi hai for I do not have a small note. Bilkul nahi for absolutely not.
Pronunciation matters less than confidence and word order. Say the destination first, loudly and with the landmark attached: Andheri East, Chakala, Andheri Kurla Road — not the hotel's marketing name, which nobody knows. Landmark navigation is how the city works: signal, naka, chowk, station, market, temple, bridge. If you say Bandra station east side, near the skywalk, you get there; if you say the address on your booking confirmation, you get a 20-minute tour. Learn your hotel's nearest landmark on day one and write it in Devanagari on your phone.
Bambaiya: the city's own dialect
Mumbai's street Hindi has its own grammar and vocabulary, and hearing it decoded makes the city funnier. Apun means I or we. Kaay re and kya re are the all-purpose openers. Jhakaas means excellent, popularised by Marathi cinema. Bindaas means carefree. Khali-pili means for no reason at all. Faltu means useless. Locha means a mess or a hitch, as in there is a locha with the booking. Scene, as in kya scene hai, means what is happening. Rickshaw is always rickshaw, never autorickshaw, and the black-and-yellow taxi is a kaali-peeli.
You will also meet English words used in specifically Indian senses, and misreading them causes real confusion. Hotel can mean a cheap restaurant with no rooms at all. A tempo is a small goods truck. Prepone means to move earlier. A doubt means a question. Out of station means out of town. Lakh is one hundred thousand and crore is ten million, and property prices, film budgets and hospital bills are all quoted that way — a flat at ₹4 crore, a wedding at ₹15 lakh. Learn those two and Indian numbers stop being a wall.
Reading signs, scripts and station boards
Marathi and Hindi share the Devanagari script, which means the same letters spell different languages — useful, because once you can pick out a handful of station names you can read the platform boards. Railway signage in Mumbai is trilingual: Marathi on top, Hindi below, English at the bottom, and the English is always there. Road signs, metro stations, hospital boards and municipal notices follow the same pattern. Bus destination boards are the exception: on many BEST buses the destination is in Marathi and Hindi only, with the route number in Arabic numerals, which is why locals navigate buses by number.
Two practical tricks. First, download the offline Marathi and Hindi packs in your translation app before you land, because the camera-translate function on a Marathi menu in a Dadar khanaval is genuinely transformative — it turns thalipeeth, sol kadhi, kombdi vade and misal into food you can order deliberately. Second, screenshot your hotel name and address in Devanagari and keep it in your phone's favourites; showing a screen beats pronouncing a colonial-era street name that has since been officially renamed and is known by both names locally.
Where English stops working
English carries you through hotels, restaurants with printed menus, museums, malls, app cabs, pharmacies and any office. It thins out with autorickshaw drivers away from the tourist strip, at suburban vegetable and fish markets, on BEST buses, at government counters, in the outer suburbs beyond Borivali and Thane, and with domestic workers and security staff at residential buildings. It also thins by age: a 25-year-old barista in Bandra West speaks better English than a 60-year-old tailor in Kalbadevi, who may speak four other languages instead.
The failure mode is not incomprehension, it is politeness. A driver who does not understand will nod and set off anyway, because saying no is rude and he assumes it will resolve. So confirm rather than ask: instead of do you know the Prince of Wales Museum, say Kala Ghoda, Museum, CSMVS, and wait for him to repeat it back. If he repeats the wrong word, get out. Yes rarely means yes here; a repeated destination name means yes. This single habit prevents more wasted hours in Mumbai than any app.
Address, tone and the small courtesies
Forms of address do a lot of work. Bhaiya for a younger or same-age man serving you, kaka or uncle for an older man, aunty for an older woman, madam and sir for staff at counters and in offices — and yes, sir and madam are used constantly and are not sarcastic. Ji appended to a name or to haan softens everything: haan ji is a warm yes. Namaste and namaskar both work as greetings, with palms together and no handshake needed, which is also the safest greeting when meeting a woman for the first time.
Volume and directness read differently here. What sounds like an argument between a driver and a hawker on Colaba Causeway is usually a transaction. Conversely, a flat no from you is heard as final and is not rude, which matters with touts near the Gateway of India — say nahi, keep walking, do not explain. Bargaining language is short: kitna, then a pause, then a counter of roughly 60% for a market souvenir, then walking away. In shops with printed prices, marked bills or an MRP label, there is no bargaining and asking for it marks you out.
Before you book
What people ask before booking Mumbai.
No, but a dozen words remove most daily friction. The high-value ones are meter se chalo for taxis and autos, kitna hua for how much, bhaiya to address staff, and namaskar plus dhanyavaad in Marathi for shopkeepers and temple staff. Everything hotel-related, ticketed or menu-based works in English.
Hindi is more immediately useful because most drivers, porters and stall holders speak it, and it works across north and central India too. Marathi is the state language and buys real goodwill in Girgaon, Dadar, Matunga and with older residents. If you only learn one set of words, learn Hindi and add namaskar and dhanyavaad from Marathi.
Because a direct no is considered rude, so a nod can mean I did not understand. Fix it by making him repeat the destination back using landmarks — station, chowk, naka, temple, market — rather than a hotel brand name or a street name that was officially renamed decades ago and is still known by both versions.
