I’m passing along a link to a post written by an American teacher who is traveling in Asia. Her blog is a travelogue of her experiences. I enjoy this blog very much and hope you do, too.
Here’s the link to her post about Hindi:
Jan
13
If you are interested in a Hindi course, you will need to think about how to learn Hindi in its written form. The Hindi language is written in the Devanagari alphabet. The alphabet is distinguished by a bar that runs horizontally across the top of each letter. It is also called the “nagari,” or urban or urbane, script. That is, it was the alphabet of the cultured elite. “Devanagari,” or devine urbane script, has been used to write sacred Sanskrit texts since about the 19th century. It is now used to write Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and a host of other languages. You will need to know how to learn Hindi and its alphabet if you are beginning a Hindi course.
I admit that the first time I ever saw written Hindi, I was baffled. I had no idea how to learn a foreign alphabet. The Devanagari alphabet is so beautiful that I loved to look at it, yet I couldn’t imagine myself recognizing the letters and understanding words.
Relax. You can learn the Hindi alphabet, just like you learned the Roman alphabet. Start the way you did as a kid learning to read, and take it step by step. Here are some tips for how to learn Hindi in its written form. You can apply the same tips to learning any foreign alphabet.
- Write the letters over and over. Practice writing the letters one by one. Write lines and lines of them. Say the sound that each letter makes to yourself — or aloud if you dare — as you write it. Practice each letter until you feel quite familiar with it before you move on.
- Beware of similar shapes. When you were little, did you confuse “b” with “d”? Or “n” with “h”? Lots of alphabets have letters that look like other letters in that alphabet. Keep an eye out for them. When you find a pair of similarly shaped letters, look for differences. Then practice them side by side to reinforce the differences.
- Turn English into Hindi. Take an English-language text and transliterate it into Hindi. That simply means to use the letters of the Hindi alphabet to rewrite the English sentences.
- Read aloud. Take a Hindi-language text and read it aloud. You probably have a textbook from your Hindi course. Use some sentences from some of the more advanced lessons. Sound everything out, letter by letter and word by word. Hindi is written as it sounds, so you should be able to do that without too much trouble. Do not worry about understanding the meaning. That will come, too. But first get used to the sounds each letter makes. After some struggle, you should be able to read faster. Keep practicing.
It’s never easy to learn a foreign alphabet. But it can be done, so take the steps to do it. Practice hard and soon you, too, will be able to read Devanagari script, or any foreign alphabet. You remember how you learned to read English, don’t you? Then you should start your Hindi course with confidence, because you already know how to learn Hindi in its written form.
Dec
17
Are you wondering how to learn Hindi? That’s not surprising. More people in the United States are studying Hindi than ever before. Language schools and software developers are having a hard time keeping up with the demand. And considering the dynamic emergence of India on the global economic and political stage, it makes sense that there are so many people in the United States and elsewhere trying to find out how to learn Hindi.
Hindi is spoken worldwide by millions of people. It ranks fourth on the list of languages most commonly spoken; only Mandarin, Spanish and English are ahead of it. Hindi and English are the two official languages of India, a country in which 347 languages are spoken. Hindi is also spoken in Fiji, Mauritius and Guyana. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is another language commonly spoken in India. The two languages have so much in common that a Hindi speaker could also speak and understand colloquial Urdu. The languages are, however, written in different alphabets. So someone who has learned how to learn Hindi can get around in India, Pakistan and elsewhere.
It could be that you are wondering how to learn Hindi because you want to travel to India or do business with Indian companies. More and more people are traveling to India now for business, given the tremendous growth that the Indian economy is experiencing. Or maybe you want to travel, not for business, but for other reasons, like spiritual growth or cultural adventure. Or perhaps your interest is interpersonal; a significant other or friend with ties to India has you intrigued with Indian culture and the Hindi language. Or could it be that you are a film buff and you want to be able to enjoy Bollywood films? (Bollywood films are in Urdu, but remember that spoken, colloquial Urdu and Hindi are essentially identical.)
Well, those are all possible answers to the question of why to learn Hindi. But once you have decided that you want to learn this language, you need to think about how to learn Hindi. And frankly, opportunities to learn Hindi are limited in the United States. Although US universities saw an increase in enrollment in Hindi courses of 36% from 2002 to 2006, there are few universities with complete Hindi programs or majors.
If you aren’t a university student, your choices for learning a language generally include commercial language schools, a private tutor or self-teaching programs. But those alternatives aren’t often available to someone trying to find out how to learn Hindi. Commercial language schools offer Hindi typically only in large metropolitan areas, if they offer it at all. There are people who speak Hindi as a native or second language who live in the United States and who tutor others in the language, but those people are not as numerous as tutors of other languages. The easiest way for most people living in the United States to learn Hindi is to embark on some course of self-study, available either on CD or online.
There are obvious drawbacks to self-study language programs. For one thing, you don’t get feedback from a teacher when you make a mistake. For another, the best way to learn a language is to practice speaking it. You don’t have that opportunity when studying a language in a self-study program.
Still, whatever your reasons for studying the language, a self-study program, whether on CD or online, is most likely your best choice if you are trying to discover how to learn Hindi.
Oct
30
Are you wondering how to learn Hindi? Before you dive into learning Hindi, it might help you to know a few things about the language in general. Here is a list of six things to know about Hindi.
1. Word Order. In Hindi, there is some freedom in word order. Word placement can change for reasons of style or emphasis, but not as much as in other languages that are more heavily inflected. In Hindi, the verb usually comes at the end of the sentence. In a simple sentence, the word order of a sentence is usually
- subject
- object
- verb.
In more complex sentences, the word order goes as follows
- subject
- adverbs
- adjective and noun phrase of any indirect object
- adjective and noun phrase of any direct object
- Negative or interrogative marker, if any
- Verb, with auxiliary verb following the main verb.
Hindi uses postpositions instead of prepositions. That is the word follows the noun instead of preceding it. Adjectives precede nouns, as in English and German, but unlike Romance languages like French.
2. Case. Hindi is a weakly inflected language. That means that the endings of a noun will tell you its role in a sentence. Hindi has three cases:
- the direct case is used for the subject of a sentence and for other nouns that are not followed by a postposition
- the oblique case is used for nouns that is followed by a preposition
- some nouns have a separate vocative case, the form of the noun used when the noun is used as a form of address.
Singular and plural nouns are not always distinguishable in all declensions.
3. Gender. Hindi nouns recognize two genders, masculine and feminine. The masculine gender is used for male people and animals and for other objects deemed by usage “masculine.” Similarly, the feminine gender is used for female people and animals and for other objects deemed by usage “feminine.”
4. Pronouns. In Hindi, nouns do not reflect gender and the third person singular, comparable to the English “he,” “she” or “it,” actually corresponds to the English “this” or “that.” In addition to the direct and oblique case that Hindi nouns have, pronouns also have
- the accusative case, which is used for direct objects and
- the genitive case, which shows ownership.
There is no vocative case for pronouns.
The second person, corresponding to the English “you,” conveys three levels of honorifics.
- the formal form, which can be either singular or plural and is used in formal settings or when speaking to someone older or otherwise senior to the speaker
- the informal form, which can be either singular or plural and is used in informal settings or when speaking to someone younger or otherwise junior to the speaker
- the extremely informal, which exists only in the singular. It is used only between very close friends or in sacred poetic language and can be perceived as an insult if used inappropriately.
5. Verb Forms. Hindi verbs agree with their subjects in both number and gender. If the subject of a verb is a pronoun, the verb agrees with the noun that the pronoun represents. Hindi verbs indicate both tense, that is, whether an action is past, present or future, and aspect, that is, whether an aspect is habitual, progressive or perfective.
6. Interrogatives. As in other languages, questions can be formed in Hindi by using who, what, when, where and why. Additionally, the Hindi word kyaa, when placed at the beginning of a sentence, indicates an interrogative. Intonation can also indicate when a sentence is a question.
Do you want to know how to learn Hindi? It’s simple. Check out Rocket Hindi.
Read about Bollywood:
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saif teams up with the ‘gadar’ director – saif teams up with the ‘gadar’ director dna the actor believes that it would be interesting to work with the ‘gadar’ director this seems to be the most unlikely coupling in the history of mainstream cinema. saif ali khan has decided to …
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Giselle Monteiro – Love Aaj Kal – She didn’t know how to speak Hindi. Luckily Giselle had only two lines to speak, which we dubbed. Not to mention Giselle looked perfect for the role she played and audience kept wondering who the Punjabi Kudi (Giselle Monteiro )was? …
Oct
26
Ahmedabad, in northeastern India, is the largest city in the State of Gujarat. It was founded in 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah and named after its founder. There are many places to visit and things to do in that bustling city. Here are four of them:
1. The Calico Museum of Textiles. The Calico Museum of Textiles was founded in a city in which the Indian textile industry flourished. It was originally housed in the Calico Mills. Considered one of the finest textile museums in the world, the Calico Museum of Textiles houses five hundred years of the finest fabrics spun, woven, printed and painted in different parts of India. The museum displays its textiles organized into religious fabrics and historic fabrics. Visitors to the museum include members of the general public as well as scholars from India and abroad studying textiles. Visitors can also view a collection of marble, sandstone and bronze icons and busts.
2. Kankaria Lake. Kankaria Lake is a circular man-made lake. An island in the center of the lake which hosts a garden, called Nagina Wadi, meaning “beautiful garden” in Urdu. The lake is the site of a number of family-oriented recreational venues, including parks, an aquarium, a boat club, a natural history museum and a zoo. This makes it one of the richest locales to visit in the area.
3. The Mosque of Sidi Saiyyed. The Mosque of Sidi Saiyyed is known throughout the world for its exquisite stone screen windows, or jali. It was built in 1573 by Sidi Saiyyed, a slave of Sutan Ahmed Shah. Visitors to Ahmedabad often bring home a miniature of this arc-rich mosque.
4. The Siddi Bashir Mosque. The front of the Siddi Bashir Mosque is graced with twin minarets. And these minarets contain a mystery. When one minaret is shaken the other one begins to vibrate while the connecting passage between them remains still. How and why this happens has never been explained.
If you have a chance to get to Ahmedabad, you will enjoy these and many other places. If you are planning a trip, don’t forget to come prepared by learning Hindi first with Rocket Hindi.
Read about the perils of not learning Hindi here:
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Confessions of an arrogant Expat: Why didn’t I learn how to speak … – Confessions of an arrogant Expat: Why didn’t I learn how to speak Hindi? Melissa A. Bell – Saturday, April 11, 2009 1:31 PM. First it was summer in February. Then it was back to winter for a little while. Then it was monsoons for a …
Oct
21
Thinking about visiting Mumbai? Here’s yet another reason — the Mumbai laughter clubs.
Mumbai is a busy, busy city. With a population of about 19 million souls, this tropical metropolitan area on the Arabian Sea is the fourth largest urban area in the world. Mumbai is the commercial, shipping and financial hub of India, a multicultural, multilingual city that is the home of Bollywood, the thriving Indian film and television industry. You might forgive residents of Mumbai for being a little stressed out.
But there is a solution for stress. And Mumbai owes it to Dr. Madan Kataria. The solution is laughter.
In the mid 1990’s, Dr. Kataria was researching the scientific literature that demonstrates that laughter aids in healing both mind and body. It occurred to the good doctor to start a laughter club. He sought participants by visiting a Mumbai park. Rather than engaging professional comedians, the few participants in the laughter clubs stood in a circle and told each other jokes. But then they ran out of jokes, so Dr. Kataria used his creativity to devise new ways of encouraging laughter. In doing so, he developed laughter yoga, a process that incorporates traditional yoga poses, yoga breathing and group laughter exercises that don’t depend on jokes or comedy routines. Dr. Kataria has continued to encourage laughter as a positive influence on physical, mental and spiritual well-being. And Mumbai is known as the birthplace of laughter yoga.
In a large and diverse city, the creation of laughter yoga is a charming slice of life.
Mumbai is a multilingual city in a multilingual country. The three most common languages spoken in Mumbai are Hindi, Marathi and English. Hindi is the official language of India and almost everyone in India can speak it, at least a little. So if you are visiting Mumbai or anywhere else in India, and you want to speak directly to the residents there, Hindi is the best language to learn.
Do you want to know how to learn Hindi? You can learn Hindi like a rocket with Rocket Hindi.
Speaking of Bollywood, have a look at these videos:
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coincidence, part one – l_r_13_edit. love and rockets, #13 by jaime and beto hernandez. by coincidence, the creator of the above publication came up to me when i was 14 years old and told me i reminded him of a character named maggie from a comic book called …
Oct
21
Rocket Hindi – The Ultimate Guide To Learning Hindi
Are you wondering how to learn Hindi? Well you should be, if you are interested in Indian culture or travel to India. India is a large, teeming, diverse country and provides fascinating things to study.
For one thing, India is a nation of artisans and craftsmen. It can be daunting for visitors to India to choose just a few things to bring home, because the choice is so great and the size of most travelers’ suitcase is just too small! From textiles to metal crafts, from inexpensive to quite dear, India is rich gorgeous collectibles.
All of India’s largest cities have bazaars, and that can be the best place to look for variety and quality. You’ll be glad you know how to learn Hindi when you are wandering around the bazaars looking for just the right keepsake.
Some of the finest textiles can be found in both Rajasthan and Kashmir. Artisans craft carpets in both regions. Kashmir is famous for embroidery. In addition to fabrics, Rajasthan also produces jewelry, glass and products made from camel hide.
Jewelry is also a favorite souvenir from places all over India. In the Himalayas, jewelers craft unique items out of silver, turquoise and coral. Silver and gold items abound all over India. Many visitors to India come away with a special fondness for 22-carat gold items, which tend to be bold and bright in design. Silver jewelry can be so commonplace that jewelers have bags of it available for purchase by the kilo.
But jewelry is not the only kind of metal work popular with collectors. Artisans use brass and copper for decorative and practical use, such as trays, plates and cups. And a particular specialty of Aurangabad and Hyderbad is a type of metal work called bidriwork. Bidriwork is gunmetal alloy that is inlaid with silver and gold. It can be used for various decorative yet functional items, such as boxes and vases.
Of course you will learn all this for yourself if you are lucky enough to visit India. And if you do get to India, you will be happy that you looked into how to learn Hindi.
Are you wondering how to learn Hindi? You can learn Hindi like a rocket with Rocket Hindi. Not sure you want to commit? Sign up for the free six-lesson trial.
Read more about learning Hindi:
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Learn Hindi Conversation: At the Vegetable Market – Learn to speak Hindi online with this article on visiting a vegetable market. The article will introduce learners to names of vegetables, how to ask if the vendor has something how to buy, how to bargain, and how to say you don’t want a …
