Hindi Self-Learning - A Bibliography

A book which was ommited in post #4:

- Diccionario hindi-español; Central Hindi Directorate, Government of India, New Delhi, 1987

Again a glossary instead of a dictionary, just providing translation of the word in Spanish; out of print.

Johnny




A new book for Spanish-speaking people interested in the Hindi language:

- Hindi para principiantes, by Rupert Snell; Editorial Herder, Barcelona, 2007

From Teach Yourself; also available with two audio CD. The first commercially available book in Spanish for Hindi self-learning.

Johnny

Some more books to add to the Hindi self-learning bibliography in Spanish language:

- Hindi para principiantes, by Rupert Snell; Editorial Herder, Barcelona, 2007

From Teach Yourself; also available with two audio CD. The first commercially available book in Spanish for Hindi self-learning.

- Diccionario hindi-español; Central Hindi Directorate, Government of India, New Delhi, 1987

Again a glossary instead of a dictionary, just providing translation of the word in Spanish; out of print.

- Hindú elemental; Divulgación Idiomática Internacional, Aranjuez, 1974

Out of print; available for browsing in the "Biblioteca Nacional" (National Library).

Johnny

Mohini Rao's Teach Yourself Hindi. Cheap and pretty good - very clear, not a lot of technical grammar, lots of examples, and good transliteration for pronunciation. Also with devanagari script alongside the transliteration, which is helpful for beginners.

Also, try online a series of little videos put together by the U.S. Department of Education and a Hindi professor in North Carolina, "A Door into Hindi." I'll see if I can track down the url. This includes lessons as well as live and interactive conversations filmed in India and Pakistan, involving American students and Indians/Pakistanis.

Here's the link:

http://taj.chass.ncsu.edu/

Well I will bring this up again I am finally going to india in April!

Unfortunatley I am a somewhat slow learner when it comes to other languages.. I bought the book of Rupert Snell but it will take quite a while before i can speak hindi with that..

@ Haemish could you post your book in ebay again? I am sure it would be of great help !

cheers

Vik

McG - excellent.
Shapiro - OK, but not my favourite. Not bad in explaining grammar, but IMO R. S. McGregor: Outline of Hindi Grammar does it better.
That's the one I use now when taking up Hindi again after a couple of years.

I second.

You won't need any other dictionary HI-EN than the abovementioned McGregor. It's more difficult in the other direction. The Oxford English-Hindi Dictionary is probably all right for Hindi speakers studying English, but I ideally want one word or as few words as possible when looking for the equivalent of an English word, not a long explanation in Hindi of what the word means. I already know that.

I find Anand: The Modern English-Hindi Dictionary quite decent, but despite its smaller size, Bulke: An English-Hindi Dictionary is often more helpful to me.

A new book for Spanish-speaking people interested in learning the Hindi language:

- Hindi de cada día, by Ana Thapar; Pons Idiomas (Difusión Centro de Investigación y Publicación de Idiomas, S.L.), Barcelona, 2009

Conversation guide Spanish-Hindi/Hindi-Spanish; includes MP3 & Audio CD.

Johnny

Regretfully, a bunch of posts advertising and discussing an IM member's own book have been deleted.

Sorry to all whose posts have therefore disappeared, and for the frustration this will inevitably inflict on many.

Rules are rules, folks.

A list of useful dictionaries for the learning of Hindi language through English medium:


GENERAL DICTIONARIES

- The Oxford English-Hindi Dictionary, by R.S.McGregor; Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 330 Rs.

A must; over 70.000 entries providing etimology or origin of the word, meanings, examples of use, compound words...

- Advanced Learner's English-Hindi Dictionary, by Dr.Hardev Bahri; Rajpal, New Delhi; 500 Rs.

Also a must, providing meanings, examples of use, and compound words; appendixes covering grammar basics and other useful information.

- Pocket Hindi-English Dictionary and Pocket English-Hindi Dictionary, by Dr.Hardev Bahri; Rajpal, New Delhi; 40 Rs.

Pocket size dictionaries with more than 20.000 entries each.


SPECIAL DICTIONARIES

- English-Hindi Dictionary, by Dr.Hardev Bahri; Rajpal, New Delhi, 210 Rs.

Myriads of entries, with coverage not only of "normal" vocabulary, but also technical, cult, and even insolit words. No examples of use, but along with the meanings compound words, derivatives, idioms, etc. are provided. Miscellaneous appendixes.

- Dictionary of Hindi Verbs, by Helmut Nespital; Lokbharti, Allahabad; 1100 Rs.

Bulky volume in which, after a very technical introduction, only verbs are listed, including causatives. For each one, apart for the basic meaning, all the possible compound verbs are provided along with the nuance in meaning they convey. Real examples of use taken from books and scholars.

- Sahaj Samantar Kosh, by Arvind and Kusum Kumar; Rajkamal, New Delhi; 395 Rs.

Comprehensive thesaurus, with synonyms, antonyms, and related words; totally written in Hindi.


Johnny

I've recently become a convert to podcast language learning, at least as a component in addition to normal books/CDs. I've yet to find anything for Hindi as engaging as ChinesePod (the one I'm addicted to) but here are two.

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/

A really earnest attempt to make a range of lessons that you can download. Also has a community of Hindi learners who post in it's forum, many offering their own tips and other resources.

http://www.hindiurduflagship.com/resources/

This is the resources page of the University at Texas, Austin's Hindu-Urdu Flagship program. This is where Rupert Snell is teaching now and there is a range of stuff here from .pdf textbooks to podcasts available from Itunes. If you're using Teach Yourself Hindi there seems to be a lot of material that will help reinforce what's learned in that book.

I just started learning Hindi so I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in about other resources too.

Rosetta Stone - I've used this for Chinese and now for Hindi. Great for the absolute beginner. All right review for someone in the intermediate stage. It's not thrilling but is often less tedious than working through a textbook. It also relies heavily on audio, so even if you're outside India you'll be hearing quite a lot of Hindi. Though the topics aren't culturally sensitive, it's the same set of pictures and script for all languages so you'll learn the word for dress early but never hear the word for sari. Very useful for sentence patterns. The problem is that it never moves on into a lot of full conversations. Their marketing over-hypes the product but it's still very useful as an introduction and supplement to textbooks/classes.

Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script - This one has been great and I quickly got the basic script down. Since Rosetta Stone doesn't do a good job of teaching you the script (or explaining the difference between dental and retroflex, or aspirated and unaspirated consonants for that matter) this is a must have.

Teach Yourself Hindi - I'm working Rosetta Stone and the Script book first, TYH has been hard to pick up and maintain momentum with. TYH is very concise, but a little too concise for me. Languages don't come easily to me so I want a little more background before I dive deeper into this book.

thats only if one doesn't know how to use torrents

A most delightful book for Hindi-learning in Roman script is the Hindustani dictionary of Fallon published in 1877 but reprinted by Urdu Academy.

Are there any tricks with learning the Hindi script - like any faster way to memorise them?!

I bought the "Teach Yourself Hindi" book and find going through the script pages harrowing. There are so many. Some only a very slight difference to another that you have to be extra observant! Then there are those dependent, independent characters and not to mention those mixed and mangled character groups which changes the original characters completely. Totally confusing.

Any tips?

I've found that writing each letter individually 20 times or so helps memorization. It also helps train your hand with how to write it and your brain to pick up on the small differences. Then move on to other letters. When you start forgetting the ones you did before then redo them another 10 times. That, backed up with trying to read them in sentences, should help out.

I'm curious if anyone has any more in-depth tips though, especially about conjuncts.

Get hold of a Hindi newspaper or magazine and then copy out one paragraph a day by hand after you have deciphered it. This should make you completely familiar with the script in a matter of weeks. A Hindi primer used in the first year of school should also be helpful.

hi,
if you want to learn hindi language you have to take help of sanskrit word which is mother of all indian languages