Learning Hindi

cluckadee

Hello,

I am travelling to (north) India in about a month, and wanted to know if anyone has used a Hindi Language course on CD? I have used the Pimsleur course to learn Brazilian Portugese, very good, but very expensive.

Also, whilst I am there, I wanted to take some Hindi classes. I will be in Delhi for a little bit, and then up to Rishikesh to study Yoga, but would be useful to get a good working knowledge of the language.

Any recommendations would be helpful and appreciated.

Cheers,
Matt

Samsara

I bought the latest version of Lonely Planet's Hindu and Urdu phrasebook (you can learn the Devanagari script from it and also the script Urdu is written in). I like it and it didn't cost much (AUD$11 or something?) . I also want to get the audio kit by Lonely Planet, it doesn't cost much either. But I'm already doing a formal course of Hindi and I used to speak it when I was a kid, so it might be not so useful if you don't know any of the language. Landour Language School in Mussoorie is famous for learning Hindi (pay by the hour, I think, and just find your own lodgings, goes 11 months a year? Plus there is at least one private qualified tutor in the area). Himalaya Hindi House in Garwhal Himalayas is another place (outside certain summer months when it's used by Australian National Uni students). Or you could just take cheap language books with you to Rishikesh and practise on the locals. I practise down at my local Indian restaurant and they don't mind at all (in fact last time I went there they gave me extra food which was a bit embarrassing but very nice of them and they sit down everytime, even if it's only for a few minutes and have chai and talk to me).

I feel it's essential to learn the Devanagari script first (the language written in Roman script makes no sense unless you are already a Hindi/Urdu speaker and the script is truly phonetic, unlike written English and it's very easy to learn).

Landour Language School - http://www.avashy.com/hindisite/lls.htm

Hindi Language Links (this is my lecturer's university page) -http://www.latrobe.edu.au/indiangallery/links.htm

Himalaya Hindi House -
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/himhindi/index.html

LuAnnandJawahar

If you have high-speed access, there are some great lessons at
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/hindi_lessons/

Unfortunately it is not all complete. I've written them several times with no response. Maybe they're on holiday or maybe they abandoned the project. What a shame. Still worth looking at.

And as above poster says, go ahead and take the trouble to memorize the Devanagari script. You'll be able to read anything then. Ofcourse, you won't necessarily know what it means.........

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wonderwomanusa

I once used the pull-out alphabet chart in the "Hindi Self Taught" book to navigate road signs on a trip from Kathmandu to Goa; you'd think I'd be able to remember some of those characters, but I swear, it's like I've never seen them before!

Samsara

<<Kathmandu to Goa>> by car, the mind boggles...those were the days...lol

Wonderwomanusa, maybe it's time to revisit the delights of the "Hindi Self Taught" book...just kidding

Getting back to the Devanagari Script - it's honestly very easy (through sheer rote and repetition, unless you are a natural genius, which isn't me...I just kept writing the characters over and over again with their English phonetics underneath I don't know how many times). It's not like the Chinese script, for example (not that I know a single word of Chinese but I'm not going near that language, I keep hearing it's the most difficult script and language in the world to learn).

Hindi is an Indo-European language (like Greek and Russian). If you can learn the Cyrillic script, you can learn Devanagari no problem (both are very easy, though they might look difficult, they aren't, both logical, phonetic scripts with not too many characters, just a handful more than the English alphabet).

So can you do without learning Devanagari? Well, not if you want to ever learn the language properly, as each character contains the exact pronunciation (unlike English, which is can be quite illogical at times in this area). A plus is, if you learn the Devanagari script, you'll be able to read Nepali (which is a very closely related language to Hindi).

Tagore

I know several scipts: Devanagari as well as Cyrillic, but Hindi is really hard for a russian. You must learn atleast an hour a day, to get some results.

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gweno' bribri

Well I hope I will have an easier time learning hindi than I had learning russian...

bijapuri

cluck- I am awaiting those CD's in Hindi to show up in my mailbox. I have my doubts, as I am not a natural linguist, but did manage thru sheer doggedness to learn Spanish, so who knows?
Will keep you poastd
BTW- I am in a weekly hindi conversational class in Milpitas, if that helps anyone . .
http://www.indiacc.org/indiacc/site/..._milpitas/view

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lookit me!!!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bijapuri/

Utube fuzzy logic:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=bijapuri&p =r

dreamsyndicate

Just came across these sites while looking up some hindi-words :
free dictionary :

http://sanskrit.gde.to/hindi/dict/eng-hin-itrans.html
which is a phonetic dictionary (txt-file)
You can download a big (1.5 MB - 330 pages) pdf-file from here which translates to Devanagari script .

http://sanskrit.gde.to/hindi/dict/eng-hin.html
which translates to the Devanagari script (txt-file).

DianeN.

Thanks for bringing back this thread. Now, I have a question about some pronunciations. Having only read place names in books or on this forum, I would like to know how to pronounce the following two place names:

Ladakh (Is it pronounced like La Dock?)
Leh (Is it pronounced like Lay or Le (as in French?)

Thanks for helping me clear up my ignorance!!

guerik

Hey, the Australian National Uni students = me! I'll be going over for summer school at the end of this year but am studying through this year too.

I think learning Devanagari is essential too, so that you can get the pronunciation right. (there are 3 different "t" sounds, 3 different "d" sounds, all made in different places in your mouth. strange but true - i still can't tell them apart most of the time though).

Without seeing how Ladakh and Leh are spelt in Hindi script I have no idea how they're pronounced. I was calling Jaipur J"eye"pur until recently

AvidTrekker

Ladakh can be broken into Lad + akh

Lad = lud = mud .... only thing the d is soft, as spoken in French. I do not know of soft d's in English.

Akh = aakh = aaaaaa kh , again the kh sound is not there in English.... but there in Russian and the Slav family of languages.

Leh as in Eh ? but the emphasis is on the "h" and the 'h' is very distinctly pronounced.

Even Jaipur is pronounced differently in N. India & S. India.

N. India : Jai - pooooor Jay resembles chai somewhat. (all the extended vowel sounds are deliberate, only to illustrate)

S. India : J"eye" poooor here the eye is very short but the sound is like aaaiii (all short short sounds ) The S. India pronunciation is closer to the orig. Sanskrit

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volga_volga

a belated compliment, gweno'bribri, but your Russian left me (almost) speechless. I am sure you'll speak fluent Hindi in no time.

AvidTrekker

dreamsyndicate, THANKS for those links... they have some good web-info about Sanskrit

DianeN.

Ok, what I really wanna know...is how many of you Indiamikers out there have mastered the Hindi alphabet?
I have been dabbling in the lessons that were recommended earlier in the thread by Namaste Tours. I figured since I can read Japanese (at least about elementary school level) it shouldn't be too hard to memorize the Hindi alphabet since there are several thousand less characters to learn than there are in Japanese (all those I studied but can't remember!!). But I'm confused about the vowels that are printed one way...and then if they are added to a consonent they are printed another way.... gahhhaaaahha!!!

So, who out there in Indiamike land can actually read Hindi (nevermind actually UNDERSTANDING what you read). How long did it take for you to memorize it all? Did you do it by yourself??
I know some people on the thread are going to proper classes in a proper school...but I just want to learn it on my own without too much time that will take me away from my day job.

Diane