What language shall I try to learn?

If you learn Devanagari and pronunciation, you can read aloud most anything written and people will understand. But in principle, you can't read Urdu until you are rather fluent in the language, because you won't see any vowels.

Ooh, hadn't thought of claiming that one as a language...
Denticulata foetidus japonica mollis!*

By the way, I didn't mean people being rude to the staff, I meant the way that Brits who don't speak a word of the host country's language have the gall to complain to each other about the lack of fluency in English!

Trying to learn really is a win / win situation, even my limited language skills have consistently given me a far better experience when abroad, I have found people far more friendly and helpful than have friends who do not bother. While I cannot imagine learning much Hindi before I arrive, I doubt India would be any different in that respect. I do have the added advantage of having absolutely no compunction about making a total idiot of myself by talking gibberish half the time!

That is good to know, thanks for the encouragement.

Paal was my first Malayalam word (out of about 10), and I think the only understandable one for the shopkeepers So I wonder whether this guy was maybe deaf....

My problem with Indian languages: unless the pronunciation is almost 100 %, nobody will understand you

Mollis is generally used to denote 'softness', so yeah, the 'soft stinky teeth from Japan'

Inglish would be a good starter...

Found these devanagari flash cards, which I thought I'd share.

Used similar cards when I learned Hiragana and Katakana. How I did that was by keeping them in my pocket and pulling one out at random during the day, and imagining what the shape could represent.

Then I went through the lot, guessing what they were and putting them into two piles, ones I'd learned and ones I still didn't know.

Actually it is not that absurd. There are about 50, but there is no "upper or lower case", so the total number of characters is similar to learning the 2 English alphabets.

I thought learning Devanagri would be difficult, but it was actually quite simple, and I think you can learn it in a week or two it you try.

The only tricky part is recognising the conjunct characters - ie where two consonants appear without a vowel in between. I still occasionally come across one I haven't seen before, but the common ones are easy to work out.

I was having hindi lessons for a while, but stopped because I couldn't devote enough time to practice. However, finding anyone else to speak hindi to in Exeter is not at all easy.

Learning the devnagari script didn't take that long, despite the number of characters. I found it really helpful, even just for little things like finding out which town the bus is just going through!

Learning the script will also help you to fully understand the use of vowel marks and, because it's a properly phonetic language it will help your pronunciation, unlike the transliterations.

For example Ap kaise he? (How are you?) could be pronounced in several different ways - but not once you've read it in script. That said, I still read very slowly. I also found the grammar pretty tricky - there are loads of rules.

Finally, don't take any notice of the people telling you "They all speak english anyway" - we've been to plenty of places where no-one spoke english.

I'd love to make more progress, so if there's anyone else out there in this part of the world who can help, do let me know.

I have just been trying to learn how write in script 'credit cards'

The little dots and dashes, oops I mean accent marks are tricky.

It will take me a few hours to get these two words in my head and understand how it works....hey I am having fun.

any one see the Bombay Railway...wrong thread....ha

Good, now that we've convinced you the script is easy to learn, I must break the news that actually learning to speak Hindi properly is incredibly complex, especially for an english speaker.

As Mikewill points out the grammar is pretty complex. It's similar to spanish, where you have masculine and feminine nouns, and verb forms change depending on gender, tense, plurality, familiarity, etc. Their use of prepositions (postpositions in hindi) is also weird, as is the general sentence structure. I don't really understand it myself, and my own hindi is limited to very basic sentences, most of which are probably improper.

You can assume that you'll sound very silly for the most part, and I'd guess it would take a long long time to learn it fluently.

If you REALLY wanted to learn it well, it would probably be best to learn the grammar in your own country from a qualified teacher whose first language is the same as yours. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but a teacher of this sort will be able to clearly explain how the grammar differs from your own, rather than simply telling you, 'that's simply not how we say it', which is what you get from Hindi speakers alot. A brush up on the grammar of your own language would probably be very helpful as well.

Ali-Monbeam, glad you're having fun with it, are you going to learn it "properly"?

Personally, when I am starting out I do not stress over grammar, it is more useful to expand my vocabulary. I'd rather be able to say a hundred things badly than only be able to say ten things perfectly. Besides, for me at least, grammar tends to come naturally with exposure to a language, and if it doesn't well I'm happy to sound odd. At least I'll be trying, which gives me an advantage over people who don't even bother to learn how to say hello!

Fortunately, I have never been particularly vainglorious, so losing my dignity is not an issue. Age probably also helps! If I can communicate that "This food is good", I won't be beating myself up because sometimes I might end up saying "This food good is".

Actually, I think that's exactly the proper form. Or perhaps 'this good food is'. Not too hard.

What get's difficult is when you try to say something like, 'the roast chicken at mansur's restaurant is good on fridays, but only when his wife is cooking'. Then you're in trouble.

Sorry, my post wasn't clear.

I meant that if I used the English sentence construction by mistake, words would be in the wrong order for Hindi - I used the example of a sentence in English "This food good is" as how the equivalent sentence might be spoke in English by a Hindi speaker - gramatically incorrect but still perfectly understandable.

I can imagine that would be a rather difficult to get right.

Even harder to get it over in writing, but I remain confident that with the right words in Hindi, and the use of facial expressions and sign language, I could make myself understood.

Not to say that I won't be trying to get the grammar right.

I think I will learn it as best as I can, given that I am doing it alone as I cant seem to find any classes or someone to help with some bits.

Working from home and having spare time is making it easy to spend time studying in peace.

I found myself looking at shops signs and takeaway bags for words to try and read...

I knew what you were trying to say. I was just pointing out the irony that the proper structure is precisely what you'd consider 'improper' in english.