advice on learning hindi

gvdv

Here's a video of Mared on youtube teaching the first few vowels in Hindi, with pronunciation and Devanagari script included
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hufOU8ay04g

I think that Mared's instructional methods are clear and very effective (her username on YouTube is tutonline)

To access information about Mared's online Hindi lessons, just click on the links which you'll find under 'tutonline' in the sidebar on the right.

gvdv

Word Anywhere seems to be a good site for providing good definitions of Hindi words. Simply type in the transliterated version of a word (e.g., Namaste), and the interface will produce a definition, and if relevant, several other words which might possibly be related

http://www.wordanywhere.com/


I also like this online English to Hindi dictionary

http://www.shabdkosh.com/

Karina83

I bought a hindi program on internet called LINGUATA. I only can say that It's the best for me. It shows you even how to pronounce in hindi and it's about 20 Dolars...
Hope it serves you as well

Wishes

__________________
Kabhi alvida na Kehna

gvdv

Dhanyavad. Will check this out.

gvdv

I finally received the 'Hindi Guru' CD today, which I had ordered from matcheless-gifts.com and which was significantly overdue in terms of its arrival.

Good news:
The CD seems to be a very thourough, multi-faceted way to learn Hindi.

It contains cartoon animations of characters in conversation in Hindi; written transliterations of these conversations; grammar notes; separate dictionary and grammar sections; cultural notes and more. It is supposed to contain animated instruction in how to write Devanagari text (shows it in the demo) but I can't find it.

Bad news:
The organization of the CD could be better in that the sections could be connected in more logical ways, which would allow smoother and quicker access to the different sections (a toolbar with all of the main options on it is feasible and would satisfy this need).

On a more serious note, I had wondered why the copy that I bought online from Matchless-Gifts.com was so cheap ($50 - $60 cheaper than in other online stores). I had speculated that the reason for this might be that the CD might be from an older operating system.

Turns out that the program was developed in the 1990's, and is only available on CD, and was made for Windows 95 and 3.1.

I can't for the life of me work out why this product has not been updated for DVD, but it appears not to have been.

Another bad news note is that I had tried to contact Matchless-Gifts.com to try to find out if it was possible to track the CD after the shipping period had been exceeded, and I got no response to several emails I sent. The day after I initiated a 'dispute' through PayPal, I got a very nice response. So, I'm not thrilled with Matchless-Gifts.com's total lack of customer service and would not order from them again.

But I am looking forward to learning from this CD, and hope that I can find the section which shows how to write in Devanagari.

shreder

Learning Devanagari is probably the easiest step in learning Hindi.
I know it looks a intimidating at first, but all it takes is a few days of practice.

The only thing that can be hard about it is the conjuncts, but most of these are pretty easy to figure out.


You can use this site for help:

http://www.hindibhasha.com/

gvdv

Hi Shreder,
Thanks very much.

Actually, I was lost with most explanations of Independent and Dependent vowels in most of my resources until I realized that the problem was that most explanations of the concept are needlessly complicated (it could be explained so much more clearly).

By the way, the pronunciations of the Hindi vowels on hindibhasha.com are not very good (wrong, actually, in most cases), and need to be supplemented by listening elsewhere. e.g., when one clicks the speaker icon on the hindibhasha vowel page to hear pronunciations of the vowels, both 'i' vowel sounds are enunciated identically, despite the written explanation that one sounds like the 'i' in the English word 'in', and the other sounds like the double e sound in the English word 'feet'. The vocalization of the the vowels should be re-done, and this may be true for other vocalizations on the site, but I have not checked.

Thanks, once again,

shreder

Hi,

I haven't used this site since the first week of my studies, so I really can't give my opinion as to the quality of the pronunciation.

Thanks for giving this warning to other people who might read this thread.

Good luck with your studies.
All the effort pays up in the end!

gvdv

Hi Shreder,
Thanks very much for the encouragement (both written and in the form of the link you posted).

I do like hindibhasha.com, but will have to be careful about the pronunciation.

Take care,

Saulteaux_woman

Have anyone tried Rosetta Stone's Hindi or Rocket Hindi. I havent heard from people who actually learned the language this way.

Thanks

gvdv

Hi Saulteaux_woman,
I started a (small group) Hindi class a couple of days ago here in Toronto, and one of the other participants said that he had tried Rosetta Stone, but found it to detailed for his main purpose, which was to learn enough to conduct simple conversations.

Although I have not tried Rosetta Stone or Rocket Hindi, a part of the class involved learning a bit from one of the CD's in the Pimsleur series. This involved hearing a phrase/sentence, then hearing it broken down word by word, repeating those words, and then repeating the whole phrase or sentence. Then, another sentence or phrase was introduced, focusing on the same subject, and the learning process I described above was repeated.

I have not seen what, if any, written materials were available for study with this method, and will try to get an idea of this in the next class, and 'report' back here.

I found the particular section of the Pimsleur CD that we used in class to be helpful with pronunciation, and with getting an idea of how to make statements and ask questions.

You might want to look at some amazon reviews of Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, and Rocket Hindi (never heard of this one) to get an idea of how the similarities and differences between these programs. As mentioned above, I really like the 'Hindi Guru' program I picked up.

Good luck.

Saulteaux_woman

Thanks for the reply. I have the Pimsleur hindi, with four disk set, and to be honest all I learned to say was "excuse me" and "I dont understand" I have ordered the Living Language 6 cd pack will report how that works out. I have read the reviews and Rosetta Stone is 2nd after Rocket Hindi. I have used RS for French and I liked it but I'm still unsure if anyone actually learned hindi from it. I havent been able to find a Rocket Hindi here in Delhi and it cost so much more when ordering from abroad.

bjp

gvdv, thanks for the information you've been posting here.
When I do eventually get to learning Hindi, I'm going to need it. I think I'll print it and keep it somewhere that I can find it, whatever the circumstances.

gvdv

Hi Saulteaux_woman (are you from Saulte St. Marie, by any chance?),
Thanks for this; I appreciate the information.

gvdv

Hi bjp,
Thankyou for your thanks!

And you're most welcome.

I have found this thread valuable because hearing about the various learning materials and people's experiences with them gives me an idea of which ones may be suited to my - rather specific - learning style.

I'm a bit frustrated that the materials in the Hindi class I'm taking use different conventions for accents/pronunciation in transliterated words than many of the commonly available materials which some of us have been accessing (e.g., Rupert Snell's books, which I don't like, but which use common transliteration 'language'). Having slightly different ways of explaining the same pronunciations which I have seen elsewhere just clouds the issue a bit for me, creating yet another 'step', which is really unnecessary.

Don't know if anyone else has had this experience.