Just another European obsessed with India

"Keep me shocking"....

Indeed.

Those people from Pakistan speak Hindi but call it Urdu. Their mother tongue is most probably Panjabi but they have all been educated in Urdu.

Oh yes, you are right! I had forgotten that! I think it is the same for people from Bengladesh, isn't it? I remembered joking with a waiter working in an Indian restaurant; he was Bengali and wanted to make me speak Hindi!
The problem in France when you like India, actually is that it is difficult to meet Asians. Finding people to teach you Hindi, for example, is quite difficult; I think there are one or two serious Hindi teachers in Paris; whereas in the UK, the Indian culture is everywhere! I'm envious!

I don't know if speaking Hindi is "shocking" to Indian people but they certainly take you more seriously sometimes. I remember when I was in India, I only knew one hindi word: nahi. When I said "nahi" to a little girl who wanted chewing-gums I didn't have, she looked really impressed and was less cheeky to me than to my tourist mates! I'm looking forward to coming back to India to tell all the Hindi words I know, now!
Well, I'be been ruining your topic Dororai... Sorry...

Bonjour Marilay! If you really want to learn Hindi in Paris, try the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO):

http://www.inalco.fr/ina_gabarit_rub...id_rubrique=78

You could enrol as an "auditeur libre" if you do not want to take a degree course.




This is a cool site to glance at when you want something India-related in Paris:

http://www.indeaparis.com/

Dorothea,
Welcome to IndiaMike!

Thank you! I know this site. It is really helpful, you're right! Have you lived in Paris before?
I've heard about INALCO but, well, I heard that the courses for "auditeurs libres", I mean, the evening courses, were not as good as expected. (I hope you're not one of the tachers!) I've got a nice Hindi teacher now, she is really serious.(I don't know if I can name her on this site.) I learn slowly but with method.

No, no I am not a teacher! I was once upon a time a student of Modern Greek at INALCO.

That's a golden word to learn India since it's often needed here.It shouldn't be too difficult to find people to practice Hindi online through skype,try polyglotclub site.

I have a cousin in Paris but after living there for over decade and a half he speaks fluent French and Punjabi.His Hindi is in Punjabi accent but can be understood.

"Panjabi" is a perfectly legitimate "native" accent of Hindi/Urdu. The distinguished Hindi/Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi spoke with a very strong Panjabi accent, as did the film director Chetan Anand. The latter was a teacher of Hindi at a well-known school before he went into films.

@Marilay thank you for the very warm welcome! I wish you to fulfill your dream very soon and return to India with a whole new pack of Hindi/Urdu knowledge. As to learning Hindi in Paris, unfortunately I can't help you much in that direction. You can always try online learning programs (livemocha.com is one I tested and liked a lot), but my opinion is that it would still be better if you enroll in some kind of courses or constant, well planed Hindi classes. I think Hindi can give Europeans a lot of headaches and without a good teacher you can easily get lost in all its hidden traps. I am currently taking 4 hours of Hindi a week and besides the official course I try to practice for at least 6-8 hours/week on my own. The progress I make is incredibly slow and every day I feel like I should be practicing more.

As for the Hindi-Urdu issue: some while ago Hindi and Urdu used to be two almost identical languages. During the past 150 years the gap between the two widened, Hindi was sanskritized and Urdu switched to the Arabic script and borrowed a lot of words from the Persian language. In spite of this, even today the two languages have a lot in common and from a gramatical point of view they function almost identical. If you find a good Urdu teacher my opinion is that you shouldn't hesitate!

Regarding Bangladesh: the Bengalis actually have their own language and it's called Bengali. Back in 1948 the Bengali population was quite upset when Pakistan began to force them into learning Urdu. As far as I know, Bengali is also written in the Devanagari alphabet and it has a few similarities with Hindi.

Be prepared to hear incessantly the questions: "hindi kahan se sikhi hai?", or "hindi kaise maaloom?"
You'll want to shoot yourself by the time you'll have to answer it for the 5000th time.

For beginners there's absolutely no difference if you're talking with an Urdu or Hindi speaker. Since you're not going to talk about politics, religion, literature etc., where the vocabulary difference between the 2 languages comes into play. The guy I practiced the most with during my first few months of learning Hindi, was a punjabi from Lahore.

Was that in Hyderabad? In North India that would sound quite rude.

Stick to the vocabulary used in Hindi films. Those scriptwriters know their job and are good at mixing "higher" Hindi and Urdu in just the right proportions.

As for the Hindi/Urdu difference - I started my schooling in Bihar and from a Bihari viewpoint one had to learn the use of ne, grammatical gender and all those other weird things which were missing from one's mother tongue whether one was learning Hindi or Urdu.

Bengali has its own alphabet

I've just remembered where it was. It was in Mumbai, in the synagogue in Colaba.

I presume that is Bambaiya Hindi, so Dakhini Hindi/Urdu in a wider sense.

When I was growing up there were still a lot of people left over from the days of the Raj who spoke Hindi with the accent of the place where they had lived all their lives. So coming across people who didn't look "Indian" but spoke fluent Hindi wasn't that unusual. Now it's the other way around - you meet people who look "Indian" but don't speak any language other than English with a Birmingham or New Jersey accent (just to give two examples).