Hindi textbooks and learning resources - elementary to advanced

[memsaab]

Has anyone used the Pimsleur Method?  They have a new Hindi package out.  I've heard others who have used this method for French and German and they swear by it.

I have the basic Hindi lessons from Pimsleur and they are GREAT. You don't need to read anything or learn any rules -- the premise is that you learn the language in the same way that you learned your native language as a child, by repetition and gradual increase of words/vocabulary. I have found it very very useful! If I want to know how a word looks/is phonetically spelled, it's generally pretty easy to find it via the web.

I highly recommend it if you are impatient to be able to just start talking and understanding, and don't like the "classroom grammar" approach so much. I do want to learn the script too, but it's not as important to me as comprehension and the ability to speak it.

[ber]

I think a link to the A door into Hindi online courses should be added in the first message. That's probably the best web resource to start learning Hindi. There are awesome videos, dialog scripts, vocabulary, grammar and exercices for every lesson. And it uses only Devanagari from the beginning which, IMHO, is a very good thing. Actually that's what I used to start learning Hindi!

By the way there's a typo in the "जिस जगह तू खडा है वह तेरे बाप की नहीं है |" sentence : "खडा" should be "खड़ा".

[Daniel]

By the way there's a typo in the "जिस जगह तू खडा है वह तेरे बाप की नहीं है |" sentence : "खडा" should be "खड़ा".

actually, the dot isnt really required, and you will see that in books not written for learners that is is oftentimes omited completely, especially in older typesets.

[James]

I think a link to the A door into Hindi online courses should be added in the first message.

are, vah!  They finally finished the website!  I can't wait to go through it.    It took them a while to get past lesson 9 (10 or 11?  I forget) but they finally have.  Thanks for the reminder, ber. 

Daniel, I was going through those stories you linked to earlier on, and I've been enjoying them.  They're cute.  I was wondering if you or anyone else would be able to suggest either some good children's books, or some simple stories, for purchase or online?  I've tried looking myself, but not much luck so far.  Thanks!!!

[ber]

By the way there's a typo in the "जिस जगह तू खडा है वह तेरे बाप की नहीं है |" sentence : "खडा" should be "खड़ा".

actually, the dot isnt really required, and you will see that in books not written for learners that is is oftentimes omited completely, especially in older typesets.

I guess we can't say it's "required" because there's no official spelling everybody has to use. When I read India Today (इंडिया टूडे) for the first time, I was annoyed because they almost never use nuktas with क, ख, ग, ज and फ. It's not a problem for people who already know Hindi perfectly but it's a little boring for learners. Actually now I'm less bored with that because I've noticed a lot of native speakers pronounce these letters as if there weren't nuktas, but I still think it'd be better to have them. By the way, are there native Hindi speakers who pronounce ड़ as ड? I believe I've never heard that.
Anyway it's a learners board, right? So it seems better to have खड़ा.

I think a link to the A door into Hindi online courses should be added in the first message.

are, vah!  They finally finished the website!  I can't wait to go through it.    It took them a while to get past lesson 9 (10 or 11?  I forget) but they finally have.  Thanks for the reminder, ber. 

It's not really finished. There are a lot of missing files, especially videos, but nearly all lessons have at least the dialog script, the vocabulary and the grammar.

[Daniel]

Anyway it's a learners board, right?

Thats correct.  Thats precisely the reason that I am pointing out that spelling it without the dot is not a "typo."  Its simply a choice.  At some level it is better for learners to see the dot, but the reality of the matter is that at some point in your period of "learning" (which is afterall, a lifetime), you've got to be able to reconize and pronounce words correctly without seeing the optional nuqta. 
 

[palacerani]

Hmmm....I'm not able to see the examples in devanagari script that Ber has posted. Is it my PC or does everyone else have the same problem?

[maxqnz]

Hmmm....I'm not able to see the examples in devanagari script that Ber has posted. Is it my PC or does everyone else have the same problem?

I can see them in Ber's original post, and in one of the posts in which they were quoted, but in one of the other posts, they show up as gibberish.

[palacerani]

You're right Max I can see some. The ones I can't see are where he talks about the nuktas, his latest post in fact. Is that the one like gibberish to you?

[crazyone]

I can't read ber's 3:10 pm post either, or at least the devanagari parts.

[maxqnz]

I can't read ber's 3:10 pm post either, or at least the devanagari parts.

Haa.N, zarUr. 

[ber]

Anyway it's a learners board, right?

Thats correct.  Thats precisely the reason that I am pointing out that spelling it without the dot is not a "typo."  Its simply a choice.  At some level it is better for learners to see the dot, but the reality of the matter is that at some point in your period of "learning" (which is afterall, a lifetime), you've got to be able to reconize and pronounce words correctly without seeing the optional nuqta.

Sounds absolutely right. I thought it was a typo because I had never seen this spelling, but I don't have a lot of written Hindi sources. Thanks for pointing it out!

[ber]

Hmmm....I'm not able to see the examples in devanagari script that Ber has posted. Is it my PC or does everyone else have the same problem?

See http://bollywhat.com/forum/index.php?topic=3298.0. As a temporary workaround, you can force page encoding to UTF-8. If you're using Firefox, go to View->Character Encoding->More Encodings->Unicode->Unicode (UTF-8).

[palacerani]

Hmmm....I'm not able to see the examples in devanagari script that Ber has posted. Is it my PC or does everyone else have the same problem?

See http://bollywhat.com/forum/index.php?topic=3298.0. As a temporary workaround, you can force page encoding to UTF-8. If you're using Firefox, go to View->Character Encoding->More Encodings->Unicode->Unicode (UTF-8).

Thanx Ber, that helped.

[Daniel]

A forum setting has to be changed and the problem will dissapear....whenever meredith comes online...

[Daniel]

BTW, Ber, welcome to the forum and especially the language section!

[veracious]

Hooboy, I finally took my first step in learning Hindi (you know, besides fishing for English translations of my favourite songs online) and bought the TYH book by Rupert Snell. The one with the tapes wasn't available in my shop and anyway, it would've cost so, so, so much more (the book cost me  17 euros, which is around 20 dollars which is all good and well for my current budget).

So.. Is there a site with pronounciation mp3's or wav's available? Or should I rely on my Hindi film soundtracks for pronounciation? I don't think I can afford to buy the taped version now that I've got myself the book for a reasonable price. I know there's that site with Hindi lyrics in Devganari script, so I could practise with that, as well. Do you think it's enough or..?

[Anamika]

So.. Is there a site with pronounciation mp3's or wav's available? Or should I rely on my Hindi film soundtracks for pronounciation? I don't think I can afford to buy the taped version now that I've got myself the book for a reasonable price. I know there's that site with Hindi lyrics in Devganari script, so I could practise with that, as well. Do you think it's enough or..?

Here are two websites which I found helpful:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/hindi/
it's good for learning about the devanagari alphabet and the pronounciation of its letters. The lessons are a little complicated at first, but when you're at chapter 3 or 4 of your TYH book, give them a try.

With easier lessons for the beginner there's this website:
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/hindi_lessons/lessons.html

Being a beginner myself (only learning Hindi for 5 months now) I don't know about the pronounciation in the films. It varies a lot, there are different dialects, and maybe if you pick the wrong one to learn, you'll sound really funny to a native speaker - like a Bombay mafia boss, or a Punjabi farmer, you just never know...

[Daniel]

As far as I can say, There is really nothing better than listening to bollywood films.  Honestly.  I found that after watching the films for so long, when i started using TYH the pronunciations came to me easily.  I'd either heard them or knew how words were generally formed.  Plus, you get a range or pronunciations, children, adults, grandparents, which really helps your comprehension.    What they are going to give you on the tapes is probably a more standardized pronunciation.  If you wanted such a pronunciation on recording, then direct thyself to the audio files at www.bbchindi.com for all those hindi words, and www.bbcurdu.com audio for all those more urdu words (i mention this one specially out of the fear that the hindi recordings might go too far and turn the z's to j's what not, which is not ncessary, and you really should be exposed to all the sounds of words from both sources.)

Find the days news (link refreshed daily) in hindi (aaj ke din) at http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/meta/tx/nb/ajkedin1_au_nb.ram
and the same in urdu (taaza tariin) at http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/meta/tx/nb/latest_au_nb.ram

[veracious]

Thank you Ele & Daniel. A fellow BW? member in my country has offered to copy her TYH tapes for me which so work out good. I'll also check out those websites and (duhh!) watch more films.

[ber]

BBC recordings are nice but journalists speak too fast for beginners. I have a hard time understanding several sentences in a row.

i mention this one specially out of the fear that the hindi recordings might go too far and turn the z's to j's

I think z's are always pronounced correctly on BBC Hindi.

Btw, Daniel, can you give us names of BW actors who always pronounce Urdu words correctly? It seems Farida Jalal does.

[palacerani]

SRK is very good with Urdu. His diction is excellent. Among the older actors Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kumar were excellent. Dilip Kumar too. Amitabh is better with shudh Hindi.

Among the women Meena Kumari was great.

[Daniel]

As for the BBC,  i was more reccomending it as a "hear the language" than an "understand everything" thing.  They are well spoken and not mumbled, which, even if not understood, can still form in the mind of the listener an intuition of how sounds are pronounced. 

phew I dont really know about actors with good urdu.  I havent really paid attention to that. 

[Deewani_Aurat]

Hi i want to learn hindi to speak but im not interested in learning the hindi writing.  The problem however with most of the online ones is they only provide hindi written as an explanation of the scene...im even ok with written hindi english such as writing kuch and bohot but when it comes to the proper writing i have no idea...so is there any online resource that offers teaching on how to say stuff rather then the hindi writing.

[Daniel]

I dont know of anything online but if you are truly interested in that goal try buying a copy of Colloquial hindi which does everything in transliteration.