Learning to write Hindi (Devanagari script)

[krissh]

Sounds great but I don't see this item linked from the page link you posted. That resource list page just links to Snell's regular Beginner's Hindi -- don't see it called Hindi Praveshika anywhere. And you mention a pdf file, but the title "Hindi Praveshika" isn't linked in your post, just bolded. When I googled Hindi Praveshika I found this link http://www.sk-publications.com/hindi.aspx but still not sure where to find this book. Please help, thanks! Also, would this book be child-friendly? I have an Indian friend whose child speaks fluent Hindi but only reads English so my friend was looking for a resource for him too. From this publisher link, looks like children's books, though again I didn't find the page with the book you mentioned. Thanks!

Chinchin,
The supplementary page has great stuff!
the links are in blue font and allow you to download pdfs of the various study guides and exercises.

The book mentioned can be found by clicking the "first year Hindi textbook links" on the left-side menu. Then click on the images of the books (or right click to save) to download them.

[farida]

Sounds great but I don't see this item linked from the page link you posted. That resource list page just links to Snell's regular Beginner's Hindi -- don't see it called Hindi Praveshika anywhere.

 Also, would this book be child-friendly? I have an Indian friend whose child speaks fluent Hindi but only reads English so my friend was looking for a resource for him too. From this publisher link, looks like children's books, though again I didn't find the page with the book you mentioned. Thanks!

Thanks to krissh I hope you have found the link in the column on the left of  the “hindi-urdu-flagship“ site (1st year Hindi textbooks)

And sorry, no, I'm afraid this book in itself isn't child-friendly. It's been designed for university students. But maybe a parent wanting to teach a child how to write could use it to make up a simplified version adapted to the level of the child.

[chinchinchu]

Thank you both!

[krissh]

Thank you both!

I don't know where my brain is tonight, but there are a number of websites geared towards teaching children.

www.hindigym.com - specific to children...but I have been using it to learn 
www.Ispeakhindi.com - podcasts, wiki, tons of stuff
www.byki.com has a free version of its language software which is pretty nice. I mention it because I have the software, and I received a newsletter that described various types of add-ons, one of which included stuff for kids.
http://www.hindilearner.com/index.php -has both free and paid subscription areas

These sites might have stuff for kids, but I don't know for certain.
http://hindiboloblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.uni.edu/becker/hindi.html

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wjsn/hindi.htm - this site has tons of links at the bottom of the page
http://www.avashy.com/hindibhasha/index.asp -depends on the age of the child, teaches how to write and speak devanagari, with audio and visual aids
http://www.multilingualbooks.com/freelessons-hindi.html#free - another site with a thousand and one links to others


Some of these, I haven't really used, I just save the links whenever I find new ones. I figure it might be useful in the future.

[farida]

Thank you! These links are really fun to browse.

I've found yet another very useful site:
http://www.anu.edu.au/asianstudies/hindi/pronounce/index.html
You can choose lessons where you see each group of consonants and a vertical cut of the head.
When you click on a consonant you hear it spoken by a female and a male voice and you see an animation of the articulation of the sound.
This is a great tool as you don't only rely on hearing but can check your own prononciation from the visuals of what should happen inside your mouth.
Though it doesn't actually teach how to write the script this site is very useful because the script doesn't make sense if it isn't seen as a representation of the sounds.
You'll also find other hindi learning material there.
 
I'm editing this because I've just realised that  “intro Hindi“ leads you to http://www.anu.edu.au/asianstudies/hindi/alphabet/vowels.html
with a program that traces each sign step by step while you hear the pronounciation.

[farida]

...Also, would this book be child-friendly? I have an Indian friend whose child speaks fluent Hindi but only reads English so my friend was looking for a resource for him too.

I've stumbled on a site which might be nice for your friend's child to practise reading devanagari - there are 4 levels from 0 to 3. The easiest level shows pictures of animals, objects etc. with the first letter shown in devanagari, next level shows pictures with the whole word, then there are some easy songs/stories in devanagari - on all these levels there is sound, too. The highest level is just sound and animation, with lots of stories (dadima kahanian and the like) in slightly more demanding hindi, but mostly aural.
The site (sorry, no direct link, I'm afraid)  is:    
http://www.hindikatha.com

[derketchup]

I myself learned to read and write devanagari from Snell's "Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script", which is really a good book,  but I'm not sure if I would have managed  without  the help of a tutor.

I worked through the entire book, and I'm not as literate as I'd like to be.  It takes me a good 5-10 minutes to read one paragraph, and I find myself going to google indic transliteration to figure out what a few characters are.

[chinchinchu]

I worked through the entire book, and I'm not as literate as I'd like to be.  It takes me a good 5-10 minutes to read one paragraph, and I find myself going to google indic transliteration to figure out what a few characters are.

Please explain. I have used Google Indic to write in Hindi, inputting in English characters. But how do you use it to look up a letter??

[derketchup]

Please explain. I have used Google Indic to write in Hindi, inputting in English characters. But how do you use it to look up a letter??

I try to retype the word into what I think it is, and then if it doesn't match what is printed I click on the (Devanagari) word and see what the other options are.  If that doesn't work I click on edit.

It's not really meant to do what I ask it to do, but it works for me most of the time.

[chrism]

Thanks for all the resources in these posts. On the basis of what I read in other threads, I bought the Snell book and really like his approach. Because it's a phonetic writing system, it just makes sense to me to gear my learning in that directtion.

I have a question about learning Devanagari from Snell, though. (Maybe there's something about this in the Snell Support Group thread - will check there too...) Anyway, it is a good idea to sound out the sounds for each letter as I write them as Snell says to do (this uses more parts of the brain at once, and helps to remember the letters better) but the examples he gives are in English. And in many, many cases, the sounds do not appear in English so he has to say something like "d as in date, but retroflex".

It would really help me out with the letters if instead of his English instructions for sounding out the letters, I had a list of words familiar to me from Bollywood movies instead. For example, "ka" could be K-K-K-Kiran. "ka (Perso-Arabic)" could be Quran(?)  "kha" (Perso-Arabic) could be "Khan"(?) (You can tell what movies I'm most likely to be familiar with) (sorry if those examples are wrong - but it shows why I need Hindi words to work with!) For example, I didn't really hear the distinction between the American-English "r" and the Devanagari retroflex "da" and "ra" until I saw what I heard as "lurki" spelled out someplace as "ladki".

So I'm starting to recognize the letters (I'm still just halfway through the consonants), but would feel better if a Hindi speaker supplied the example words for each letter, because I could be making mistakes and learning it wrong... Any volunteers? Or is there already such a list?


Thanks in advance for any advice and pointers any of you can give me! 

[someone]

Great idea!

I'll do the first row of the syllabary (retroflexes) and you can tell me if it's working for you:

क ख ग घ ङ
ka kha ga gha nga

If it helps, the order for each row as you may know is: voiceless, voiceless aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated, nasal.

क ka from kabhi in K3G,
ख kha from khana. pronounced exactly like the 'c' in 'car' in English. (Not like the Kha from SRK or the khushi from K3G which is a guttural sound - that one sounds like the 'ch' in German 'mach').
ग ga from gana. Pretty straightforward.
घ gha from ghar. Like 'g' but with aspiration (strong breath of air). The same sound as the one in the SRK song in Koyla: Ghunghte mein chanda hai
ङ ng. Like the 'ng' in 'singing'.

[chinchinchu]

It would really help me out with the letters if instead of his English instructions for sounding out the letters, I had a list of words familiar to me from Bollywood movies instead. For example, "ka" could be K-K-K-Kiran. "ka (Perso-Arabic)" could be Quran(?)  "kha" (Perso-Arabic) could be "Khan"(?) (You can tell what movies I'm most likely to be familiar with) (sorry if those examples are wrong - but it shows why I need Hindi words to work with!) For example, I didn't really hear the distinction between the American-English "r" and the Devanagari retroflex "da" and "ra" until I saw what I heard as "lurki" spelled out someplace as "ladki".

So I'm starting to recognize the letters (I'm still just halfway through the consonants), but would feel better if a Hindi speaker supplied the example words for each letter, because I could be making mistakes and learning it wrong... Any volunteers? Or is there already such a list?
Thanks in advance for any advice and pointers any of you can give me! 

Try the Avashy site that krissh mentioned -- for each letter they have recording of someone pronouncing it. Also if you get the version of Snell Teach Yourself Hindi that has the CDs, the first CD starts w/ that very thing, person pronouncing each sound and a word that contains it.

[chinchinchu]

ख kha from khana. pronounced exactly like the 'c' in 'car' in English. (Not like the Kha from SRK or the khushi from K3G which is a guttural sound - that one sounds like the 'ch' in German 'mach').

That other sound mentioned as in Khan etc. is this same letter with dot under it. The ones w/ dots are used in Perso-Arabic words.

Also, in addition to the recorded resources I mention in my post just below, there is the A Door Into Hindi site. The first lesson has a word that lets you really hear the dotted regular ka, the Qutub Minar in Delhi, because that is where the first story is set. (The pronunciation of the Q (dotted k) in Qutub sounds really clear when they say it.)

[farida]

As to the dotted g my favourite example is galat (wrong) as pronounced by SRK in KBC. You really hear that this g is formed way back down in the throat.

[chinchinchu]

As to the dotted g my favourite example is galat (wrong) as pronounced by SRK in KBC. You really hear that this g is formed way back down in the throat.

Oh yes! I think I may have mentioned that (or meant to) in my Learn Hindi from KBC thread. One thing I know I did mention there is learning the Hindi regular r (not the retroflex dotted d "flap") from how Shah Rukh says the English word "arrange" (as in arrange the following answers in order.) To me it looked almost as if he was saying an English r, but without moving his lips.

By the way, the dotted k seems to be at the back of the mouth but near the roof of the mouth, not quite as far back as the dotted g, which seems to come from the bottom of the throat, if that makes any sense.

[chinchinchu]

I think the dotted gh is the one in gham, as in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Listen at the end of the Bole Chudiyan Song where this title is sung. Probably harder to hear when sung than when spoken, but this line of the  song is slow so I think it comes through fairly well.

[Usha]

I don`t know wether this is the right place to ask but :
Where can I get software / program / other to be able to write Devanagari on my computer ?
I have a MAC and use Microsoft Word.

I`ve just started the Beginners Hindi teach yourself book by Snell, and thought perhaps wring it on the computer would help me learn, also being able to write on this forum, but I don`t know how / where to get Devanagari script.

[farida]

You might try Linguanaut and their free hindi lessons.
http://www.linguanaut.com/learn_hindi.htm

Among an introduction to the script and the pronunciation, various lists of useful expressions etc. they offer a virtual Hindi keyboard which you can use to type your own texts, either on the virtual keyboard or on the corresponding keys of your own one.
I've saved it on my desk-top so I can have it on hand.
But I must admit that I mostly use        
http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/
You type in the hindi word in roman letters and get it in devanagari.
The problem is that you must be very careful with the transliteration or else you won't get the correct spelling in devanagari.
Whenever this doesn't work I use the virtual keyboard to get the missing signs.
Of course this is rather slow work, but I'm not yet at a stage where I would want to write longer passages.
Anyhow, I like to use pen on paper when I want to practise vocabulary, do my homework for my Hindi lessons, or write my diary (totally secret code )
Have fun with the Hindi keyboard!  

[Usha]

Thank you farida  or better perhaps शुक्रीया shukria

[farida]

Thank you farida  or better perhaps शुक्रीया shukria

वाह-वाह , शाबाश!   

[chrism]

Thank you - all of you who responded to my October post. Sorry I didn't respond to your generous replies earlier but I got sidetracked by Life (or what passes for it outside of Bwood) and am just now getting back to studying Hindi - and now with your advice and inspiration I can't wait to get back to practicing my script again - with sounds! Will follow up on all of this. Thanks again How did people learn languages before they could get help from fellow enthusiasts on the Internet, I wonder?

[chinchinchu]

And one more thing, chrism, I know on a thread a while back about singers, there was some agreement that Sonu Nigam's pronunciation is the clearest, so his songs are very helpful for hearing the sounds. e.g. there's that Keh Raha Hai song from Baabul (or Baghban -- I have those 2 soundtracks mixed together in my hand) with the word qasam, another example of dotted k, and you can hear it really well. Same with other sounds -- he has very clear diction.

(In contrast, Adnan Sami, whose voice I also love, will not help you with pronunciation, though he is beautiful to listen to.)

[chrism]

And one more thing, chrism, I know on a thread a while back about singers, there was some agreement that Sonu Nigam's pronunciation is the clearest, so his songs are very helpful for hearing the sounds. e.g. there's that Keh Raha Hai song from Baabul (or Baghban -- I have those 2 soundtracks mixed together in my hand) with the word qasam, another example of dotted k, and you can hear it really well. Same with other sounds -- he has very clear diction.

(In contrast, Adnan Sami, whose voice I also love, will not help you with pronunciation, though he is beautiful to listen to.)

Thanks for that too, Chinchinchu  - not that I need another excuse to listen to Sonu Nigam! I think I have both those soundtracks. He does revere the traditional, so it makes sense that he takes care with the pronunciation... I like Adnan Sami's voice too and it helps to know about whose pronunciation is better. I did some warmup exercises yesterday and will take this as a hint to get serious again with the studying. (Rented Singh is Kinng yesterday, and was delighted to be able to hear the Punjabi accent and not be too confused by it! )

[punkmama]

hello, all...i have found a website that for some reason, has turbo-charged my script learning process, and thought that i would share it...

http://www.garretwilson.com/education/languages/hindi/devanagari/index.html

the way that it progresses is really nice, and the way that he gives hints about how to remember the letters has helped me a lot! i am now working from a set of un-translated flash cards and have been able to read all of the words on the quizzes in this tutorial with no problem at all.

check it out!

[chrism]

hello, all...i have found a website that for some reason, has turbo-charged my script learning process, and thought that i would share it...

http://www.garretwilson.com/education/languages/hindi/devanagari/index.html

the way that it progresses is really nice, and the way that he gives hints about how to remember the letters has helped me a lot! i am now working from a set of un-translated flash cards and have been able to read all of the words on the quizzes in this tutorial with no problem at all.

check it out!

Thanks so much!