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Portuguese vs Hindi practicality | ||
Tags: Hindi | Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| knchcanada Newbie United States Joined 5110 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 1 of 31 26 February 2014 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm about to enter university at the University of Texas. UT offers a Hindi Urdu flagship program, which enables
students to live in India during their Junior year and requires you to write a thesis statement in either Hindi or Urdu during your senior year. The head of the program also happens to be the author of Teach Yourself Hindi. I became really interested in the program as I lived in India with my family for 6 months and was able to take hindi lessons for about 3 weeks before we moved to Bangladesh. Now that I have my acceptance, I'm starting to reconsider since the program does take 5 years to complete as opposed to 4, and I am equally interested in learning Portuguese for my career goals (International relations). While the University doesn't offer a comparable Portuguese program, I am wondering if Portuguese would be more beneficial to me in the long run given that it is spoken in several countries (including Brazil), as opposed to just a region of India with Hindi. I had my heart set on learning Hindi, since I would never get an opportunity like this again, but I have found myself equally interested in learning Portuguese. I was hoping to get some valuable advice on the subject, since I can't do both seeing that I would be learning 3 languages from the start. If you have any input on the usefulness of these languages, that would be really beneficial. I am really struggling to find the right degree plan. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5193 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 2 of 31 26 February 2014 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nobody can decide that for you.
Sure, Portuguese is a useful language if you plan to have international relations with Brazil. It's also a language which you could realistically start and make good progress in at age 20, 25, 40, 50, etc. It's not what I would class as a difficult language, since it has Latin roots like several English words.
If your heart's set on something and most of the signs seem to point that way... the tutor... the India connection... 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4953 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 31 26 February 2014 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Based on the fact that you seem to have the passion for Hindi, you must go with Hindi. You can learn much much faster when you are doing something you want.
And the great offerings of your University's Hindi program are just icing on the cake. I also feel (based on your writing), that if you chose Portuguese you would be having second thoughts, and that would hurt your level of commitment and concentration. So to me it is no doubt which one you should do. And the fact that you are young you still have a bit of an edge in learning a new language, especially one that is more removed from English. You will still be young to learn Portuguese in a few years, and you will have the experience of learning a language already and seeing what worked and what didn't. All that plus the genetic closeness of Portuguese to English should make it far easier for you. The only variable is usefulness. I want to learn Hindi too down the line (only to basic conversational level and decent reading), and I recently asked a question on its phonology vs Russian or Arabic. Reason being, at first glance it seems to me Arabic would be more useful overall, and Russian would be more useful to me in the area where I live currently. I did not ask whether Hindi could me more useful, I still don't have to decide as I have plenty on my plate right now. But down the line, I would like to know. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3945 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 31 26 February 2014 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Additionally to the comments above, with which I agree,
Hindi is the native language of about 300,000,000 people, contrasted with Portuguese being the native language of about 200,000,000 people. Urdu (if you speak Hindi, you speak Urdu) is the native language of about 70,000,000 people, and is insanely widely spoken as at least a second language due to being something of a lingua franca throughout "Stanland", and popularly spoken by very many Stanland ex-pats in other countries (in Britain for example there is a huge portion of the population who are from Pakistan or Afghanistan who speak Urdu). If you've learned Hindi and want to speak Urdu, well, go ahead, because whatever the politicians say, they're pretty much the same spoken language. If you want to be able to read and write Urdu, well, you just need to learn the Arabic alphabet and you're more or less set (it'll take a while to get it right, but you'll be able to read and write on a basic level pretty much immediately). Add to all this that there are loads of popular commercial resources for learning Portuguese. You can pick it up later if you want it. Sounds like you have an opportunity that won't knock twice, regards Hindi/Urdu. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4669 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 31 26 February 2014 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why would choosing Hindi @ UT preclude studying Portuguese on your on?
I don't know how universities in the US work, but I know that here in the UK I could have spent time in the various language departments and maybe even attended lectures and so on even though I took an engineering degree. My daughter's in university right now and there are plenty of adverts for classes in various languages, various language clubs and so on. So,in the UK at least, I'd expect that you'd be able to study Hindi while working on Portuguese on the side (on your own, but with access to the usual university language resources). Is it the 5 years vs 4 that worries you more than the practicality of the language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3992 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 31 26 February 2014 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Portuguese is easier than Hindi/Urdu and you can learn it on your own and then boost your knowledge with some immersion stay in Brazil. I generally wouldn't recommend Portuguese as the first Romance language to learn. You could kill 2 birds with one shot by going for Spanish first and then picking up Portuguese.
Especially Urdu might be very sought after and well paid if you want to work for security and intelligence services. Keep in mind that Hindi is not the single national language in India and many other languages are spoken there and it's quite possible that a non-native Hindi speaker Indian would prefer using English to Hindi. English is considered neutral while Hindi is not so welcome in certain parts of India. Also, most educated Indians speak a decent enough English, while it cannot be said about the majority of educated Latin-Americans, be they Spanish or Portuguese speakers. I am not suggesting anything, it is up to you, just wanted to add a few other points to consider. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4672 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 31 26 February 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hindi is learned in all states of India except for Tamil Nadu.
What politicians didn't achieve in Karnataka, Andra Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra was achieved with the help of Bollywood movies. ;) In Kerala (the Southernmost state of India), people watch Bollywood/Hindi movies without subtitles. Hindi is a very easy language to learn, it's the easiest ''exotic language'', and the script is very easy to learn. When it comes to language material, there are zillions of movies and songs available on youtube and on the internet... I lived in both Brazil and India, and while I love Brazil, I liked India better because it has this that interest me more: Hinduism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, yoga, trancedental meditation, spirituality, Ayurveda, Kundhalini, devotional festivities etc. If you're into soccer, beaches, nightlife, carnival, protestant churches, you might like Brazil better. Edited by Medulin on 26 February 2014 at 5:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 31 26 February 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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