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Urdu (Hindi, Hindustani) overview | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5441 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 25 of 34 02 January 2012 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking as someone who spent quite a long time studying Hindi, finished up with Shudhh Hindi (more
sanskritized, but not extreme), I feel handicapped in reading much literature, reading magazines, listening to songs and understanding movies, not to mention understanding poetry. Urdu is very much embedded in large parts of Indian culture. Even when the language is Hindi, the vocabulary can be either full of urdu words or very hindu- based. When choosing Hindi materials, try to find Hindustani based books, which will have the Urdu vocabulary as well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4750 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 26 of 34 03 January 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hindi film industry is mostly in Urdu and it is made in Mumbai, a Marathi city. ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anjathilina Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6605 days ago 33 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin Studies: Hindi | Message 27 of 34 12 January 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you have any recommendations regarding specific books? If you get older Hindustani books, are they still relevant? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mountain Goat Diglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5367 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: Pashto Studies: Urdu | Message 28 of 34 17 February 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey guys, I want to learn Urdu and need any and all tips you have on doing it most effectively.
I just read through the thread and there was lots of good reviews on language materials. The posts are a few years old though and I'm wondering what people would recommend nowadays for learning Urdu? Ideally I'm looking for a comprehensive teach yourself Urdu book containing vocabulary, grammar and with Urdu script (I.e. I want to learn to read and write urdu as well). Right now I'm thinking about going with Complete Urdu: A Teach Yourself Guide which seems to be a reprint of "Teach Yourself Urdu". Can anybody recommend anything else or would I be good to go with this one? It seems comprehensive enough... Also, what's the best English-Urdu/Urdu-English dictionary out there? Thanks in advance guys! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rajsinhasan Diglot Newbie Joined 4699 days ago 24 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English*, Creole (English) Studies: Portuguese | Message 29 of 34 18 February 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I can completely relate to this. I've been studying from Colloquial Hindi (version published in mid 90's which covers some Urdu vocab), Teach yourself Hindi (version published in early 90's and a bit more Sanskritized if I remember correctly), and Intermediate Level Hindi A Textbook by Sheela Verma. I found that with my studies I can only understand news broadcast without any hiccups or handicaps. Anything else like filmi songs, Bollywood, etc., there were times I've felt as if I barely understood what was going on if I relied on words alone. I'm thinking it's better indeed just to learn both Hindi and Urdu if possible to truly delve into North India's rich culture but if not, see if you could learn the Urdu register of speaking alongside the Devanagari script as that would seem to allow for the most access. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5441 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 30 of 34 19 February 2012 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't been studying Hindi for a while, but I would think that the older books would be very relevant. I use a
Bengali Dictionary (Johnson's) which was written in 1859 (or so). Of course in both Hindi and Bengali you need about six dictionaries and even then...much unhappiness. I imagine Urdu would be good..I'm just not up for a new script! If the title of the book says Hindustani that has more Urdu. I think Colloquial Hindi would have more. So for finding good language books for Hindi-Urdu :these days I would ask the internet...type the question into your browser. (You'll probably find this exchange of posts listed too). Problem is that this is not a question that most Hindi-speakers know the answer to...because THEY don't need textbooks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Afgjasmine16 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6007 days ago 29 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish | Message 32 of 34 24 March 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone! Sorry I know this is an old topic, but I just wanted to add some things to the conversation. I am a native Pashto speaker but I have been learning Hindi/Urdu from a very young age and currently I'm majoring in Hindi/Urdu at my university. I know more about Hindi than Urdu, but they are both pretty similar and if you learn you will probably most definitely learn the other one. Although I would suggest starting with Hindi, because there are more resources on it. I don't think Hindi/Urdu is hard at all. It is an extremely regular language, only a handful of verbs are irregular (which unfortunately happen to be common ones but still the irregular ones don't cause much difficulty. Hindi/Urdu has two genders, masculine and feminine, as a general rule most feminine nouns end in I and masculine ends in A, however of course there are exceptions, I've known some Hindi speakers who do mess up the gender sometimes though with uncommon words. Hindi/Urdu has three cases, direct, oblique and vocative. But these are all very regular and not very difficult or complex as some other case systems. Overall, it requires some work but it's not a very difficult language. The Urdu script is a little harder to learn than Devnagari. Devnagari has conjuncts, but most are easy to figure out once you can read the script well. The hardest part might be the pronunciation but as long as you listen and practice a lot, you should be fine.
The only advantage I think studying Urdu over Hindi, is if you are going to be talking with predominantly Pakistani's or only have an interest in Pakistan. I would also recommend only focusing on Urdu if you have a strong interest in literature, there is much more literature in Urdu than Hindi. I enjoy Urdu literature a lot more than Hindi's and Urdu has some amazing poems. However Hindi has more resources and it would probably be easier to find classes for Hindi. The most similar language to Hindi/Urdu is Punjabi! I hardly have studied any Punjabi but although sometimes it's hard for me to make out, I can understand a lot of Punjabi songs and can get the gist of an easy Punjabi conversation. I can also read a little Punjabi, although they have different scripts many of the letters look the same. I believe after learning Hindi/Urdu you could Nepali is very similar to Hindi, I have studied some Nepali and unfortunately had to give it up because I didn't have time for it, but they are both written in the same script and share a ton of words and very close grammar structures, I hope to learn Nepali one day. Bengali is also close to Hindi, mainly only in loan words and some grammar structure. Bengali has no gender , it has more honorific pronouns and a different script, but if you know devnagari it will help you learn the Bengali one. I'm learning Bengali now and my knowledge of Hindi has helped tremendously. South Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are in the Dravidian family and different from Hindi, but still having a knowledge of Hindi can help you especially with the south Indian sounds. The only South Indian language I have studied is Tamil and I can say Hindi did a help a little although they are very different from each other. I think Urdu would help with Farsi as Urdu gets a lot of phrases from Farsi. I noticed that Hindi/Urdu and Turkish have a lot of loan words and Hindi has a lot of loanwords with Indonesian, it probably won't help you learn Turkish or Indonesian faster, it's just something I noticed :P When I was in New Delhi, Hindi was very useful. Although most people do know English, many Indians simply translate from their Mother Tongue to English which makes understanding sometimes very difficult. Also I saw many signs in English used wrongly and was thankful I could read the Hindi on there. Also Indians were very welcoming to me learning Hindi and would speak in it with me. They also really appreciate it when you talk to them in Hindi. One important thing to remember is not all Indians speak Hindi, for Hindi specifically you will have to stay in the Hindi belt. Tamils and Bengali's will be very offended if you talk to them in Hindi, because they are very proud of their own languages, some nationalistic Marathi's are also like this, but majority of them know Hindi. Most of all the educated Punjabi's I met did speak Hindi/Urdu. If you are traveling in Bengal or anywhere in South India, I would suggest learning how to ask 'Do you speak Hindi?" in the local language before going right into Hindi. Tapes and textbooks in Hindi are easy to find. I have two favorite Hindi textbooks for beginners. I know that most people don't suggest Teach Yourself, but honestly Teach Yourself Hindi is probably the best one I've used. I really like the fact that after Chapter five they take away the transliteration, I know that sounds hard but it really helps when you want to learn the script and not rely on the transliteration. The new version from 2003 is also not really "Shubd" Hindi at all. Rupert Snell pretty much points out the difference and has certain characters use certain registers. For example the Pratap's teacher and the one character who is a writer use shubd Hindi while most of the other characters use everyday spoken Hindi. Using this book I could converse with Pakistanis with no problem. Another book I really like is Richard Delacy's Elementary Hindi, although before starting this you really need to be able to read devnagari because there is no Transliteration. This book is very colloquial and not very "shubd". You can also buy a workbook with it, which is great for practice. Neither of these books will make you fluent but it will give you a solid foundation. There is also another Hindi book on the market called "Living Language Hindi", it is okay and a lot of people like it. However , I noticed a lot of spelling mistakes. But it is useful. When you get passed beginners you can try "Hindi : An Essential Grammar." Which is a really good reference. Also when you get to an intermediate level, Usha Jain's Intermediate Hindi Reader. For Urdu, I will also suggest Teach Yourself Urdu, it is a decent course. There is also a course called Let's Study Urdu from Yale Language series this is also a great course and it even has transcripts of Urdu songs. I hope this post helped a little bit if you are interested in Hindi/Urdu :D Edited by Afgjasmine16 on 24 March 2012 at 12:37am 13 persons have voted this message useful |
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