exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 1 of 18 17 June 2010 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
Okay... so my fiancé has gotten a job offer in India (hurrah!) and we'll be moving there, if all goes as we expect, at the end of next month. Immediately after our wedding. And by that, I mean "We leave the reception and go to the airport". We'll be there for 1-3 years, at least at this first go, so I've decided that despite the increasing usage of English: I want to learn Hindi.
(I also want to learn the regional language up there, Garhwali, but finding resources on THAT is quite difficult!).
My current materials and steps are:
1. Learning how to read and write in devanagari (I am setting up a set of Anki flashcards for this purpose)
2. Using some textbooks (free, via University of Austin, TX) for Hindi*.
3. Attempting to track down some audio for sampling/reviewing.
I have the 2nd Harry Potter in Hindi as well as The Little Prince; I collect the latter in different languages, and someone gifted me with the former awhile ago. I can't yet find audio for either of those in Hindi to try L-R with, though I'd quite like to.
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*: http://www.hindiurduflagship.org/resources/firstyearhindi.ht ml
**: http://www.hindiurduflagship.org/resources/glossaries/index. html - some audio from the Teach Yourself Hindi series
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lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5913 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole
| Message 2 of 18 18 June 2010 at 12:22am | IP Logged |
Hey, good luck. Hindi is cool, even if most people don't really think much about it.
Hopefully being in India will make it easier to pick up. :)
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 3 of 18 18 June 2010 at 6:09pm | IP Logged |
Soldiering away with Anki flashcards. Debating on being an incredible masochist and creating a flashcard for every biconsonantal conjunct. Since, if memory serves, there are over 1000 of them... I'm probably going to start with the most-used 100 and add from there, in the event I decide I'm having recognition issues. It's daunting, to say the least, but after putting in a run of the consonants + a single run of the vowel diacritics, I can look at The Little Prince and recognize what vowels are where.
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 4 of 18 23 June 2010 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
An update on this...
Have everything in Anki for the script, plus daily writing practise. The biconsonantal conjuncts are daunting: 1296 of them! - but I'm tracking down the most commonly used ones so I can focus on them, and expand it. If anyone ever wants the Anki flashcards I've made up, I will happily share them.
Have also given the anki decks to my fiancé, so he's starting to move through it as well. We spent a little bit of time playing on Google Translate last night, and it was fun to recognize that we - even at this beginning stage - can recognize when Google is "doing it wrong" with the pronunciation (as it's computer generated) and the romanization.
Finding various audio resources in Hindi is proving to be problematic - I can't find anything that would let me do L-R, or even audio in Hindi with a transcription in Devanagari, or a translation into English. I'll have more than I could want when I get there, but until then... argh!
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Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5397 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi
| Message 5 of 18 23 June 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
I think focusing on the most common conjuncts is a good idea as you'll notice a few of
the same ones coming up time and time again. Also, once you have a stronger grasp of
the characters and see how many conjuncts are formed, you'll be able to pronounce/read
certain conjuncts even if you've never seen them before.
And I agree with you about the lack of audio and texts for L-R; I can't find
anything... Right now I can only L-R the texts in Teach Yourself Hindi which just isn't
enough. But thanks for the textbooks link! Always nice to have more resources.
Good luck with your studies! Learning a bit of that regional language would be really
cool too.
Edited by Tenebrarum on 23 June 2010 at 11:35pm
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 6 of 18 01 July 2010 at 3:58am | IP Logged |
Have acquired A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi and have Elementary Hindi on order. Normally I wouldn't splurge on books like this, but I'm feeling a driving need to get as deep and as accomplished into the language as I can so as to settle into the country, and not get short-changed/the wool pulled over my eyes while bargaining, traveling, etc.
I love my Primer, but it's VERY much a traditional grammar, starting with nouns and working its way through. Finding audio support outside of Bollywood films remains a nightmare, and that audio/aural work is what I really need right now to make sure I'm hearing and pronouncing things correctly.
I am at the point where I know most of what is where on my keyboard for typing, and can write out some of the nouns I know and I don't constantly need to flip on the keyboard viewer for keying new things into Anki!
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Bryan_ Newbie United States Joined 5248 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes
| Message 7 of 18 04 July 2010 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
exscribere wrote:
If anyone ever wants the Anki flashcards I've made up, I will happily
share them. |
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I would love to get a hold of those - that's some amazing dedication to create them :)
I started using Beginner's Hindi Script a few months back, with the hopes of having a
base of Devangari as the foundation for learning Hindi. I got a little bogged down in
learning some of the characters and didn't have any luck finding a flashcard set. Happy
to say that I just found this thread through a Google search!
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 8 of 18 05 July 2010 at 3:46am | IP Logged |
Well, Elementary Hindi and I are getting on splendidly. Into Lesson 2 and I am fantastically happy with this, and think it's worth every cent (and have ordered the workbook). It introduces the Devanagari in phases and - most importantly for me - gives me things to DO with the little bits I've learned. So I can say things like
यह कया पै?
यह अाम है.
कया वह कमल यहै?
and use the structures for questions, introductions, and have started getting to play with postpositions. I'm using the Primer as support for the textbook, so I have more information, but I am much happier with this than Snell's materials. And I'm loving the audio. =)
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