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Indian Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 35 18 August 2007 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps you should think about writing a book... :) P.S. Like this one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FlorentT Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6321 days ago 119 posts - 120 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: Portuguese, Flemish, German, Hindi | Message 10 of 35 19 August 2007 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
Accidentally, your story resonates with me because I have felt the same about Australia when I lived there when I was 16ish. Now I didn't live there on my own, but after a year came to dislike many things like what I perceived as lack of culture (theatre, movies that did not come from Hollywood, ability to talk litterature with Australians) where I was living (Perth, WA), the focus on sports and cult of the body, and so on, and only wanted to go back home. Twenty years later I have changed a lot I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6869 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 11 of 35 19 August 2007 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Chris777, that was a great description of how cities in Western Europe feel like sometimes. I lived for nearly a year in Trier, Germany, and often, the weather was just like that (although I was fortunate to not lapse into a serious depression, however, I cannot say the same for all of the people there).
That was a very visual bit of writing! :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bartolomeu Dias Groupie United States Joined 6948 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Latin | Message 12 of 35 27 August 2007 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh my, I completely understand what you mean about the living in Paris
thing. I'm originally from San Diego, but I spent my junior year of high school in Paris in order to improve my French. Paris is a great city to visit but a very difficult one to live in, especially when you've just moved there and don't have many people to show you around. When I was going to school there I had a lot of friends, but adjusting to the dirt, erratic climate, and petty bureaucracy was still really difficult for me (I even had Parisian friends who didn't like the city; in fact, I knew one whose life's ambition was to move to San Diego!). Don't get me wrong, Paris is terrific in a lot of ways, but from the way it's talked about in California, I was kind of expecting it to be a sophisticated Utopia and wasn't prepared for anything less; so when I arrived and ran up against all these difficulties, I was quite taken aback and disgruntled. My love of French itself remained relatively unscathed, but after a few months I was thoroughly fed up with the city and wanted nothing more than to go home. And I have to say, when I got back to San Diego with the constant sunshine and ubiquitous Mexican food, I was positively giddy! To answer your question, though: as far as I know, Hindi isn't the predominant language in every Indian state, but it is the official language of the Union and is widely understood in pretty much all of the major cities, so if you want to learn an Indian language for the purposes of commerce, I'd have to go along with the others here and say that Hindi would be the best to learn. If you want to limit your business to southern India and want to learn a Dravidian language, I'd maybe recommend Tamil; it's the official language of Tamil Nadu, which contains the important industrial and commercial city of Chennai. Again, though, Hindi will probably be widely understood in most commercial centers around the country, Chennai included, so even if you do want to learn a southern Indian language, I'd recommend learning it in conjunction with Hindi. Also, if I understand correctly, Hindi and Urdu are extremely similar, so if you learn Hindi, it's mostly a question of mastering Urdu script and some different vocabulary, and you will be quite proficient in both, thereby opening up several business opportunities in neighboring countries. I can't claim to be an expert, but I'd imagine that Hindi and Urdu would make a formidable combination! Edited by Bartolomeu Dias on 27 August 2007 at 1:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6619 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 13 of 35 27 August 2007 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chris, are you studying at UT Austin by any chance? There are many Indian students studying there and they're studying things like Business and Computer Science. As someone who studied Computer Science at UT Austin, I would highly recommend that you learn an Indian language, preferably Hindi.
As you probably know, the unemployment situation in Austin is bad enough that even getting a Burger King job there is difficult. If you seriously study an Indian language, I believe it may help you get the connections you need if you decide that you want to work in India. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| xtremelingo Trilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6288 days ago 398 posts - 515 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Punjabi* Studies: German, French, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 35 02 October 2007 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hindi. The United States and Britian have very strong diplomatic, economic/business, technical ties to India versus Pakistan. Learning Urdu is great, but Urdu is still somewhat different than Hindi in the way some words sound. I can easily distinguish Hindi from Urdu in a split second and so will local/natives. In a country like India that has alot of patriotism/nationalism, sounding like the other side i.e. Pakistan isn't going to get you as far as you think, PARTICULARLY if you can't read/write in Devanagri script. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 15 of 35 02 October 2007 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Gujarati!!!
I don't know why I picked this language. I just liked the sound of the name. I'm about 20 hours into it and I can read the script okay now (that is, I can sound out the words about 90% accurately--not without major accent issues, but at least I can recognize the characters). Yeah, I know Hindi should be the correct choice for this member (if he's still around...), but Gujarati just had a cool-sounding name and I like the script, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the same as Hindi, but without the line across the top?? xtreme, is that true? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Shinn Trilingual Tetraglot Groupie India gallery.takingitglob Joined 6413 days ago 61 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Oriya*, SpanishB2 Studies: FrenchB1, Japanese, Irish | Message 16 of 35 03 October 2007 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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apparition, Gujarati and Devanagari do not quite have the same script. A few characters are different and some may even cause a bit of confusion, like the character for the "kh" sound in Gujarati resembles the "j" sound in Devanagari.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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