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Anyone Here Learn/Speak Hindi? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5445 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 21 01 July 2010 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi, I was thinking of learning Hindi this summer and was wondering; how difficult is it to learn? All I know at the
moment is that the script would be way easier to learn than Japanese and that grammar is quite difficult. My next- door neighbour speaks fluent Hindi, and I'm sure she would be willing to help me, but it would be great to have a foundation first. Thanks! Brian 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6141 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 2 of 21 01 July 2010 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hindi is quite an easy language. It's certainly much, much easier than Japanese. The
script is very phonetic and although it has a few quirks it's not an ongoing challenge in the way that Hanzi are. The grammar is quite easy. It's a SOV language but it's not as "rigorously" SOV as, say, Japanese or Turkish. For example: He asked where he could get the bus to Dehli - scans to: Japanese: Dehli-to going bus-accusative where get "quotative particle" he asked. Hindi: He asked that I bus which Dehli going being is where get. (Could be "Dehli going-one bus", but it's use is more restricted in Hindi). The verb forms can get quite long because most verbs only have present and past particles which are combined with (most often) a part of the verb "to be" to create different tenses (of which there are about as many as in English). People are fond of pointing out that Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi are partially ergative and it is very difficult to get correct in spontaneous speech, especially in longer sentences, but it certainly falls into place over time and it's not a major barrier to communication. In fact, when I was getting Punjabi lessons from a bilingual English/Punjabi speaker he had trouble working out if Punjabi use the "ne" ergative marker because in natural speech it was dropped or skipped over quite frequently. Also there's loads of English vocab in Hindi, especially in the language of bilingual speakers in the UK/US/Ireland. If/When you move onto the more advanced stages it becomes more difficult as the vocab becomes increasingly Sanskrit-based. And there's very little material that aimed at foreigners learning advanced Hindi so ironing out the little kinks (using the right postposition with a verb etc) takes a lot of time. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5280 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi | Message 3 of 21 01 July 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Brian!
I've JUST started learning Hindi and have scavenged a fair number of different resources up from the depths of the internet, as well as physical resources (dead tree books). I'm enjoying it a lot so far - the syllabary is quite easy and I've just started delving into one of the "Teach Yourself Hindi" books for sentences and vocab outside of randomly cited words in the section on Devanagari (नान/bread). If you decide to pursue Hindi, let me know--I'll happily share my resources with you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| socks Triglot Newbie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5266 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Telugu, Hindi* Studies: French | Message 4 of 21 03 July 2010 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fat-tony makes good points. I had to look up what 'ergative' meant, and I still don't
know how it works exactly... but I think Hindi should be quite easy to understand. I catch myself substituting English words in Hindi all the time, and I don't even live in an English-speaking country. I even remember writing English words in my Hindi essays in school, and my teacher would excuse it saying: "she just couldn't think of the Hindi word." Hmm, you're probably better off not taking my advice in this case. North Indians tend to be more particular about the kind of language they use, and I've often had them chide me for using Hyderabadi words like "nakko" and "mereko". If your neighbour is from these parts, maybe you should think twice about getting tutoring from her. ;) I'll stop being a waste of reading space now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6141 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 5 of 21 03 July 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
In Hindi/Urdu the "past" tense of transitive verbs is ergative in that the participle agrees with the object rather than the object e.g. لرکے نے کتاب پڑھی लड़के ने किताब पढ़ी laRke ne kitab paRhi the boy(m)-oblique ergative-marker book(f) read(f). It's actually quite trickly for two reasons: Being an SOV language there can be a lot of information between the subject and the verb, so you can start a sentence, give lots of additional information, then when you get to the verb you realise that it's transitive and you should have added a "ne" ने/نے. Secondly, many verbs are compound verbs in that they are made up of a noun or adjective with a "proper" verb, often karna/करना/کرنا (to do). In these case it's quite rare for there to be a "true" object, often there'll be a postposition in between e.g. to try something is (in Urdu) ki koshish karna (कि कोशिश करना/کی کہشیش کرنا) lit. to do a trying of something. In the past tense verb agrees with koshish (fem) so it's always ki koshish ki (कि कोशिश कि/کی کہشیش کی) regardless of the gender of the actual object. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| socks Triglot Newbie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5266 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Telugu, Hindi* Studies: French | Message 6 of 21 03 July 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the explanation, Fat-tony. I never looked at it that way before, it's strange.
How are you typing in Hindi btw? In this: कि कोशिश कि, the second कि should have a badi ee ki matra. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| horshod Pentaglot Groupie India Joined 5771 days ago 74 posts - 107 votes Speaks: Hindi, Marathi*, Bengali, Gujarati, English Studies: German, Spanish, Turkish | Message 7 of 21 04 July 2010 at 1:30am | IP Logged | |||||
Both should be badi ee ki matra. Both are long vowels.
This actually happens only in the past perfect, simple past, present perfect and future perfect, i.e. wherever there is a sense of completion of the action, according to my observation. I think for an English speaker pronunciation would be the most difficult thing. He shouldn't find grammar to be that hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| socks Triglot Newbie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5266 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Telugu, Hindi* Studies: French | Message 8 of 21 04 July 2010 at 9:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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horshod - :D I can't tell you how long I thought about that phrase, I was still thinking
about it this morning lol. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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