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Anyone Here Learn/Speak Hindi? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5444 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 17 of 21 02 July 2011 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
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This IS strange! Kana easier than Devanagiri! Bapre! Devanagiri is so logical, so systematic. Of course, you need a
good language book that explains what retroflex is etc. Also it seems mad to me because I know zero about Kanji, I am also baffled by having the idea of needing a background in linguistics to pronounce hindi or many of the Indic languages. Hindi (as my first book (now lost) explained, follows a very basic idea: leave aside the vowels--all the consonants are arranged in order moving from the back of the mouth (k,kh,g,gh) then forward in the mouth with the same pattern in the same groups of four until the system breaks down with r, l the three s's etc. Each consonant group follows the same pattern of "unasperated and asperated; unvoiced and voiced". Of course the real sequence is unasperrated-unvoiced, asperated-unvoiced; unasperated-voiced, asperated-voiced. This is annoying to say or read, but the practice and sequence, once learned, is simple. Otherwise known as k,kh,g,gh - -then c,ch,j,jh --etc. etc. Understanding this is difficult for Westerners--I'll say English-speakers because those are the people I know-- because as a rule we have absolutely no idea when we are asperating a consonant and when we are not. How do you know? You put your hand in front of your mouth. If you feel air, that's asperated. And unbeknownst to ourselves, we are doing it with our chest and lungs, not our mouths. So we English speakers asperate ALL our k's, ch's j's t's, and p's without realizing it. On the other hand, we English sp's have a hard time saying bh's and dh's. And then for us to understand the difference between palatal and dental d's and t's--which I can hear clearly in hindi but not Bengali, go figure--we need to understand that our d's and t's in English are made with the tongue about half-way between the hindi palatal and dental positions. What is a palatal d? If someone is doing a cheesy South Indian-accent imitation, and says "Whart are you dooeeng?"--that d in "dooeeng" is a palatal d. But I have to say, I know what you mean about a being really slow reader--it has taken me years in Bengali to get up to reading-reading speed with adolescent level books--where I can actually read by myself. That is, less than three unknown words per sentence. Hindi and Bengali dictionaries being as bad as they are, more often than not you can't find a perfectly ordinary word. The range and number of vocabulary is enormous. My most complete dictionary with best print quality in Bengali was printed in 1829 (available on line free download: Companion to Johnsons Dictionary) . I found in reading hindi that every new writer seemed to use a different combination of vocabulary: eg shuddh hindi, or REALLY shuddh hindi, or hindustani-hindi, or hindustani, or hindustani-urdu, or just urdu, basically. Each new book was incomprehensible at first. I'm glad you enjoy English words. They bring me grinding to a halt. ;( I think my problem --which I still have trouble with--was that in hindi the vowels are on the top or on the right of the consonant. In bengali they can be to the right, to the left; or right or left plus on top; or surrounding the consonant. And েকা (ko) looks just like েক (ke) with কা (ka). (Sorry about the print size here--anyone interested can just enlarge it). So count your blessings! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nithin1997 Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4893 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 21 07 July 2011 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
Hey I want to learn Hindi aswell, could you possibly give me your resources? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5283 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi | Message 19 of 21 07 July 2011 at 6:00am | IP Logged | ||
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nthin1997, do a search for "Hindi" on the forums - you'll find lots of sites and lists with information!
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| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5444 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 20 of 21 07 July 2011 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Two sites I think a lot of:
A Door into Hindi http://taj.chas.nssu.edu/index.html. Cute, too. Hindi Bolo : http://hindiboloblo.blog.blogspot.com/ Also, of course, Teach Yourself. You can do hindi study at livemocha.com and exchange chat with people. I don't think much of a lot of their beginning material which is kind of random "There are six men with five ears of corn. Twelve girls are running in the field. etc." But maybe you can avoid that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 21 of 21 07 July 2011 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Understanding this is difficult for Westerners--I'll say English-speakers because those
are the people I know-- because as a rule we have absolutely no idea when we are asperating a consonant and when we are not. How do you know? You put your hand in front of your mouth. If you feel air, that's asperated." I just hear the difference (not always, of course)and can pronounce both aspirated and unaspirated. I don't know and don't study Hindi. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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