Hindi Update - Including Some Resources

So, Zahra and my language swap is going pretty well so far. In Spanish we've covered pronunciation, extra letters and accent marks, about 12 nouns and 6 -ar verbs, as well as how to conjugate those latter in the present tense. We've discussed gender, plural, and articles, as well as using gustar to express liking something. She thinks it's very easy so far and she's right.

Hindi is going well for me too, although a bit more slowly because it's a bit harder, at least initially. At first, when I thought I knew exactly what I was looking for (lists of words written in devanagari) and had limited time in the computer lab, I felt frustrated by the lack of materials I was finding. With a bit more patience, internet time, and random wandering, I've actually found a wealth of resources.

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There's Quillpad Hindi http://quillpad.com/hindi/ which lets me type in Hindi without knowing how the Hindi keyboard words - I just write phonetically and it converts things for me. It has it's quirks and irregularities, and so does the transliteration I've learned, but nevertheless it works pretty well. Also, Quillpad lets you type in Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, and English - basically a little sample of Indian scripts, most of which are related. For comparative purposes I've sometimes selected what I've typed in Hindi and pushed the button to transliterate it into one of the other scripts. Interesting to see the similarities.

Then there's Hindi Script Tutor http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm which originally upset me because it's distinctly unprintable. However, it's awesome for learning Devanagari if you have internet, because it shows how to write (stroke order and all) and pronounce each letter, and shows each letter in one or two examples, which are spoken by both male and female voices. The Conjunct Engine is also nice - that's what I'll be moving onto next.

In fact, the more I look around, the more I find. There are several things I've found that will be excellent for improving my Hindi once I have a basic grip on the language.

For example, this site uses clips from real Bollywood movies to teach Hindi: http://www.cuttingchai.com/HouseFull/index.html

This website http://www.babloo.com/is great for learning all sorts of things about India (from their description: folk tales from India, nursery rhymes, significance of festivals, Indian Panorama, all about Olympics, magic tricks, safety and good manners for children, reference park, health awareness, online games for kids, puzzles, mathematical brain teasers, amazing facts... and much much more.) and is available in English and Hindi, as well as other languages of India. You have to enable pop-ups.

This website's "Kid Zone" http://www.indif.com/kids/hindi_proverbs/hindi_proverbs.aspx also has a lot of cool things in Hindi.

Although I went to the bookstore here in Columbia and was a bit disappointed to find not so much as a Hindi phrasebook, the web seems full to bursting with resources! :D What a great language to learn over the internet!

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I've almost gotten a good handle on the alphabet, which Zahra wants before she starts teaching me much grammar or vocabulary. I know all of the basic letters now, although I'm not 100% certain of my pronounciation, especially with hard and soft and aspirated and super aspirated t's and d's. (???!!) I haven't even really started with conjuncts yet, although I recognize most of them and I'm not really afraid of them - I just think I can probably get started with the language itself before I'm ready to transcribe entire novels.

Yesterday I watched two Hindi songs on Youtube, both from Bollywood films I've already seen. I actually understood a handful of words. :) Although having the English translation at the bottom helped, of course...