Hm. I joined up, did some poking around, and started the lessons. I'm, er, not convinced. I'll hold out for the possibility that the connections with real live other people might make it worth it, but
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Tp be fair I know nothing about Hindi, and havn't tried to use Livemocha to start learning a language yet. The interaction is pretty cool later on, and you can rapidly find many msn buddies to practice with, maybe it's not so good for beginners.
वह should be pronounced "woh." Anyone who was saying "veheh" was either wrong or using something very regional. I've never heard anyone say it like that--just woh or voh. I have no idea why it's pronounced like that, though.
I used Teach Yourself Hindi by rupert snell and simon weightman. it was very good. unfortunately, this was 10 years ago and they have totally changed their book and the new edition that I have seen is crap. I would recommend the first edition.
I've been learning the script, and that is indeed my favorite site for it, though there are a couple other good ones. Thank you. But now I want to learn things like, I don't know, grammar. :)
It's hard because there isn't much available. For speaking/listening, one of the best things you can do (in any language, but this is especially good for Hindi because it's so easy to find stuff) is to listen to songs and watch movies and then repeat the phrases, try to translate the songs, etc. You'd need to know grammar basics before you started, but once you've learned the raw basics it's really good--I learned it through a class, but I progressed a lot more quickly than my classmates because I spent so much time watching Bollywood and listening to the songs. Not all the accents are perfect, but that's part of what helps and there's no guarantee that you'd get someone who spoke "unaccented" Hindi if you took a class anyway; my instructors were all from Rajasthan and they definitely pronounced some things differently.
I also went on YouTube and found this and this. The first one is more comprehensive and I didn't watch all of them all the way through, but they're both pretty decent
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See, I've been watching Bollywood movies for a couple years, now, and am watching more and more. And now I have an Indian friend who was so appalled by my terrible taste in films (*grin*) that she has written up a whole list of 'better' Hindi films. I'm actually pausing halfway through Halla Bol to write this. (Ajay Devgan is the bomb.)
I think that if I weren't watching the films, I wouldn't be so interested in the language. The other thing that's gotten me into it is that, quite incidentally, someone asked me to write a character in an RPG/collaborative fiction who is her character's sister - so it's a character who was raised in India. A lot of the questions I've asked here have been part of my attempt to get reasonably realistic dialogue for Chandini.
Between those two things, my brain is filling up with the rhythms and phonemes of Hindi, without my actually learning it. I'm piecing things together from watching the films, but often the subtitles are so clumsy that it takes many movies to clarify a single phrase. (
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LOL. That's how I got started, too. A friend (who was actually from Kerala, so she spoke Malayalam and not much Hindi beyond words like "shaadi") started showing me Hindi movies and I both liked them and liked how pretty Hindi sounded so I decided at first to learn it because of that. What are some of your favorite movies, and what are some of the movies your friend put down as the "better" ones?
Oh, now you've done it.callunavApril 5 2009, 02:53:34 UTC
In this post, I give the list she gave me. (The previous post, also tagged 'bollywood,' describes my first and second conversations with her about movies.)
So, almost all of the movies I've seen before this have been musicals, very Bollywood, though I feel like even the musical Sanjay Leela Bhansali films don't quite fill that category. I have a deep, ridiculous weakness for Kal Ho Naa Ho, despite its many, many flaws. I like Veer-Zaara, Main Hoon Na, Devdas, and the last third of Krrish. On odd-numbered days, I like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. I think I like Bunty aur Babli, but I never know for sure with movies I've only seen once, and I want to watch as many of the Amitabh Bachchan movies it pays homage to as possible before I watch it again. Similarly, I've only seen Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam once, so I'm not sure whether I really like it or not, but I think I might.
My current goal is to watch enough that I'll be able to catch the cameos and homages/references in Om Shanti Om, because I'm a fanatical Farah Khan fan
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Try to find a good podcast. I was trying Japanese on my own for like, 10 years, and never had so much luck retaining it as I did when I found a great podcast that teaches me the language.
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Learning basic conversation is always fun to learn through the wonders of subbed Bollywood films. :)
(I second the Rupert Snell recommendation as I've heard that is also an excellent way to learn hindi)
Don't despair!
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I also went on YouTube and found this and this. The first one is more comprehensive and I didn't watch all of them all the way through, but they're both pretty decent ( ... )
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I think that if I weren't watching the films, I wouldn't be so interested in the language. The other thing that's gotten me into it is that, quite incidentally, someone asked me to write a character in an RPG/collaborative fiction who is her character's sister - so it's a character who was raised in India. A lot of the questions I've asked here have been part of my attempt to get reasonably realistic dialogue for Chandini.
Between those two things, my brain is filling up with the rhythms and phonemes of Hindi, without my actually learning it. I'm piecing things together from watching the films, but often the subtitles are so clumsy that it takes many movies to clarify a single phrase. ( ( ... )
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So, almost all of the movies I've seen before this have been musicals, very Bollywood, though I feel like even the musical Sanjay Leela Bhansali films don't quite fill that category. I have a deep, ridiculous weakness for Kal Ho Naa Ho, despite its many, many flaws. I like Veer-Zaara, Main Hoon Na, Devdas, and the last third of Krrish. On odd-numbered days, I like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. I think I like Bunty aur Babli, but I never know for sure with movies I've only seen once, and I want to watch as many of the Amitabh Bachchan movies it pays homage to as possible before I watch it again. Similarly, I've only seen Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam once, so I'm not sure whether I really like it or not, but I think I might.
My current goal is to watch enough that I'll be able to catch the cameos and homages/references in Om Shanti Om, because I'm a fanatical Farah Khan fan ( ... )
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