(Untitled)

Dec 11, 2009 11:07

Hello, I am currently trying to teach myself the Hindi language. I find it very difficult since the hindi script is written so small ( Read more... )

hindi, learning languages, devanagari

Leave a comment

shanrina December 12 2009, 04:17:32 UTC
One thing you can do is download the scripts here (I've used them for years on multiple computers so they're safe). You can copy things over from books (just for your own personal use) and increase the font size until you can read it easily enough. One thing you should absolutely NOT do is try to cheat when you're just learning the script and write it in the alphabet you're used to reading. It'll just make internalizing the script take longer.

As far as livemocha goes, I've looked at the early parts of the course even though I already speak Hindi and I wasn't too impressed. I also have a friend who isn't as familiar with it as I am who tried to use it to learn and she had a very hard time with it. It might work well for other languages, but as of yet I haven't seen anything in their Hindi course that would make me feel comfortable recommending it.

Oh, and if you don't already have one, I recommend getting a good dictionary. There really are no good dictionary options online. I personally like the Oxford English-Hindi and Hindi-English ones best, but IIRC they're fairly expensive.

Another thing I also did when I was first learning that helped me a lot with speaking was watching a lot of movies. It helped me get the rhythm down and hear what it was supposed to sound like (I took a class so I was lucky enough to have native speakers correcting me, but they were often speaking slowly and not with the same rhythm that two people having a conversation in their native language would have) and also exposed me to a lot of vocabulary.

Good luck!

Reply


Leave a comment

Up