More Hindi info.

[callunav]

I have a friend at school who is from Bihar, India, but grew up in Oman, in the Middle East. She's the one who gave me the list of Hindi films to watch that I posted about a while ago. Today, I had a chance to sit and chat with her for longer than usual, and ask her a lot of questions about Hindi as a language, as well as the cultures of India (

Comments

[talinthas]

In gujarati, you can say Bhena for an affectionate form of sister the way you say bhaiya.

And yes, Gurus can be female--check out anandmurti gurumaa, for instance.

[caprinus]

Thanks for the update! I remember the original post, but for those who don't you could maybe provide a link? :)

[gooofy]

Hindi and Urdu dictionaries: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/

[shanrina]

I don't know much about the traditional/proper slant, but in my experience shabdkosh isn't very good. I only use it if I already know a word but want to check the Devanagari spelling since it's less of a pain than burrowing through the huge pile of books near the computer to find my paper dictionaries.

As far as paper dictionaries go, I have the Oxford Hindi-English and English-Hindi dictionaries (yes, dictionaries--one for each way) and they've been good to me so far. Back in college I even used the English-Hindi one to write a paper in Hindi on Jewish Socialists and Zionists in late 19th and early 20th century Russia and Eastern Europe (long story) and my lecturer said that I'd gotten everything right, even words like "proletariat," lol. So yeah, I'm definitely a fan of those. I have a couple others, too, but I don't really use those so I'm just going to mention the Oxford ones.