n8an wrote:Hey people,
You guys have always been extremely helpful with my Hindi/Urdu studies
I haven't done anything for a year or so, but I would like to get back into it a bit.
I still have my Elementary Hindi (Text and Workbook), Teach Yourself Hindi and Teach Yourself Urdu books.
As before, I have immense difficulty reading Nastaaliq (even though I read Persian and Arabic with no difficulty). I think I am okay with Devanagari, except for combined consonants which make me pretty irate at times
I'm interested in getting somewhere with the language(s) that helps me be more conversational with Hindi/Urdu speakers and understand more media.
Any tips you guys can give me? I'm slightly reluctant to go straight back into the textbooks, because starting from the beginning is really unnecessary but I can't exactly remember where I was up to either :p
Hello! Please do Hindi. I can help you with it and you can help me with Arabic/Turkish/Hebrew haha
The Urdu script is actually quite hard to read even for people who know the Perso-Arabic script. Urdu has many words spelled the same way but pronounced differently. For example:
کیا can be pronounced both kya and kiya. Kya means what and kiya means did. In Devanagari it is spelled like this:
क्या=Kya
किया= kiya
I would continue with Devanagari and after you get a good gripping on Hindi you can move onto to Urdu and you will see it is a lot easier because you will already know most of the words and grammar concepts. If you follow Elementary Hindi or the TY Hindi most Urdu speakers should understand you especially if you use the Elementary Hindi. If you know Persian you will probably recognize a lot of Persian words in Urdu/Hindi. Another advice I would give is to make sure you watch and listen to media from both Pakistan and India. I am not great with reading Urdu but when I watch Urdu news and Urdu tv serials I can understand with really no problem. You can watch a lot of Hindi movies for free legally on youtube
And it will give you exposure to the phrases used in both.
I know how it is not wanting to start from the beginning, I'm having that problem with Turkish right now
Maybe you can review by testing yourself and doing the exercises. And the things you aren't too sure on you can review and then move on. You can use these videos if you want to review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbNfoGv ... Sw2z4WtdFoI like all the books you have. I think the TY Hindi /TY Urdu goes more in depth than the Elementary Hindi but they are all good. I think by the end of TY Hindi/Urdu you will be at a good intermediate spot. There is a book called TY Urdu Script if you are interested which is great for learning how to read Urdu.
Anyone I hope this helps a little bit. If you have any other questions feel free to ask