Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

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n8an
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Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-15, 4:04

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 :D

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

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby Saim » 2016-06-15, 8:24

نعن بھائ!

زبردست! میں تمہاری مدد ضرور کرونگا، پوچھو کوی پھی سوال :)

درسی کتابیں استعمال نہ کرو اگر تم کو تنگ کرتی ہیں۔ بص گانوں اور فلموں سے سیکھو، اور یونیلینگ میں پوسٹ لکھو ہندی-اردو میں۔ اگر مشکل ہو، کتاب کو واپس جاو۔ جوش و خروش اور موٹویشن بہت اہم ہیں، اے لیے جو مزاق ہے بص کرو۔

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby Antea » 2016-06-15, 9:09

Hi! Don't you remember which level had you reached approximately? I started learning Hindi this year, and till now we have learned to read in Devanagari, the usual basic vocabulary (months, colours, numbers), we also have learned some verbs and how to conjugate them in present tense, present continuous, past and future. We have also done the most usual postpositions.

We're now doing sentences and trying to get used to the word order. In summer I would like to increase my vocabulary, which is very basic, and to do more reading in order to get used to Devanagari. So far for the A1 level.

Did you get past all those things? Maybe you are in a more advanced level :hmm:

BTW, I also have the Elementary Hindi Textbook :D

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby Meera » 2016-06-15, 17:38

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 :D

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 :P

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 :P 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 ... Sw2z4WtdFo



I 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 :)
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n8an
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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-16, 1:14

Saim wrote:
نعن بھائ!

زبردست! میں تمہاری مدد ضرور کرونگا، پوچھو کوی پھی سوال :)

درسی کتابیں استعمال نہ کرو اگر تم کو تنگ کرتی ہیں۔ بص گانوں اور فلموں سے سیکھو، اور یونیلینگ میں پوسٹ لکھو ہندی-اردو میں۔ اگر مشکل ہو، کتاب کو واپس جاو۔ جوش و خروش اور موٹویشن بہت اہم ہیں، اے لیے جو مزاق ہے بص کرو۔


Okay, I'm not gonna pretend I understood all of that...but I'm surprised to say that I did understand a lot more than I thought I would have :lol:

This is actually the easiest form of Hindi/Urdu I've read. I can kind of see what's happening because Perso-Arabic is pretty natural for me. I wish the Teach Yourself Urdu book was in this Naskh and not the impossible Nastaaliq :doggy:

Thanks a lot for the advice :D I will see if I can try Nastaaliq one more time as well :yep:

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-16, 1:16

Antea wrote:Hi! Don't you remember which level had you reached approximately? I started learning Hindi this year, and till now we have learned to read in Devanagari, the usual basic vocabulary (months, colours, numbers), we also have learned some verbs and how to conjugate them in present tense, present continuous, past and future. We have also done the most usual postpositions.

We're now doing sentences and trying to get used to the word order. In summer I would like to increase my vocabulary, which is very basic, and to do more reading in order to get used to Devanagari. So far for the A1 level.

Did you get past all those things? Maybe you are in a more advanced level :hmm:

BTW, I also have the Elementary Hindi Textbook :D


Hey!

I actually don't remember exactly where I left off. I think I will start somewhere easy so I can get some confidence again.

Wow, you know all of those tenses and vocabulary but you only consider yourself A1 :o I would consider that kind of level to be A2-B1 at least :D

I'm definitely not more advanced than you. I have so much work to do!

I love Elementary Hindi. It's reeeeally good for explaining the basics. I agree with Meera that it doesn't go into depth and go as far as Teach Yourself Hindi, but it's still really good and helps you understand basic things. Definitely has helped me a lot!

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-16, 1:21

Meera wrote:Hello! Please do Hindi. I can help you with it and you can help me with Arabic/Turkish/Hebrew haha :P

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 :P 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 ... Sw2z4WtdFo



I 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 :)


As I always say, I would love to help you with Hebrew one day :D

Yes, Meera, you have actually been my biggest encouragement and helper ever since I started Hindi a couple of years ago! You were the one who encouraged me to get Teach Yourself and gave me a lot of great advice. I'm super grateful :D


I agree that Teach Yourself is more in depth. I loved Elementary for how basic it was and how it eased me into things that seemed really overwhelming at first. Teach Yourself has funny stories though and does give you quite a lot of information that Elementary takes longer to do.

I think I should start from about chapter 8 in Teach Yourself. I will let you guys know how I go :)

Thanks again so much!

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby Antea » 2016-06-16, 5:44

n8an wrote:Wow, you know all of those tenses and vocabulary but you only consider yourself A1 :o I would consider that kind of level to be A2-B1 at least :D


Well, you know, the teacher has explained all those things to us. But that doesn't mean that I know how to use them correctly. I know them in the theory, but I still struggle to make a single correct sentence with the correct verb tense, and the correct word order and all :roll: .

I suppose I need some extra time to let all this information sink in. So far, I've been so much devoted to Russian, and that has delayed me in other languages :hmm:

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-16, 12:15

Antea wrote:Well, you know, the teacher has explained all those things to us. But that doesn't mean that I know how to use them correctly. I know them in the theory, but I still struggle to make a single correct sentence with the correct verb tense, and the correct word order and all :roll: .

I suppose I need some extra time to let all this information sink in. So far, I've been so much devoted to Russian, and that has delayed me in other languages :hmm:


Haha okay, gotcha :D

How long have you been learning Hindi?

I can never seem to focus on languages anymore. It's like my brain is full now :roll:

But I do really love Hindi/Urdu! It's so beautiful

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby Antea » 2016-06-16, 13:21

This is my first year. I've been going to classes, and at first my teacher was really going too fast with the lessons. It was very hard for me to keep the pace. Now, I'm reviewing what we've done, and I'm beginning to make sense of it all. But there's still a long way to go :roll:

n8an wrote:I can never seem to focus on languages anymore. It's like my brain is full now :roll:


Yeah, I know the feeling. Now I'm beginning with Persian :hmm: . But usually the languages that I focus more on, are those that I go to classes. The others, well, I do what I can and when I have time :roll:

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Re: Starting Hindi/Urdu again? :D

Postby n8an » 2016-06-18, 4:53

Antea wrote:This is my first year. I've been going to classes, and at first my teacher was really going too fast with the lessons. It was very hard for me to keep the pace. Now, I'm reviewing what we've done, and I'm beginning to make sense of it all. But there's still a long way to go :roll:


Nice! How do the other students cope?

I found my TY Hindi book and I've been re-reading it. There was a lot that I'd forgotten, but I remembered most...which was good! I just need to do the exercises again I think.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Now I'm beginning with Persian :hmm: . But usually the languages that I focus more on, are those that I go to classes. The others, well, I do what I can and when I have time :roll:


Persian will be really nice for you after Hindi. I did it the other way around (Persian before Hindi). They have so many common words and you can really see how related they are 8-)


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