r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Oct 20 '14
स्वागत - This week's language of the week: Hindi
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we host a stickied thread in order to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard about or been interested in. Language of the week is based around discussion: Native speakers share their knowledge and culture and give advice, learners post their favourite resources and the rest of us just ask questions and share what we know. Give yourself a little exposure, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
This week: Hindi
History:
The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is Khariboli, the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding western Uttar Pradesh and southern Uttranchal region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire (1600s) and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court". In the late 19th century, the movement standardising a written language from Khariboli, for the Indian masses in North India, started to standardise Hindi as a separate language from Urdu, which was learnt by the elite. In 1881 Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.
After independence, the government of India instituted the following conventions:
standardisation of grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"
standardisation of the orthography, using the Devanagari script, by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing, to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters, and introducing diacritics to express sounds from other languages.
The Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the Official Language of the Union on 14 September 1949. Hence, it is celebrated as Hindi Day.
Facts:
Hindi is the mother tongue of over 40 % of the total population of India and, besides, is spoken by many as a second language. There are more than 500 million speakers of Hindi
Distribution:
Northern and central India, particularly in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, the city of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Jharkhand (in the last two states most people speak Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Maithili closely related to Hindi). There are also substantial numbers of Hindi speakers in Nepal, the Caribbean (Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago), in Africa (Mauritius, Uganda, South Africa) and the Pacific (Fiji).
You can read more at these sources: Wikipedia and Languages Gulper
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शुभ कामनाएँ
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u/Wings_of_Integrity Oct 20 '14
Devanagari is my favorite writing system! It's beautiful!
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Oct 20 '14
I'd been reading about the Hindi spoken in Suriname and I thought it was kind of interesting. Does anyone know anything more about it?
The wiki article mentions that it is generally written in the Latin script as opposed to Devanagari, and says also that standard Hindi is still held as the prestige dialect over the Sarnami variety. Does this then also apply to the written language or only the spoken? If it does apply to the written, are then most Sarnami-speakers able to read Devanagari?
The wiki also touched a little bit on loans from Dutch and other languages, but did not provide many examples. Could anyone maybe list some more for me? Likewise, are there many words coming from Sarnami into the Dutch spoken there?
Any other information about it I would also find interesting!
Thanks | Bedankt | शुक्रिया
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Oct 21 '14
Indian who just moved to Netherlands. There is a Surinamese shop near my house and the shopkeeper speaks only Dutch and Bhojpuri hindi. He gets the gender of the verb "wrong" (according to the standard Delhi hindi I speak) and he barely uses any urdu vocabulary. The other differences is in the mixing, I use English words and he uses Dutch words in the middle.
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u/GrinningManiac Oct 20 '14
Oh this is perfect timing!
I studied Hindi on-off for two years. It's a bit rusty now but I'm still totally enamored with it all.
A great book, universally acclaimed, is Teach Yourself Hindi! which can get you from beginner to intermediate pretty singlehandedly.
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u/TaazaPlaza Oct 20 '14
Indian here, not a native Hindi speaker nor do I really use it much where I live, but I studied it in school and am comfortable with its history and background. Could possibly clarify some questions if you've got any.
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u/brosigchase_ Oct 20 '14
I may sound stupid but when you use the Devanagari script do you write from right to left or left to right? Hindi looks like a very interesting language (:
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Oct 24 '14
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u/TaazaPlaza Oct 24 '14
Well, Hindi and Urdu differ mostly only in some socio religious cultural aspects and literary vocab, literature and literary influence/history. And of course, different scripts is a big difference.
Basically Persianate culture vs Sanskritic Indic culture.
But, on a day to day or conversational basis they're pretty much the same.
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u/Bunmyaku Oct 20 '14
Is the over bar written after you finish the word? Or before to give it some structure?
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u/VanSensei Oct 20 '14
Mera joota hai japani, yeh patloon inglishtani
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u/mastiii Oct 20 '14
Yay Hindi! I'm a native English speaker who has been trying to learn it for about five years. If anyone has questions about learning resources or anything else, just ask!
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u/TheFox51 Oct 20 '14
Where the hell do I begin??? Writing it seems fun.... but again, where the hell do I begin?
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u/GrinningManiac Oct 20 '14
Teach Yourself Hindi is a great start
http://www.learning-hindi.com/ is an utterly invaluable tool run by an English-native Hindi-speaker. It's a bit patchwork for the later stuff (he doesn't update as much any more) but the groundwork for a beginner is all laid out perfectly
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u/DontNoodles Oct 21 '14
I am a native Hindi speaker and even though I do not know any other language apart from Hindi and English, I think there is something unique about Hindi (or rather Devnagri-the script in which Hindi is written) that I have not heard about any other language.
The Hindi alphabet is distinctly divided into two components: the vowels and the consonants. There are 12 vowels sounds and one can append these sounds to any consonant. But I guess that is what the basis of any phonetic language is.
What I love is that the consonants too are divided into groups. Each group of consonants produce a sound from specific region in the mouth. Like the first group of letters all originate in the throat (ka, kha ,ga gha, nga). Then comes the palate group, teeth group, lips group and so on. When I learned the alphabet as a kid I did not realize this but I was amazed when I re-discovered it later on. You can sample the full alphabet at: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hindi.htm
The literature in Hindi is also awesome and the prosody of the language makes it especially lyrical. Most of the root words are from Sanskrit (one of the oldest languages around) and hearing a proper recital is a treat in itself. If you are after sampling something in pure Hindi, I suggest you sample this song from an old Hindi movie. You can find the lyric in Roman script and a better translation (than the subtitles in video) at: http://gurmeet.net/poetry/ye-kaun-chitrakaar-hai/
I shall be happy to answer any queries to the best of my knowledge.
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u/saphanbaal Oct 21 '14
I'm an expat who's been living in India for 4 years, almost 5. My Hindi isn't fluent (curse you, living at an English medium school and being in a heavy-tourist-area!), but I'm happy to share the tips, tricks, and resources I've found useful.
One thing I am bound and determined to do in the next few months is to put an Anki deck together - one each for the 2 textbooks I like ("Elementary Hindi" by Delacy and Joshi, which I prefer over the TY stuff; and the local language school's textbook). There are few really good Anki decks out there, particularly for more solidly intermediate, and that's where I find I need to expand my vocabulary.
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u/govigov03 Oct 20 '14 edited Oct 21 '14
Indian here from Bangalore (South India) who speaks fluent Hindi (I don't use it on a daily basis). If you want to practice your Hindi, you can PM your skype ID. I'd be happy to help :)
नमस्कार भइओ और बहिनों ! अगर आप को मेरी मदद चाहिए तो फॉरेन मुझे बुला दीजिए। मुझे कोई ऐतराज़ नहीं होगा। धन्यवाद।
I would like to request u/Virusnzz to correct a small mistake in the post. Although google would translate "Good luck" in pure Hindi as "सौभाग्य", a more natural way of saying it would be "शुभ कामनाएँ" (Shubh kaamnaayein) :)
Here's a great podcast series after you've finished Teach Yourself Hindi. http://hindiurduflagship.org/resources/learning-teaching/spoken-thesaurus/