Ask HN: Do you want to learn Hindi? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you want to learn Hindi?

8 pointsrevorad13 comments

Hi guys,

I am Indian, my girlfriend's English. She's really keen on learning Hindi, so I've been trying to help her. I'm thinking maybe I could help more people.

I always had an itch for creative writing and speaking in Hindi. I used to write and direct plays in school and college. I haven't done that stuff in such a long time, so I thought it would be fun to get back into it by doing some videos and articles teaching Hindi and see if people find it useful. A lot of people travel to India. Even though you can totally get by speaking English, it's useful to know some local lingo.

Would you guys be interested? What kind of things would you like to learn?

Thanks,

Hrishi

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I'm of Indian decent but only speak English. I would like to.

Also, as a side note:

Even though you can totally get by speaking English

I'm living in Chennai now and make a few trips to Mumbai for work. In Chennai, I've had few problems with English, but in Mumbai, it can be quite a bit harder. If you stick to touristy things English is fine. But if you want to try traveling by auto-rickshaw or talking to locals, you will run into difficulties without Hindi.

Yes, in Mumbai you do need Hindi. In Chennai, they'll probably ignore you if you talk in Hindi :-p.

Thanks for your interest, it's encouraging to know at least some people would find this useful. If you like, drop me an email and I'll update you when I put some stuff up.

I'm of Indian descent, but rarely speak my "mother tongue" (Gujurati). I'm most fluent in English and wouldn't mind giving this a shot.

How are you planning on teaching it? Using videos? A book?

I'd probably like to learn the basics of keeping a conversation, counting/measuring and asking for directions. After that most things can be learnt pretty easily.

Yeah, I'm mainly thinking of videos with me talking and slides with English phonetic pronunciation. I'm also thinking a phrasebook might be useful.

If you know some Gujarati, you'll pick up Hindi fast. Bau similar chhe.

Edit: Oh and I'm also planning to use some kind of SRS tool like Anki or Supermemo.

Perhaps try videos in this format: http://www.youtube.com/khanacademy#g/p

Keep us posted!

Oh I love Khan academy. But I am thinking of a different format. I will use slides to show the text but I think there will be some amount of me just talking and explaining things. Thanks for the interest, I'll do a followup post.

Would it be better then to just do audio (mp3 is probably most universal) and create separate slide shows? Then people could have the audio on a personal audio player (ipod, phone, whatever). Or, provide an audio only version of the video.

Yeah an audio only version is probably a good idea. Should keep that in mind while recording. Thanks!

One way to teach people Hindi would be to create a video (maybe a series) on 100 most used Hindi words and phrases, with context, pronunciation and transliteration.

Another way may be cheatsheets. For example, this Hindi cheatsheet. http://www.gng.org/currents/india/ind_lang.html

Yes I am thinking of teaching conversational stuff first through videos. Cheatsheets would also be good, thanks for the link.

Here are some things I'm planning to teach:

1. How to greet people and make new friends (hello, what's your name, where are you from, where do you live etc.)

2. Numbers and quantities, especially money.

3. How to talk to locals to get around in India (e.g. auto-rickshaw drivers).

4. Bootstrap Hindi - learn more Hindi by learning to ask useful questions in Hindi: "What do you call this in Hindi?", "How do you say this in Hindi?" and "What does this word mean in Hindi?".

5. Hindi vocabulary one Bollywood song at a time.

6. How to order food in various types of Indian restaurants.

7. Describing objects by shape, size, colour, weight.

8. Talk about the weather (you've got to, especially if you're English!).

I'd love to hear your thoughts. So please leave a comment here or email me (see profile).

I´m Indian on my father's side, and I never had a chance to learn the language. I would definitely be interested.

Cool! I must say I didn't think of this demographic at all. I thought only Americans or other non-Indians would be interested.

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