Hindi hints

I'm learning Hindi, and the single best tool for learning it is adding a Devanagari keyboard to your phone so you can actually see it & use it pretty much every day. For Samsung, the keyboard is organized by the letter groups:

क ख ग घ ङ

च छ ज झ ञ

ट ठ ड ढ ण

त थ द ध न प फ ब भ म य र ल व श ष स ह

So you'll learn the alphabet quickly (took me less than a month of practicing every day). The autocorrect will also help you spell + learn words. It will also allow you to type out words into a translator much more accurately than using Latin letters and hoping it's transliterated properly. And unless you have knowledge of the language already, Latin script is going to cause a lot of trouble for reading & learning Hindi because of how ambiguous letters can be in terms of the sounds they produce, especially vowels. For example, bhai & hai both have "ai" when written in Latin but are pronounced completely differently, but when you see it written in Devanagari it's very clear that they are distinct (भाई vs है). There's also the situation where words that end in "i" can be ambiguous in terms of whether it's the short "i" or long "i", because of typically not writing "ee" at the end of words (meri is मेरी while Preeti is प्रीति). And there's also words that are written with just one "a" even though it has a long a that would otherwise be written as "aa". This usually happens when the word begins with a long a (आवारा being written awaara rather than aawaara). But then there's also aap (आप) which does have "aa" at the beginning. But then words like bhabhi are only written with one "a" even though it's a long a sound (भाभी). And it's also difficult to distinguish त थ द ध ट ठ ड ढ र ड़ ऋ when writing using Latin. The word sari for example, is actually written साड़ी, with long a and retroflex d/r (sound that doesn't exist in English). Then there's word pairs like larki and ghadi, which in Latin look like they only have the vowels in common but actually both use ड़ (लड़की घड़ी).

I think I've given enough examples to justify why you should learn Devanagari as soon as possible and try to avoid using Latin to write Hindi words & instead focus on trying to write using Devanagari as the script is much more conducive to writing these the way they are actually pronounced in Hindi (and Sanskrit even more so).

Learning how to read, in my opinion, is more important than trying to learn vocabulary or grammar first, because reading will introduce you to new vocabulary naturally.

As for vocabulary, understanding the breadth of Hindi is important. For one, there are often many words that mean the same thing, just from different etymological sources. I'm sure you already know this, but the biggest sources for Hindi are Sanskrit (& Prakrit), Persian, Arabic, and English. Having just basic familiarity with grammar in this language can go a long way.

For example, if you wanted to say "love story", you have the option of either saying "prem kahaani" (प्रेम कहानी), which uses Sanskrit words and puts the adjective before the noun, OR you can use "daastaan-e mohabbat" (दास्ताँ-ए-मोहब्बत), which is a mix of Persian & Arabic, using the Persian "-e" suffix to put the noun in front of the adjective. Using Arabic & Persian vocabulary would push you more toward Urdu territory but there are still many Arabic & Persian words used in Hindi that refer to everyday things, as well as the language used in Bollywood films that try to avoid relying too heavily on either Sanskrit or Perso-Arabic to be intelligible to a wider audience.

Learning Arabic prefixes (such as mo-/ma-) can go a long way in understanding what words mean & can help expand your vocabulary. Those prefixes can mean either "person of x" or "place of x". Sajde (सजदे), from Arabic, for example can mean prayer, and if you add ma- in front of it, you get masjid (मस्जिद), literally "place of prayer". I'm sure you can think of many other Arabic words used in Hindi that have a similar construction (Islam + Muslim is another one).

The Persian prefix "ham-" (हम-), meaning "with someone" or "together" or "we", comes up in many Hindi words too. Safar (सफ़र) means journey, put them together and you get hamsafar (हमसफ़र), meaning someone you go on a journey with. Dard (दर्द) means pain, and hamdard (हमदर्द) literally means someone who shares your pain, but means more like someone who sympathizes with you.

Of course, you should also learn Sanskrit prefixes and suffixes too, such as mahaa (महा), meaning big. Saagar (सागर) means sea, and mahaasaagar (महासागर) literally means "big sea", but it really means ocean.

Another Sanskrit word part that is used often is a-, (अ-), used as negation (you'll notice that many Sanskrit prefixes have Greek cognates). Himsa (हिंसा) means violence, while ahimsa (अहिंसा) means non-violence.

Vi- (वि-) can mean "opposite", & so we can take a word like desh (देश), meaning "native land" , and put the prefix in front of it to form videsh (विदेश), meaning "foreign land". Yoga (योग) means union, while viyog (वियोग) means separation.

I think it's really important to learn these word parts rather than just trying to memorize words without understanding their component parts. It can also help you guess the meanings of new words... aatmaa (आत्मा) means soul, so guess what mahaatmaa (महात्मा) means?

Finally, one thing that will make it easy to recognize English words in Hindi is that they use the retroflex t & d in their words, so if you see a word that contains those letters (ट or ड for t or d), and it sounds a little bit like English, chances are it's an English word.

Meanwhile, Arabic & Persian words often contain f, z, q, x (kh), or gh, and the letters are ph, j, k, kh, or g but with a dot underneath (फ ज क ख ग, vs फ़ ज़ क़ ख़ ग़). However, for फ the dot sometimes isn't written & it's pronounced as f rather than ph anyways like in the word saphed/safed (सफेद / सफ़ेद) meaning "white". But if you see a word or phrase like khudaa haafiz (ख़ुदा हाफ़िज़), with 3 dotted letters, you should immediately suspect it to be Arabic or Persian (it's Persian). But remember that gh and x/kh from Perso-Arabic loan words, meaning ग़ and ख़, are different sounds from gh (घ) and kh (ख). The former two are the "voiced velar fricative" and "voiceless velar fricative" respectively (look them up), while the latter two are aspirated g and aspirated k. Neither Arabic nor Persian utilize aspiration the way Hindi does, so you can be assured than any Hindi words with bh (भ) dh (ध) originate in Indian languages like Sanskrit or Prakrit (Urdu has to add letters to the Persian alphabet to represent aspiration & retroflex letters, as these basically don't exist in Persian or Arabic).

If you've made it so far, thanks for reading. Keep in mind I'm only learning Hindi myself so don't take anything here as authoritative or definitive. The specific examples I mentioned are not important. What's important is understanding how languages are constructed in general so you can learn & recognize words more easily.

I'm a native English & Persian speaker, so if you have questions about that feel free to ask. Otherwise, enjoy your journey into learning Hindi 😄.

Source : Omid at Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/7vwr8p/how_to_learn_hindi/