11 Great Free Online Courses for Learning Hindi
Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of Northern India
Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with the English language. It is an official language in 9 States and 3 Union Territories and an additional official language in 3 other States. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. As a linguistic variety, Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English. 322 million speakers speak Hindi as their first language with another 270 million speak it as their second.
Like most people, you decided to learn a new language, Hindi, but are at crossroads to decide on a good Hindi course for yourself. Like most learners you want to have a course that is worth pursuing wrt your time and money, offers comprehensive learning and can help you learn the language at the earliest possible. However, with so many different online and offline course providers, you find yourself confused on which one to choose!
To help you learn Hindi, I’ve compiled a list of 11 online courses with a lot to offer.
PIMSLEUR
Pimsleur offers an audio course with dynamic lessons to help you hone and develop your speaking skills, with verbal prompts. Each lesson builds upon the previous one, letting your learning be cohesive and structured.
However, when it comes to written language, there isn’t much it offers. There’s not much difference between the standard and premium subscription, except offering you more reading practice in the premium one.
Price: $14.95-$19.95 per month
ITALKI
Italki is more of a language exchange platform where you may be able to find a professional language teacher with a degree in education, or a teaching certificate or someone who is a native speaker as your conversation partner at a price besides free conversation partners! You could search for an instructor, on parameters such as gender, age, nationality, to suit your needs. Users wanting structured learning may want a professional teacher while a community tutor may be good for conversational practice! An additional benefit is to take trial lessons with a teacher to judge mutual compatibility.
Plan scheduling sessions a day in advance to get the best out of italki.
Price: Starts at $4/hr and can be as high as $50/hr but most tutors charge less than $10/hr.
HINDIPOD101
HindiPod101 offers supportive lessons via quality audio and video lessons for beginner to intermediate levels. HindiPod101 acts as an active language support system for learners enrolled in another course or self learning from textbooks. The Podcast instruction format is very helpful for listening and deciphering dialogue with elements of culture and vocabulary that add fun to learning. HindiPod101 offers flexible learning through monthly subscription mode. Price: Subscriptions range from $8/month to $47/month
MEMRISE
Memrise is a flashcard app that offers free learning to beginners for building basic vocabulary words, and phrases with a variety of courses. Learners can also take specific lessons in categories like food, grammar, history, and more. It is actually more helpful for people who know the basics but need practice. The user-created nature of the courses means there’s variation in quality and content topics. Price: Generally Free. But they also have premium plans at $9/month.
LEARNING-HINDI
LearningHindi is a blog that offers you 100 easy to access lessons for free from beginner to intermediate levels. The offered audio files work with you to get your pronunciation correct, and there are lessons for everything from learning vowels and consonants to practising numbers! LearningHindi provides learning through real life application of Hindi with over 60 children’s books that feature both Hindi and English translations, via a Google Drive folder.
DUOLINGO
Duolingo is an easy, accessible free app that offers great audio content and quality, teaching through exercises for beginners with plenty of practice once you master the basics. To, however, learn the Devanagari alphabets, learners will need to use another resource. Duolingo isn’t the best resource, with several limitations in teaching and reinforcing concepts with a limited number of lessons, but if you know the basic rules of the language well and just want to practice, this could be your practical option! Price: Free
UDEMY
Udemy offers targeted lessons for specific skills lasting anywhere from half an hour to six hours, for beginner through advanced level. From beginner introductions in Hindi to writing tips to conversational phrases, you can learn the language thoroughly with a handful of different classes/courses (costing different). Fortunately, each course has a money-back guarantee! Once you have purchased a course, you have lifetime access to the content (and any updates).Price: Starts at $11.99
MANGO LANGUAGES
A single Mango subscription opens up access to multiple libraries, with 70+ languages to learn without having to pay again, for intermediate level learners! The less popular dialects however offer only fewer lessons. While the lesson descriptions give a fair idea of what will be taught, a beginner must work hard to learn as well. Grammar and cultural notes help a learner immerse in the language. Mango also helps you track your language progress keeping a learner engaged via the user interface and activities. Price: $19.99 per month/$199.99 per year
GLOSSIKA
Glossika is an online resource for more experienced learners, that offers a good mux of audio recordings, test exercises, and drills via multiple response modes. Glossika’s teaching methodology focuses on listening to sentences and repeating what you hear, to improve your speaking skills and listening comprehension. With the way its designed to offer the same content for every language, (ignoring however unique cultural elements of each language) it works best for those who study multiple languages at a time. Price: $30 per month, $299.88 for a year-long subscription
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
The University of Pennsylvania, a free supplement resource, offers text comprehension activities, video exercises, translations, and more in two volumes, for advanced beginners and intermediates, via 20 lessons of listening comprehension and translation activities. Volume 1 starts in a storytelling format, where you watch a video and read the text, simultaneously, highlighting challenging words to seek translation. It offers you the flexibility to turn off the transcription, slow down the reading, or play audio-only mode. Volume 2 focuses more on increasing vocabulary and educating a learner with social issues and cultural information.
FSI
FSI offers a Hindi course in e-book format(hence no audio) with in-depth activities and tiered exercises for intermediate learners. The book format is a bit outdated(clearly a scanned document), crooked but still legible. It teaches you
short phrases and useful expressions with a lot of discussion on grammar, specifically verb usage, that helps build on lower-level skills. Price: Free
Finally.
There are plenty of Hindi courses to choose from, but not all are equally competent and good. therefore I recommend you search and stick to one that suits your schedule, requirements and overall need. Specifically for Hindi, it would be nice if you could skip RosettaStone, Mondly, Michel Thomas, and the Transparent method. They don’t provide you with the best learning for Hindi.