Can you share your experiences learning Hindi?
Hindi, or more specifically Modern Standard, is a language spoken in India. Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language that is mostly spoken in India. Hindi has been described as a standardized 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 Indian government, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories, as well as a secondary official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the Republic of India’s 22 scheduled languages. Hindi is the lingua franca of the Hindi belt and to a lesser extent other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginized variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside of India, several other languages are officially known as “Hindi,” but they do not belong to the Standard Hindi language mentioned here and instead are descended from other dialects, such as Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Fiji Hindi, which is the official language of Fiji, and Caribbean Hindustani, which is spoken in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname, are two examples. Apart from the script and formal vocabulary, standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with Standard Urdu, another recognized register of Hindustani as both share a common colloquial base. As a linguistic variety, Hindi is the fourth most spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English. Hindi, along with Urdu as Hindustani, is the world’s third most spoken language, behind only Mandarin and English
Today I share with you through this blog my experiences of learning Hindi
I am a native Hindi speaker. Hindi is my mother tongue. As a result, I started learning Hindi from my childhood. I don’t remember clearly when but I am sure it was already a part of my curriculum when I was in my first grade. Since it was also a language spoken at home very frequently I did not really have a lot of difficulties picking up the nuances of the language given the fact that most of the honorifics were taught ‘as is’ through the language used at home. Nobody really had to inform me in school that Hindi is an honorific language and that we talked differently with different people depending on their seniority or their age for example we would speak with the teacher for parents for elders advising them with आप however the same used to get a change to Tum when addressing your peers or people younger to you. This came in the guise of blessing from home where I can learn to address my parents and my grandparents separately than my younger brother which may not be the case with everyone who starts learning Hindi for their own specific reason. The best part is, I never had reason to learn it just was a part of my life because it is my native tongue spoken by my parents. I remember starting off with the Varnamala first where we learnt Hindi alphabets one by one starting with the vowels going over to the consonants learning words which can be made using two 2 vowels then starting with words which can join two consonants, subsequently moving over to words that used 1 vowel and 1 consonant and so on and so forth. Our teachers letters from two letter words to three-letter words going to four-letter word then making small sentences to describe yourself. I do remember we specifically have a lot of essays to write on the most common topic given to any Indian is write an essay about your mother or the most celebrated festival in India Deepavali or a cow. It required only five sentences to be written however it used to be a humongous task at that point in time. Slowly and steadily as a result of it being spoken consistently at home me and my friends who came from Hindi speaking families were already prepared with spoken Hindi. Hindi is quite a phonetic language it is spoken just the way it is written.
So while you make yourself proficient in speaking you also automatically get proficient in writing once you know identifying the particular alphabets and their usage together this also helps a learner get proficient in reading because identifications of how are consonants and vowels are joined to form words in a phonetic language is not a very difficult task to master. So overall since I came from a Hindi speaking family my job was fairly easy I heard Hindi at home extensively I spoke Hindi at home extensively I learn to read and write in school fluently a part of this the only aspect left was to master the grammar now just as any other language would Hindi also has a grammar which is not very straightforward to learn. In my opinion, grammar is the only aspect even I as a native speaker had to make an effort in. Learning eight parts of speech. The eight parts of speech are sangya (noun), sarvnam (pronoun), vesheshan (adjective), kriya (verb), kriya visheshan (adverb), sambandhbhodak (preposition), yojak (conjunction), and ghotak (interjection). Apart of these there are Anekarthi, Ekarthi shabh, different ling genders used, sandhi, nibandh, patra, प्रत्यय suffix, समुच्यबोधक postposition etcetra. A serious learner who really wishes to learn Hindi properly needs to ensure all these grammatical aspects of paramount importance are dealt with seriousness and dedication. It is very easy for a non-Hindi speaker to mix up things such as ‘the way’, रस्ता is masculine in gender, however ‘the road’ सङक is feminine gender! These are just basic things that need a lot of attention from non-Hindi speakers and may even need a tutors intervention because the self-learning will not be able to teach all such words which can be masculine and feminine despite having the same meaning. I continued this journey until after my higher School or what we would call 10th grade in India. Post this class, students in India don’t really have to learn any additional language and they stay with English, as their first language for the remaining part of their learning life. With this, I hope I was able to explain to you my experience of learning the Hindi language if you are a keen learner to learn Hindi and you really have a reasonable reason to learn I would suggest you look for a teacher as well as relevant available online resources that can aid you in your learning while doing self-study at home after classes with a tutor.
Finally,
The terms “Hindi” and “Hindu” trace back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu, referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are “Indus” (for the river) and “India” (for the land of the river). The word Hindi was initially used to refer to people who lived in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It was derived from the Classical Persian word Hind (Iranian Persian pronunciation: Hendi), which means “heart.” “Hind-related or belonging to Hind (India). ” Amir Khusrow, for example, used the word Hindav or Hindu (from Persian: “of or belonging to the Hindu/Indian people”) in his poetry.
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