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How To Learn Hindi: Some Facts To Begin With
By:Fran Madden

It is wonderful that you are trying to discover how to learn Hindi. Hindi is spoken as a first language by about a third of the population of India, and is the second language of millions more people. Since it is one of the official languages of India, it is used in the official communications of that country. Consequently, it is taught in schools all over the country, even in portions of India in which Hindi is not spoken as a native language. So working out how to learn Hindi can put you in touch with millions of people in India alone.

In addition to the millions of people in India who speak Hindi, there are millions who speak Urdu, the national language of India. As spoken colloquially, Hindi and Urdu are indistinguishable. They have the same grammar and much of the same vocabulary. Poetic or very educated vocabulary may differ between the languages and the alphabets differ between the languages. These differences are due to different influences on the languages. Hindi retains its chief influence from Sanskrit, its progenitor. Its written form, the Devanagari script, is the alphabet of Sanskrit and its poetic language is borrowed from Sanskrit. On the other hand, Urdu reflects the influence of the Perso-Arabic culture. It is written in the Perso-Arabic script and its poetic language is adopted from Persian and Arabic.

There is not much common vocabulary between Hindi and English. Consequently, a native English speaker would not be able to recognize many Hindi words on account of their familiarity with English. On the other hand, the Hindi language is relatively regular in terms of grammar and spelling. So hard work will bring rewards to any diligent student of Hindi. Any English speaker should be encouraged to study Hindi.

Like many European languages (but unlike English), Hindi nouns have gender. Nouns referring to boys and men and male animals are masculine. Nouns referring to girls and women and female animals are feminine. Nouns referring to inanimate objects are masculine or feminine depending solely on convention. In Hindi, most adjectives agree with the gender of the noun they modify. Moreover, verbs agree with the gender of their subject.

In Hindi, the verb goes last in a sentence. So a common sentence structure contains a subject, an object and a verb, in that order. In English, we have prepositions that precede a noun; Hindi uses postpositions that follow a noun. Adjectives precede nouns. There are no definite or indefinite articles.

Hindi verbs show both tense and aspect. The tenses show whether an action is past, present and future. The aspects show whether an action is habitual, progressive or perfective.

Hindi sentences are punctuated with commas, question marks and exclamation points as in English. However, the use of the period is not very common. Instead, Hindi employs a vertical line, or a "full stop," to indicate the end of the sentence.

If spoken Hindi sounds difficult and written Hindi looks incomprehensible to you now, you should know that Hindi, like any other language, can be learned, spoken and understood. Find a good online Hindi course, set up a systematic study schedule, and apply yourself diligently, and you will be speaking and reading a language spoken by millions of people in India and elsewhere. Do it. The goal of speaking Hindi is definitely worth the work involved in how to learn Hindi.

Fran Madden wants to help you learn Hindi. Visit her site at www.HowToLearnHindiBlog.com to get your free copy of her report, "Before You Start Your Hindi Course: Some Things to Know About How To Learn Hindi." The report will help you as you take your Hindi course -- and it's free!






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