| dc.description | You are now beginning what should be a very rewarding study of the Hindi
language. Unlike the other major Asian languages, Hindi can be learned with little more
effort than required for many European languages. The major reason for this ease of
learning is the writing system, which is ideally suited for Hindi and almost perfectly
represents the sound system of the language. You can learn to write in Hindi in just a
few weeks, although complete mastery of the Devanagari script wil take somewhat
longer.
Knowledge of Hindi is the key to the Indian subcontinent and its immense variety
of religions, cultures, and landscapes; Hindi is spoken by almost as many people in
India as all other languages combined, and the Encyclopedia Britannica has listed Hindi
as the most spoken language in the world (after Chinese) with 685 million speakers of
which 413 million speak Hindi as their native language. For activities from tourism to
scholarly research, you will find Hindi in the spoken form, which is very similar to
Urdu, indispensable. Written Hindi is more limited in scope, but learning how to read
and write the Devanagari script is the best way to start learning other Hindi language
skills, and Devanagari is also used for other languages, including Sanskrit, Nepali, and
Marathi. This book has the limited goal of teaching the writing system and beginning
conversation in preparation for a formal course of instruction. Throughout this book a
Roman transcription is used along with Devanagari; after mastering the material in this
book, you should be able to work with standard Hindi textbooks.
As you go through this book, you should do the exercises and then compare your
answers with the keys provided. Two tapes accompany this book and will be very
useful to you in relating the sounds of the language to the Devanagari characters. The
characters are taught in the traditional order with which you need to be familiar when
you use a Hindi-English dictionary later.
Enjoy this trip to proficiency in Hindi, which will take you to the fascinating culture
of South Asia. | en_US |
