Back to studying my Hindi with Rosetta Stone.* It's a really slow go. I've gotten better (from previous attempts) of practicing more often, but it's hard as heck. Some of those sounds I don't even know how to make!
My husband and had an interesting conversation the other night when he overheard me practicing. There was a word I was saying that had a T sound in it. Apparently there is more than one way to make a hard T sound in Hindi. Hubby was trying to show me the difference, but both examples sounded exactly the same to me. Oh well, hopefully it will come with more practice. My close friend advised me to ask her husband. He speaks fluent Hindi and is American - thus might be able to point out differences to me in a way I can relate.
Besides Rosetta Stone, I also purchased the book Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script.** I had read somewhere that this was a really good compliment to the Rosetta Stone, as the Rosetta stone uses ONLY Hindi script and no western type alphabet to use as a comparison. (They do have our alphabet for instructions and things.) If you take a look at the book image on the right, you can see some of my predicament. This book is on my study list for tonight. I was frustrated with Rosetta Stone the other day, and I think this will not only help with the problem I was encountering, but help me get over the frustration hump. One can hope anyway.*I have version 3, they are on version 4 now.
**I have no idea why this book is selling so expensive now on amazon in the used book section. When I bought it used a few months ago, it was around $10. If you are interested in purchasing it, then I'll bet you can find it cheaper elsewhere.
I considered learning Hindi, but decided against it because everyone there that you'll be working with speaks English. One thing that was invaluable to me was the Google Translator program that I downloaded. We stayed in an apartment that had many problems during the first week and the guys that came to work didn't speak English at all. With that program, I could type what I wanted to say in English, and it translated it into written Hindi. BONUS, it also could say it out loud in case they were unable to read (not uncommon). I would highly recommend that you get something like that to have with you at all times in case something happens and you need to "speak" to somebody. There's also a speaking translator that I've gotten on my phone. You can talk into it and the program will analyze the words and translate them into the target language. Haven't used it yet but my fingers are crossed!
ReplyDeleteThanks Allie! My husband is actually from India, so I'm really learning Hindi for our family over there and (hopefully) for our child. Anything I know by the time I get there will be gravy. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure we will run into a few people that don't speak Hindi as well. Gujarati is the language in that area. My husband's family's first language is another one (there are a lot of different ones over there!), but they all speak Hindi and most speak English.
I have used that translator program before in other countries and it has helped a lot. That's great advice for people who may not have a traveling Hindi speaker (or if I have to travel there alone sometime).