The Easier Snell?

Since I took my University course in Hindi (Rant: their is only one available and it's only one semester long. It's also the only language course offered at the University that doesn't have intermediate classes, anyway....), I have been having trouble retaining all the information that I've learned to date from my Snell Book (I'm at Chapter 9). I'm a bit confused, I didn't have enough time to assimilate everything in each chapter. So, I opted for Rupert Snell's Beginner's Hindi. I just finished Chapter 1, and things are looking good. I also memorised all the vocabulary before moving one to the next chapter. The hardest word to learn was "vidhyarthi" (student) because the syllables are not in order. You want Vi-Dhi-Ar-Thi, but, if you read the syllables in order you get Vi-Dha-Thi-R , so yeah...confusing. But I still have more to learn. Will update when I'm done Chapter 2.

Oh yeah, just wanted to mention, I learned the Tamil and Bengali Vowels today as well. I'm on a roll! Will update on that as well (more precisely when I know the whole alphabet in both languages).

Sukriya,

Stella_1

a...aa...i....ii...

Namaste, Stella here from Parties, Sarees and Melodies. I just began my Hindi classes last week. Presently, here is what I know how to write ... yeah, it's only the alphabet but it's where everyone has to start.




I posted a picture of my writing, so if anyone finds that a letter isn't well written, just tell me whats weird about in a comment box, Thanks


Great to see that many bloggers are interested is the Hindi language as well. Thanks for having me.

My Status: (Week 2) With the alphabet I can read and speak the letters (doesn't mean I pronounce them well) and I can maybe say and read a word but I won't know what that word means.

Hallelujah!

Firefox 3.0 will now handle Devanagari on a Mac! Heavens be praised!

Now if only I could write that in Hindi....

Thanks to Babasko for the news

the Big B and typing in Devanagari

I haven't been paying much attention to Amitabh Bachchan's new blog - usually I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about - but this post gave me a moment of bonding bliss.

And how much do I love it that Amitabh Bachchan uses a Mac too? A lot. Apple needs to get on the horn pronto. I'm imagining so many great variations on the "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercials - he could just dishoom that PC guy cold.

primetime Devanagari

I'm a little bit addicted to Numb3rs (or Dumb3rs, as a physicist and Hindi-speaking friend calls it) and was more than delighted to see one of the lead characters, Amita Ramanujan (played by Ravi Nawat, whom I love from The OC *as well),

writing Devanagari on a blackboard.

The story had something to do with gang killings, chess, finding a cipher, and a comparison to the Rosetta Stone; to illustrate this last idea, she wrote the word "numbers" in English and French and transliterated it in Devanagari. Before the final close-up of the words, we can see portions of them from a distance.



As a side note, I also caught some continuity errors. This shot of another character walking in front of the blackboard with only English on it

shows up after the photos above, in which we saw that the Devanagari was already there. A moment later, Amita walks to the board and writes the French and Devanagari

even though the latter was already on the blackboard earlier in the scene. Amita is so smart that she can skip around the space-time continuum! Woot!

You can watch this episode, "Checkmate," online here.

* Speaking of now-defunct tv shows I was hooked on, Numb3rs also stars Rob Morrow and Peter MacNicol! What's not to love?

My Snell is Cooler than Yours

Written by new field correspondent Bawarchi!

I met Pratap and the Kumars around 4 years ago and my copy of Snell has seen a lot of action. So much that, like an extra-loved teddy bear, it started showing some serious signs of wear after a couple years. Whole chapters were coming loose and I started to become reluctant to use it anymore since it was hard to open without pages escaping everywhere. Well...isme kya faida hoga? So I finally I dropped it off at a copying-binding-cell phone accessory-bus ticket-pav bhaji shop in Pune the other day and came back in a couple days to find:

It's a hard cover now! Well it takes up just a bit more precious space in my backpack but, man, it's pretty bomb proof. I can hardly even open it all the way, they stitched the binding through all the pages so tightly. But it works and it's been thoroughly Indiafied which makes me so proud of my little Snell. But the best part is:

I had forgotten I had left my special bookmark inside. It's my ticket stub from A.R. Rahman and Company's show in Oakland back in June. (It was a kick ass show by the way. Sukhwinder did an extended Chhaiyya Chaiyya that had everyone on their feet...well at least everyone in our section.) It got sewed into the binding and is now conjoined with the second chapter. I just think it's all too cool. Am I strange and geeky about this? Very well, I am strange and geeky about this and I am confessing right here that I joined this blog's team just so I could tell the world how cool my Snell is.

But just to be responsible, here's an awesome sign for you all to practice your devanagari reading skills. Hint: You don't need to know a word of Hindi to know what products and services are being offered.

Till next time...I'll see if I can snap any more good practice signs here in Bombay.

Eddie

Read That Sign! round 3

The more Hindi I learn, the more I see in my photos from India (summer 2006). Here's a detail from a picture of a street in Agra. I'm proud to say I got this one right away. If you click on the photo, you'll be taken to the original, full photo, where I put the transliteration and some notes. You'll also see what was really the subject of the photo....