Learning to Read Hindi (and a Book Review)

I'm less than a month away from my trip to India and have started learning Hindi. I learned to write in Hindi in 8 days using a book by Rupert Snell called "Read and Write Hindi Script: A Teach Yourself Guide" and it's just what I needed to learn to read Hindi! The book lays out each character step-by-step, provides transcription exercises and vocabulary along the way. I highly recommend it.

The script is called Devanagari (देवनागरी) and is used to write many of the signs in India. It's also the de facto script for Sanskrit, which I'll be studying during my yoga training.

I studied for 2-3 hours every afternoon at the library, sounding out the characters in whisper and practicing exercises in a notebook.

I love languages. I studied French and Japanese for a number of years and lived in South Korea for a year on a Fulbright grant. Devanagari/Hindi has elements from all of these languages that made it easier for me to pick up but it was still challenging. 

Now, onto the script! I'll show you similar characters together for comparison and give you some tips on memorization.

Firstly, this how I categorized some of the characters in my mind as I was learning them. This is how my brain categorized them; you might see entirely different groupings:

The 3 shape in figures: अ, आ, उ, ऊ

The E shape in figures: घ, ध, छ

The S shape in figures: ड, इ, ई, झ, ङ,  and ह

The r radical in figures: र, स, ख, ए

The m radical/wrap in: म, स, भ

The P-shaped ones: त, प, ष

The y ones: य, थ, 

The k ones: क, फ
The d ones: द, ढ

Here are some other mnemonics and tricks I recall from my studies:

• If you add more to a "j" sound you get a "ch" sound. ज when added to becomes च! It's ज with a bit extra. 
• द and ढ make similar but different sounds. द = d and ढ = retroflex d
• The sounds of ब and व are related so it makes sense they would look similar, too. A b isn't allowed to be a v, so it gets a bar through its character, ब. 
• "Sh" looks like 21. "Sh" is श!

Hindi borrows many words from English, making it a little easier to learn.

And lastly, some notes about Hindi compared to other languages like French, Korean, and Japanese:

• Devanagari is an "abugida" type script, with each character built with an inherent vowel. Japanese has vowels inherent with it's characters, too.
• か な だ; क न द
• Hindi romanization is more convoluted than Japanese (with 1 modern system) and Korean (with 2 systems). I prefer the IAST system used in India and South Asia (and the book).
• The word order of Hindi is Subject Object Verb (like Japanese and Korean) and consonant-based (like Korean). Consonant-based languages are harder to learn because it's harder to clear-cut syllables!
• Nouns in Hindi have gender and adjectives are conjugated, like French. Unlike French (but like Japanese and Korean), verbs don't change form based on the subject.
• Vowels in Hindi are added in a way similar to Hebrew.
• Pronunciation of unaspirated/aspirated/retroflex consonants reminds me of Korean and it's between voiced, unvoiced, and tensed consonants. Difficult!
•  ㅈ vs ㅉ vs ㅊ ; ज vs झ vs च 
• Nasalized vowels in Hindi reminds me of Japanese ん and nasalized vowels when speaking to your superiors (はい、そうしま(ん)~~す！). Especially हैं.

The sign to the right reads as "Rishikesh" in English. Less than 30 days now...!

I hope that was helpful in some way!

नमस्ते,
Tyler