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You are welcome to contact me to report errors or problems or to ask questions.

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13 replies on “Contact”

Regards,
I do not understand the language but would love to start learning. Discovered your website while searching for the best Hindi/Urdu teaching/learning sites but unfortunately cannot understand the script. I would like to register on you site and I believe it would be more helpful to me initially if there is a romanized version or is there a similar website that can show the romanized/english word corresponding to the hindi script while hovering the mouse over the letters/words. Thank you kindly

Hi, Alex! It’s great that you’re interested in Hindi. I’ll be glad to help you. I just began a new series of lessons that teaches Devanagari (the script used to write Hindi). You can see the first lesson here: https://hindilanguage.info/lessons/lesson-1-introduction-to-devanagari/ I currently plan to create 10 more lessons about Devanagari. Each lesson will have audio recordings and lots of examples. I’ve also written a very detailed article about Devanagari here: https://hindilanguage.info/devanagari/ This article is very technical, so it might not be as helpful to you as the lessons. I encourage everyone to learn Devanagari. It is a phonetic script, so once you learn it, you will be able to pronounce any word that you read. Try the first lesson, and let me know if it was helpful. I’ll be glad to answer any questions that you have.

Hi, John,

I’ve written a brief article about typing Devanagari here: https://hindilanguage.info/devanagari/typing/

I personally prefer to use “back-transliteration” tools, i.e. tools that convert transliterated Hindi (e.g. “aap kaise hain”) to Devanagari (e.g. “आप कैसे हैं”). I like these tools because I can type very quickly and I write transliterated Hindi anyway so I don’t have to learn a new way of typing. You can use Google Translate ( http://translate.google.com/#hi/en/ ) to type Hindi. Google has a variety of input tools for their products and services ( http://www.google.com/inputtools/ ). There is an IME for Windows too.

One possible translation is जब मैं इंटरनेट पर जाउंगा तब मैं इस विषय के बारे में खोज करूंगा – “When I go on the internet, I’ll research this topic”

Is there a reason why you are not including the transliterations on your page? I’ve been learning Hindi for about six months now and while I can read the Devanagari, the transliteration helps me get through words I am unfamiliar with/confirm I was reading it correctly. This site is particularly helpful in explaining complicated grammar, so I like using it as a resource for that, but it’s usefulness drops a lot when I am having to slog through the Devanagari on my own.

I have considered adding transliterations. However, there are some issues:

1. How should I add transliterations to the existing words on this site? It is far too tedious to do this manually. I could write a program to do this automatically. There are challenges in writing a program, however. This is typically accomplished via complex statistical techniques, such as maximum entropy models, etc. which require a large parallel corpus. This is impractical for my purposes. I could write a rule-based program, but it might not produce very good transliterations. In either case, a fair amount of work is necessary, and I’m not sure if it is justified.
2. Which transliteration scheme should I use? If I adopt a standard scheme, like ITRANS, the transliterations will be very unnatural and occasionally hard to read, which defeats the purpose. However, it would be trivial to write a program that transliterates Devanagari into ITRANS. If I adopt a natural transliteration scheme, it will probably confuse some people. Transliterations are useful when you already know the language. If I write “main”, most English speakers would interpret this like the English word “main”.
3. Devanagari is a phonetic script, so it is already a nearly ideal transcription of the sounds of the Hindi language. Transcriptions are inferior because they transcribe sounds equivocally.

I encourage you to continue slogging through Devanagari. I have several resources on this site that discuss Devanagari. However, I understand that transliterations are convenient and helpful. I use them often, since most Indians use them when typing Hindi. I think it is a good idea to learn how to read and write transliterated Hindi. I’ll consider adding transliterations.

Yeah, these are complicated issues. I would say in regards to number 1 not worrying too much about older material without transliterations, and adding them for new material. But I can say that the place I’d want it most is on your vocabulary list. My intake of the sentence would go faster.

The scheme isn’t particularly important, a lot of Hindi books/websites use their own schemes which are more or less all the same, with some accuracy failings. That’s fine, when you get to know the script for a time, you’ll know it’s the script where you can find the actual letter which needs to be pronounced.

Having said all this, the biggest lack in online Hindi learning is for intermediate learners. There is plenty for basic, there is a lot for advanced, but intermediate loses out.

What I’d love to see is a site that was built around a word frequency list (going up to the 5000 range eventually.) Individual lessons would be constructed around the words on that list in combination with common phrases/sentences (which could also be frequency tested themselves.) If you did anything with themes, the theme would dictate the frequency lists. (Perhaps an episode of a TV serial like Balika Vadhu.) My little vision isn’t really helpful, but I hope it gives you some idea what a learner like me is needing at this point in my Hindi adventure.

I am interested to know the perspectives of people like you who are learning Hindi and use my site, so thanks for sharing your experience and ideas. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more resources for Hindi learners. I’ve had ideas that are similar to what you suggested. I think that input is the single most important aspect of language learning. However, it is important for the input to be mostly comprehensible. For someone at the beginning or intermediate level, watching a television show would probably be overwhelming. However, if they had a vocabulary list, grammar list, cultural notes, and other context, then the input might be useful to them, etc. I’m interested in ideas for teaching Hindi, so thanks for your suggestions.

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