Hindi Lesson #1

by Ashwin Batish

Hindi is really a terrific language to learn. Most of you that make it to this page are here for a reason. I will guess that you want to either visit India or perhaps have some Indian friends that you want to impress :) Well what ever the reason I want to try make this learning experience a positive one for you.

Hindi is one of the very few written languages that can accurately do phonetic translations of any of the World languages. There are exceptions but I'm talking about the majority of cases.

What makes Hindi so complete is the set of alphabets. Whereas in English we have a, e, i, o, u. In Hindi the vowels are a, aa, i, ee, u, oo, e, ai, o, ou, ñ. Let's look at these.

Free Standing Vowels and Consonants

prounced "u" as in the word "Cut"

pronounced "a" as in the word "Path"

pronounced "i" as in the word "Pit"

pronounced "ea" as in the word "Peat"

pronounced "u" as in the word "Put"

pronounced "oo" as in the word "Boot"

pronounced "ri" as in the word "Grief"

pronounced "a" as in the word "Pay"

pronounced "a" as in the word "Pie"

pronounced "o" as in the word "so"

pronounced "ow" as in the word "owl"

pronounced "un" as in the word "skunk"

pronounced "ah" as in the word "Namaha"
Now let me cover the complete Hindi alphabet set. If you want to get good at hindi I would recommend you memorize this completely. Latter I will give you examples that will help you get familiarized with this set.

pronounced "cu" as in cut

pronounced "kha" as in khalifa (aspirated ka)

pronounced "gu" as in gutter

pronounced "gha" as in ghar (aspirated ga)

pronounced "ada" say this quickly

pronounced as "chu" in churning

pronounced as "chha" asparated cha

pronounced as "ju" in just

aspirated ja

pronounced as "dun" in dunk

pronounced as "tu" in tummy

pronounced as "tha" thandaa (aspirated Ta)

pronounced as "du" in dummy

aspirated Da

no example available yet

pronounced "ta" as in tantra

pronounced "thu" as in thud

pronounced "da" as in darbaar (soft dental)

pronounced "dha" as in dharma

pronounced "nu" as in nun

pronounced "p" as in perm

asperated pa

pronounced as "bu" in butter

pronounced as "bhu" in bhusker (aspirated ba)

pronounced as "mo" in mother

pronounced as "yu" in yummy

pronounced as "ru" in rust

pronounced as "lu" in lucky

pronounced as "va" in variety

pronounced as "shu" in shut

same as above

pronounced as "su" in subtle

pronounced as "hu" in hurt

pronounced "aksha" as in stuck sherman

pronounced "tra" as both running

pronounced as bug yarn

Other Issues:

1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9

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