Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(Unfortunately the bigger size text looks good on the website but does not look right when people get it in their email. I will have to research it some more and try something different. Back to the letters words for now…)

Today we are going to look at the consonants and vowels in Hindi.

क (ka) ख (kha) ग (ga) घ (gha) ङ (ng)

च (cha) छ (chha) ज (ja) झ (jha) ञ (na)

ट (ta) ठ (tha) ड (da) ढ (dha) ण (na)

त (ta) थ (tha) द (da) ध (dha) न (na)

प (pa) फ (pha) ब (ba) भ (bha) म (ma)

य (ya) र (ra) ल (la) व (va) श (sha)

ष (sha) स (sa) ह (ha)

क्ष (ksha) त्र (tra) ज्ञ (jna)

Vowels:

अ (a) आ (aa)

इ (i) ई (ii)

उ (u) ऊ (uu)

ए (e) ऐ (ei)

ओ (o) औ (ou)

अं (an)

Notice that there are several Hindi characters that have the same English letters associated with them. These do NOT make the same sound. There are subtle differences between these characters that are difficult to represent in the English letters. I would strongly recommend that you learn the Hindi characters to avoid confusion caused by trying to write Hindi letters using the English script.

You will be able to understand these lessons more if you have the Kid’s Primer (http://www.ispeakhindi.com/2008/06/26/260-kids-primer-intro/)

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the most often requested improvements of the site has been the size of the Hindi letters. (My wife suggests this to me daily :-) )I have tried many different ways to increase it. Those of you that know about HTML and creating web pages, know how easy it is to do this. But the techniques that I have tried to date had bad interactions with WordPress (the software I use to run the website) and the styles of the theme I am using. But today I have figured out an acceptable technique. Please let me know if it is acceptable.

Also, I have found that you can increase the font size in Firefox and Internet Explorer by pressing “+” (Hold down the alt key and press the plus symbol “+”). And you can decrease the fonts by pressing “-”. But in the future, I hope to have the Hindi characters about the size you see below.

Today we finish up writing the names of the English letters in the Hindi script.

Notice that “Z” is written above with the British pronunciation of “zed” instead of the American pronounciation of “zee”.

You will be able to understand these lessons more if you have the Kid’s Primer (http://www.ispeakhindi.com/2008/06/26/260-kids-primer-intro/)

 Standard Podcast [6:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2)

Today we continue to look at the English alphabet as it is written in Hindi.

I – आय (aay)
J – जे (je)
K – के (ke)
L – एल (el)
M – एम (em)
N – एन (en)
O – ओ (o)
P – पी (pii)

You will be able to understand these lessons more if you have the Kid’s Primer ( http://www.ispeakhindi.com/2008/06/26/260-kids-primer-intro/).

There are a large number of visitors to the site that are trying to learn Hindi, but their mother tongue is not English. A lot of these listeners are know Spanish as their first language. However, it seems there are not many resources available for Spanish speakers to learn Hindi.

We are working with one of our listeners, Sara, from Venezuela to produce a Hindi word of the day targeted at Spanish speakers. As we get better at working together, and get a process down, we will probably take the majority of the content and put it on the Spanish site as well. We are still working on what to call it, but for now it is at http://www.espanol.ispeakhindi.com/

Take a look and let us know what you think.  And thank you Sara for helping us do this!

You can see the other words of the day in Spanish on our wiki:  http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=En_Espanol

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we start to cover how the Hindi alphabet is represented in the Hindi letters. Today we cover A-H which is also covered on pg. 4-5 in the Kid’s Primer (http://www.ispeakhindi.com/2008/06/26/260-kids-primer-intro260-kids-primer-intro/.

Below is each of the English alphabet letters and how to write the letter name in Hindi. It should make more sense after you listen to the podcast.

A = ए
B = बी (this is ब + ई: ब = ba and ई = E. When the vowel ई is combined with a consonant, it is written as ी. So बी is pronounced “be”; we will use “i” as a long “E”, so you sill see ई written “ii”. so you will see बी written as “bii”)
C = सी (स = sa, but when you add ई (ii) it becomes सी (sii) which is pronounced (see))
D = डी (ड = da, but when you add ई (ii) it becomes डी (dii) which is pronounced (dee))
E = ई
F = एफ (ए is pronounced as a long “A”, and we will write it as “e”. फ is “pha” pronounced as “fa”. But the last vowel sound is dropped unless specifically written. so this becomes “A-ph”)
G = जी (ज = “ja”; जी = “jii” pronounced like “gee”)
H = एच (च = cha. and the last “default” vowel is dropped so एच becomes “e-ch”)