What does a drop of water have in common with 4 Hindi words?
Neither one is much of anything. But add them over time, little by little and you end up with a lot.
Just think, if you master 4 words a day, then in a year you will know over 1,000 words. In 2 years, you will master over 2,000 words. How long are we talking about? You can probably do it in 5-15 minutes a day. Set a time, and do it every day!
How does it work?
Go to the:
“Master 4 Words” tool.
–or–
Try out our new Master 4 Words a day tool… It is much, much faster. But not quite ready to replace the current tool.
New –beta– Master 4 Words Tool
It will find 4 words that you have not mastered.
It will show you these words to give you a chance to learn them.
After you feel comfortable with the words, click “start”. You will be randomly asked each of the words. There are four different quizzes you will be asked. After answering each one you will be told if it was correct.
After you have completed the quizzes, your name will be added on the list below for today.
Go ahead and give it a try!
Master 4 Hindi Words Now!
New –beta– Master 4 Words Tool
The following people have mastered 4 or more words today (2013-06-19):| akhil vinay |
| Shantee |
| Sagar |
The following people have mastered 4 or more words yesterday (2013-06-18):
| Shantee |
| Sharon Wojno |
| Fabian Hartwell |
| Patchouli |
| Rama |
| Chelsea |
Started ISpeakHindi.com in June 2007. Continue to work on ISpeakHindi.com to learn Hindi myself and to help others want to learn it. Nathan Price is the sole owner of ISpeakHindi.com. 
A few days that I am using this tool, which is very useful. Nonetheless, I would suggest some improvements :
1. the other suggestions than the correct answer should be the other 3 words that are learned, or words that have already be learned, otherwise there’s no need to concentrate to give the right answer;
2. to master words, we should review them the next few days, so a quizz with all the learned words would be a great improvement.
Thank you very much for the developpement.
Lemons, I am still working on fixing your problem. Sorry for the trouble you have been having.
Xavier, those are excellent suggestions. I will work on incorporating them into the tool. (It may take a week or so before you see any changes)
Lemons, I’m still working on figuring out why the audio is not working with you. So hang on there.
Xavier, I’ve made a change so that the options are all from the words that are being mastered. This will make it more challenging. And I am still working on adding a review feature to the new beta tool.
Steve, I think you caught me while I was deploying a new version of the tool. It had some bugs, and then in panic fixing that caused other bugs, but I think I have sorted out now. Can you let me know if you still see the issue.
Hi Steve! I don’t think our comments made sense to each other at the time. But I think I have it figured out now. Your original comment about being able to get a different set of words to master was sitting in the spam queue because of the html. So, I only saw your second comment. At the time I was reading that, I had just deployed some new code for the Master 4 words a day tool, and some of that HTML was “stuffed up” as well. And I had linked those two together. Now, my comment probably makes more sense now.
Regarding being able to choose a new set of words, I have added this feature in. It causes it to take about 3 seconds to load. Before I think it was 1/2 a second. But since it is only the initial load time, I think it will still be OK. It will be interesting to see what people think of it.
Let me know if you have any other ideas.
Nathan
Ah very nice, thank you!
Hi Nathan, today I got my 4 words by clicking on the Beta new Master 4 words tool headline. It seems I remember it used to say it was not refined yet so I never clicked on it. Today I did and it worked perfectly. I did 12 words or so today and this new way is much faster. I am hoping when I go this route tomorrow it will work just as well!
Thanks.
Lemons
Still no audio for some words.Please look into it.
Lol my first day here progress around 30% And its motivate me to refresh my knowledge about devanagari alphabet as i forgot what i learn.
Thank you for the change : revise words is a good thing.
I think it could be great if the 4 answers proposed in the 4 new words would be the mixed answers of the words to learn, or past learned words. Because most of the time it’s just to easy to understand even if you don’t remember the words…
Thank you for this tool.
What are the differences between the two words that represent “school” in hindi?
Dear Kell.kevin:
Greetings from India. Here is the response. No difference.
1.विद्यालय ( vidhyaalay) : school : Basically means विद्या (education) + आलय ( House/abode/temple) – house of education
2. पाठशाला ( school) – पाठ (lesson ) +शाला ( house – ) House for lessons.
स्कूल ( school) Though in English, most of the Indians are aware of this,especially where Hindi/Devanagaree subject is taught.
Certainly first two can be used in Hindi for school,any time .
Thank you.
Suresh
An online Hindi tutor
sskay56@gmail.com
I’m not sure I have actually mastered the words in my list so far.
Would it be possible to create a review facility? i.e. basically the same master 4 words tool but with 4 words picked from the user’s list of already mastered words?
Hi Steve, I just went through the tool and even after just reviewing the four words, I am not sure I have mastered them either. I think true mastery comes with usage. I want to find some way to have people use the words that they were introduced to in the tool.
Your idea about letting people choose the words to review seems like an easy thing to do. I’ll work on adding that feature.
Any ideas on activities we can create to make people practice using the words?
Dear Nathan:
Some suggestions from Suresh: These are just my ideas, see which really fit into
your question above. One important thing, if possible, will help, all (including
me), say an individual types an English or Hindi word, he/should be able to find
out various types of sentences used in 1400 lessons published during the last 5+
years in the site.
1. Vocabulary lesson related MP 3 to be played and meaning needs to be understood.
2. Lesson containing a few daily usage words and sentences provided to hone the skills.
(Some 50 words in five lessons were presented by me in a month, I recall you had earlier
also prepared some lessons related to this point ( daily usage words).
3. Fill in the blanks. Say 10 sentences provided with at least one
blank space for a word to be inserted which will have to be selected correctly from 10
words not in order, provided. I have two lessons in mind. I am not sure, if already
tell the answer, the individual will not be able to learn. If I leave the lessons,
waiting for the response, most of the time remains unanswered ( Most of the learners have
time constraints due to job,travel,personal work, studies etc.. If you want,
I can prepare those two lessons and email to you, then you may decide on how to proceed further.
4. There are Hindi words having different meaning( already a few
lessons have been shared by me in the site .) say mat, manzil,sona,kar,do,(pronunciation though) & so on..
5. Take a word, make at least 3 sentences in different tense. (Present,past,future)For new learns, this will
suffice. Only for intermediate or advance various types of sentence with present/past/future can be further
emphasized.( I have seen a couple of lessons from Kavitajee, Susmitajee,You and others, earlier.)
6. Lesson with several sentences, from a title (subject lesson ) word ( e.g – refer to my lessons
on love, work, women etc.
7. Something similar to cross words or Sudoku, give a few alphabets/characters and person need to come up with
as many as words, then may be to make a few sentences. This idea, I am now sure, how to implement or put in
practice, if you can draft one example and put in site, it will be nice. Thence once I understand, may
take cue from there, then I can come up with some more presentations.
8. Asking 5 or 10 animal’s names, , similarly for birds, relatives names, household. sport names, place names,
transport, days, month. & so on. A few letters of that word will be there, the left out letter/alphabet will have to
be inserted by the learner/s.
Please closely review and share your thoughts on the above whichever feasible . Mr. Steve”s input is also requested.
You can add or delete any of the above suggestions & then proceed further to initiate action in a progressive manner.
One of the above points can be put into action by us, at least once a month.
Some of the above points can be in the form of lesson for which the responsibility can be entrusted to me and
other related to activity/ies can be taken care by you. In case any inputs are required , once you prepare the
draft, I can certainly contribute, to best of my ability.
Thank you.
Regards,
Suresh
Thanks so much for this 4-words-a-day tool.
It stirs me to widen my store of Hindi words a little each day.
As the Buddhist Dhammapada states: “Drop by drop, a water jar is filled.” :-)
Hi there, I have just joined the site an am having a slight issue using it, when I click on the first audio it gives me the choices in English, but from the second question on the choices are only written in Hindi and the audio does not activate?
Hi Nathan. I have two suggestions..One is that we make it 6 words to master and not four. four is too easy to pick from and guess, or at least make it a choice out of six and still only master four. the other is to set up an additional took which uses the words you have mastered in some sentences that we can also master, so that as you guess the word correctly it is followed by a full sentence.Thus reinforcing what we have just learned.I don’t know if that is possible but it would be great to see these words in action and context.
oh..i see it has already been suggested..scratch that :-)
Thanks, I like this feature. The beta tool works better imo because the distractor options are from the same set of words. I think it would be good if the distractors would switch places as well because I sometimes find myself learning that a certain sound belongs to the top right corner when I was supposed to learn that it goes with certain devanagari letters.
I think you should add pictures to the quiz where possible on hindi sounds and words only. I want to be able to link the word with its image, without English interference, and I think pictures can help with this for most anyone learning a language. Because our native languages are the most comfortable, they become a fall-back whenever we’re presented with a word that we don’t know. So instead of making it easy for the brain to supply the English word, it needs training to grab the hindi word first if you’re trying to think in hindi. For example, when I SEE an apple my brain goes straight to the word for apple, and that stems from my EXPERIENCE of an apple. The idea of pictures is that not only is the hindi word linked, the experience and sight of an apple becomes linked with the hindi word for apple. So instead of looking at the apple and thinking “apple > sapharjan” every time, I look at the apple, and the tool forces me to look at it and think and even hear “sapharjan,” without thinking “apple.” :)
I also think there should be another tool like the vocabulary builder for common full sentences and verbal forms, because verb tenses are tricky in any language!