About the Hindi Language,
Urdu and Hindustani...

OK, I have to admit up front that am a geek about the Hindi language, and language learning in general. I have a shelf full of grammars and dictionaries in various languages, I did German at School and New Testament Greek at Theological College.

I also have a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics, in which I studied all about how people learn language, a bit about the different language families, how our language influences thought and much more.

I find it completely fascinating to see how language, culture and religion intertwine and that’s one of the things which makes the travel experience so compelling for me, most especially India.

I mean, what does it say about a language that the word for tomorrow and the word for yesterday are the same? And the word for the day after tomorrow is the same as the word for the day before yesterday?


Well, it goes together with a culture and religion which understands time as relating to circles and cycles, perhaps spirals (think cycles of birth and death—even depicted on the Indian flag) rather than time as a linear progression from the past to the future… very interesting. Ok, back to the topic, before I get carried away!

India has many official languages (as every state can appoint as official whichever languages it wants--how cool is that?), but Hindi and English are the two which are official languages for the whole country and are used in government and administrative documents.

I took the image above at Sarnath, just outside Varanasi, which is where Buddha gave his first speech. The top is in Hindi, so you can see what the writing looks like.

The good news is that the Hindi language is relatively easy to learn from English and many other European languages. On a trip to Paris once, I overheard a friend order pineapple juice and was surprised to realize that 'Ananas' is pineapple in both French and Hindi. The same thing happened when I went to the Netherlands—the word for room, 'kamera', was very close to the Hindi 'kamra'. Why?

Well, Hindi is in the Indo-European language family and so is sort of a cousin to English, Germanic languages and Romance languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. How? The Hindi language is a daughter to Sanskrit in the same way that English is to German. And way way way back in time, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit were sister languages, which means sometimes you can feel some intuitive 'understanding' of the meaning of a word, without always knowing why. That may be because we have a related word which has derived from the same parent word back in time. You may sense this without being able to spell out the root of it. (I hope that made sense, I told you I’m a geek!)

Here's the only example I can think of off the top of my head. The Hindi word for knowledge or learning is Vidhya. In English, the closest words would seem to be video or perhaps view, both to do with seeing things. The concepts of seeing, understanding and knowing are all closely related (eg. the word 'seer' means to see beyond what others do), so we may intuitively accept that the word for knowledge should be Vidhya, without being able to explain why it feels right. Now, why did I say Hindustani speakers? Aren't Hindi and Urdu two different languages? Well, not really. What happened was that hundreds of years ago, when the Persians (Moghuls) ruled North India, they learned the local language, which was Hindi. However, they wrote it in the Persian script, which they loved and which was familiar to them. Over time, this is what became known as Urdu.

Hindi and Urdu do have some distinct vocabulary, mainly cultural and religious terms from each side. Hindi has some Sanskrit (Hindu) component and Urdu has some Persian and Arabic (Islamic) components, but this is mostly apparent in the high-end, formal language. Probably about 80-90% of words in daily use would be in common between the two.

It's a misunderstanding that only Muslims write in Persian (Urdu) script and only Hindus write in Devanagari (Hindi) script. This isn't true, although religious zealots on both sides have reason to enforce the differences and often do, trying to enforce a largely fictitious difference in both the script and the spoken language. Some even claim they don’t know the other language at all, but in truth it would only be that they couldn’t read the script.

Incidentally, 'Mahatma' is not Gandhi's name (which was Mohandas), rather it's a title bestowed on him by others, meaning 'Great Soul'. No doubt about it.

He suggested that every Indian should know both scripts (and more if they had the time to learn) so that all would have at least one common language between them and that it would help to promote unity and understanding throughout the country. I still think it's a great idea—I'm not even Indian and I'm learning at my local Indian Cultural Centre in London, along with many people who've grown up in the UK but would like to learn the language of their parents' home country.

There's so much more to say about the Hindi Language, obviously it can't fit all on the one page. If you are just going to India for a week or two and want a few quick phrases, we'll get to that soon, but if you've decided to take the plunge and learn what is my favorite living language, then here are a few things to get you going.

Hind Language Step 1: Get some basic Hindi Conversation with Mr. Pimsleur.
Pimsleur Hindi is designed to teach you to understand and to speak the essential elements of the language in a relatively short time. During each half-hour lesson, you will actually converse with two people. The method they use for presenting dialogue relieves you of most common learning problems, including boredom!

The only thing that's overlooked in my opinion, is that there isn't much concession to cultural norms. For instance, one of the conversations involves an American man asking an Indian woman to go for a drink with him in a restaurant. This is soooooo not culturally appropriate, but having said that, I completely recommend this method of learning.

Acutally, I first tried this method out on a completely random language, so I knew whether it would work or not. I picked Cantonese, as I knew not one word and had no hope of guessing anything...I couldn't believe it myself but I was speaking passable Cantonese words and phrases within the first half hour, and actually conversing with someone (on the tape). I couldn't believe the sounds coming out of my mouth, I felt like I was back in a Hong Kong night market! It was sooo cool, I have recommended this method to heaps of people for one main reason—it works a treat. I'd suggest starting here as step one, before you even learn to read and write the alphabet, because you'll feel so fantastic that you can speak in the Hindi language, that you'll take the next reading and writing steps…

I've put together the three different levels, so choose the one that suits your commitment level:

Pimsleur Hindi options...

Hindi Language Step 2: Learn the Alphabet (coming soon)...

Hindi Language Step 3: Learn the Numbers

Hindi Language Step 4: Help a Native Hindi Language Speaker read their own language:

There's so much to say about education in India. It has, in my opinion, the best and the worst examples of education and the lack of it. India has some of the brightest, most educated people on the planet (as they have historically), but there are hundreds of thousands of people who cannot read and write their own language. But now there's a way to help…

I've found an exciting project which combines three, no four(!), of my passions: India, the Hindi Language, Bollywood and learning. Can it get any better than this?

Learn (and help others learn) the Hindi Language at Planet Read
This is a fantastic project which is helping people to read the Hindi language (and others) by putting the subtitles on the TV screen, karaoke style, so people can start to read and sing along as the words are highlighted. This is a powerful education tool and can help people who know how to speak the language but not how to read and write. Awesome stuff! If it grabs your heart like it grabbed mine, you can even donate to their programme.

Get this: $1 USD gives weekly reading practice for 10,000 people for one full year. I told you India’s a place for bargain shopping, it’s hard to beat that value!!

Literacy for a billion with Bollywood songs PlanetRead uses the power and reach of entertainment to fill the need for education. In India, Bollywood songs appear on national television - Doordarshan with PlanetRead's Same Language Subtitling (SLS). This provides automatic reading practice to 300 million early literates. With SLS the viewers subconsciously associate the songs with the text, so the familiar lyrics on screen reinforce their literacy skills.