A Google India ad

Here's a sweet ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE

Chennai Express and blood thirsty Bollywood dads

Chennai Express was a huge hit. I couldn't see it in the theatre but it didn't take very long for somebody to upload it on Youtube. It was a lot of fun, in a somewhat corny way. Have fun spotting the movie references.

Basically this is Dilwale Dulhanie Le Jayenge with bigger goons and an extra murder attempt added. (No, this is not a detective story, the murder attempt is  forgotten just as soon as it happens and never gets resolved in any noticeable manner. Just one of those things I guess...)  The plot starts with SRK's character Rahul lying to his  grandma so he can go on a holiday on Goa with his pals. It seemed rather juvenile for a 40 year old character played by a 48 year old actor... he wasn't old enough to go on a holiday if he wanted to? Then he meets a girl on a train while Tujhe dekho to yeh jaana sanam plays in the background. Then someone dies and SRK and the girl are forced to travel together, singing and bickering.  Then her dad wants her to marry somebody else and SRK needs to prove his worth by getting beaten up. There's just no way that these Bollywood dads will allow a guy  to get the girl unless the guy bleeds. Oh well. I suppose sons-in-law with a head injury are just the thing in India. The part where SRK is the only witness to a murder attempt so they take him home with them doesn't make much sense to me. Why didn't they just throw him out the same way? And if someone saw you committing a serious crime on the train, do you really want them to know where you live?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd7VzfqprXQ

Memrise

Memrise is working pretty well for me.  I'm learning  vocabulary from the course Teach yourself Hindi, and the format that forces you to type the words helps me with the reading too. Most of the symbols are starting to make sense although I'm still a very slow reader and it feels like I'm deciphering a code. An annoying thing about the course is that they have words that contain characters that are impossible to type with the keyboard provided.

I haven't found any Memrise Hindi courses with phrases and grammar or audio but I like the possibility of making mems. They are pictures or sentences or both that help you to connect the word to something and it helps memorize it.

Think I actually understood this joke...

kitne baje hai

2 student raat me padh rhe the.. 
1st:"kitne baje hai yaar.. ??
2nd ne patthar uthakar samne
girls hostel me mara..
1 ladki nikli boli:"kamino ab to
so jao raat ke 2 baj rahe hai...

I've heard a similar one in my mother tongue

Some humor  is universal it seems 

Shuddh Desi Romance

Tere Mere Beech Mein - - Shuddh Desi Romance 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3jX0-JFtS4

Full Song with Lyrics - Gulabi - Shuddh Desi Romance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXsRYllXNJU

Google now recognizes Hindi handwriting

Once enabled, this feature will allow a user to scribble words in Hindi using his fingers or a stylus on the touchscreen of a phone or tablet. Google will recognize the word and perform a search query. The same feature can also be used to scribble words in Hindi and then translate them into English through the Google Translate app available for Android smartphones and tablets.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-21/computing/41432052_1_hindi-google-translate-indian-languages

Haven't tried it but pretty cool if it works.

Shuddh Desi Romance - Title Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=varo0G9I-gk

Shuddh Desi Romance - Title Song - 

Fun video with Sushant Singh Rajput and Parineeti Chopra 

 http://www.indicine.com/movies/lyrics/shuddh-desi-romance-lyrics-title-song/

 Haven't seen a translation yet  but  think 

 खिड़की -window  and galiyon, streets come up somehow.

BBC Hindi

I have recently found the BBC Hindi site. http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/

I like to watch the videos as I can sometimes tell what they're talking about (I was so happy today when  found an interview in which Sonakshi Sinha spoke something about her upcoming film Once Upon a time in Mumbai Doobara and I easily understood her saying that masala type films were her first love).   Doing spelling exercises in Memrise has helped me with the reading so I can better figure out the texts too. I can't tackle anything longer than a headline  yet but I'm recognizing words easier now. I still haven't quite grasped all the different versions of the d's and t's and dh's and th's and am easily confused by compound characters but I'm getting better at guessing. Google Translate helps when all else fails. 

Here's how to write Facebook:   फ़ेसबुक

Obama ओबामा

Usain Bolt यूसैन बोल्ट

Pimsleur again

Remember I wrote about the Pimsleur Basic Hindi course the other day. I had also bought the Pimsleur Conversational Hindi course and I feel a bit ripped off now. The site that I ordered them from didn't say that the Conversational Hindi is just the same as the Basic Hindi plus 6 more lessons. I thought it would be more like the beginner's course and the intermediate course but it's just recycling the same material in different sized packages. Apparently Pimsleur's Comprehensive Hindi is the same as the Conversational Hindi + 14 more lessons.  The good news is that they did get around to teaching the missing numbers and the feminine forms of the future tense words in the following lessons. The bad news is that the range of the conversations is really very limited. The same stuff repeats over and over again and there is very little new vocabulary.  But at least now I  know how to have endless arguments about the time when  I  ask someone for a dinner date (but I still don't know how to ask what his name is) and I have learned how to beg for money. (Mere paas kuch dollar nahin hai. Mujhe bees rupee chahiye. Kya aap mujhko kuch paisa dee sakte hain? Aapke paas bahut paisa hai. Mujhko kuch rupee dijiye.  Ji nahin, yeh kafi nahin hai, aapne mujhko pacches rupee denee hain ...)  

Just you wait,  I can make myself a real nuisance in Hindi soon! 

I think this course has been misleadingly labeled. The Conversational Hindi course is not conversational, it's still very much beginner's Basic Hindi even with the extra six lessons. I am not going to buy the  Comprehensive course because I would get only 14 new lessons for the price of 30 and if it proceeds at the same rate it's not going to be comprehensive, it's still going to be only basic beginners stuff. Also I think some of the grammar explanations are a bit iffy.

Useful links

http://hindiurduflagship.org/assets/pdf/Skeleton_Grammar.pdf
Brief grammar.

http://www.memrise.com/course/37909/1000-hindi-words-for-beginners/
Memrise Hindi words.

http://www.internetpolyglot.com/
Word lists, flash cards, matching games

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/mideast/hindi/

http://www.giitaayan.com/
http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/lyricslist.asp
http://www.bollymeaning.com/p/movies.html
http://smriti.com/hindi-songs/
http://www.bollywoodlyrics.com/movie_name

 http://pictureverything.com/ultimate-guide-to-learning-hindi-free-online/
  Link list

 http://www.uni.edu/becker/hindi.html
 Useful resources although the layout is a bit stressful.

Pimsleur Basic Hindi

I have now finished listening to this course. It contains ten lessons that each last half an hour.

The advantages: it is a good drill with lots of repetition and after faithfully doing all the exercises you can't help learning the material. You have talked to yourself quite a bit which should help becoming fluent in the language or at least getting an understandable pronunciation. 

The disadvantages: the range of the covered material  is very limited and the course seems strangely incomplete. The lessons cover only about a hundred words or so,  and that's including words like Gandhi.   

After completing the course you are going to be able to ask someone for a lunch date and argue with him or her endlessly about whether you should eat at the hotel or drink tea at the restaurant and whether you want to go to your place or his or her home. However, you will not be able to ask your date their name, or say please, and thank you.  The course won't help you say you need a doctor or the police.  You will be able to say you're American or Indian but if you're from anywhere else you're out of luck.  You won't be able to buy a train ticket to Delhi in Hindi or ask what anything costs.  You will be taught some future tense verb forms but only in the masculine. You will learn how to ask what time is it  but if the answer is six, seven, ten, eleven or twelve o'clock you won't be able to understand the answer because those numbers were never covered and they never got around to times that deviate from the full hour either.  All in all it  seems just like a snippet of a longer course and perhaps it is. But since it's for sale as a package¸i would like it to feel more planned and complete as a whole. 

Anyway, namaste, kya aap mere saath mere ghar par kuch khaanaa chahte hain? Do baje theek hai?  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L899QuA1E24