Learn Hindi through English: A Short Cut To Learn India

By P R Acharya

Hindi is considered the official language of India though it is spoken mostly in northern India. Though it is possible to interact with most Indians through English to some extent, people from English speaking countries while travelling / living in India, would find it difficult to communicate if they don’t know Hindi as most maids, green grocers, auto drivers etc. would not know English.
There are several self help books teaching Hindi in the market/online but most of them just present Hindi translations of English sentences and force the learner to learn them by heart and use them. But in this book, Hindi is taught beginning with word formation and pronunciation of the same with the help of English longhand and then formation of Hindi sentences with the help of perfect inflections in Hindi for every helping verb in English, making the learner capable to form their own Hindi sentences and thus eventually covers everything required to read, learn and speak Hindi fluently.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sagkalpika Press
• Release date: Feb 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9791221306552

Book preview

LEARN

HINDI

THROUGH

ENGLISH

First Edition : 2022

© P. R. ACHARYA

PREFACE

Hindi is considered the official language of India though it is spoken mostly in northern India. Though it is possible to interact with most Indians through English to some extent, people from English speaking countries while travelling / living in India, would find it difficult to communicate if they don’t know Hindi as most maids, green grocers, auto drivers etc. would not know English.

There are several self help books teaching Hindi in the market/online but most of them just present Hindi translations of English sentences and force the learner to learn them by heart and use them. But in this book, Hindi is taught beginning with word formation and pronunciation of the same with the help of English longhand and then formation of Hindi sentences with the help of perfect inflections in Hindi for every helping verb in English, making the learner capable to form their own Hindi sentences and thus eventually covers everything required to read, learn and speak Hindi fluently.

My 3 books- ‘Learn English Grammar through Kannada’, ‘Learn Kannada through English’ and ‘Check Your English’, which is on common errors had been serialized for ‘Vijayavani’ Kannada daily from 2013 to 2019 and nearly 20,000 copies of the first book and an average of 8,000 copies of others were sold in 3 years just in Karnataka state itself that too without any advertisement. This hinted me that the teaching method adopted in my books goes well with the readers and that they can be rendered into any language. In the meanwhile, I was getting calls asking for the books teaching English through Hindi and vice versa.

Being enthused by the continuous inquiries, I rendered my first book into Hindi last year, but it was not so easy because of the gender issues in Hindi! In Hindi, objects are not considered neutral, but faminine or masculine with respect to some guide lines. Only native Hindi speakers could speak without any confusion about gender (as they are used to it!) which is not a piece of cake for others. Hence, though I am a Hindi literate, there were a few mistakes but a few scholars in Hindi helped me out by paring the manuscript down to the bone with regard to gender and made this book immaculate.

It must be noted that spoken Hindi differs from place to place because of the influence of languages of neighbouring states. Hence, after learning Hindi in its original form from this book, the learner is advised to speak with the native Hindi speakers for common parlance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I am thankful to my friend, Professor. Chandrashekhar B Mali, M.B.A. and M.A. English, from Bagalkot for editing most parts of this book.

Secondly I express my gratitude to my teacher Late Prof. Dr. G Bhaskar Mayya, M.A. in Hindi, Prakrit, Sanskrit, English and Phylosophy with Ph.D (Hindi) and B.Ed. who had received National Award for his book ‘Ananabeepan Aek Saiddanthik Anusheelam’ for editing the first two chapters of this book amidst his frenetic activities with writing, translating, editing and much more in between his disturbing health.

I am beholden to Mr. Virupakshappa N Sunkad, M.A., B.Ed. in Hindi, retired principal of National P. U. College, Barkur, for his consummate and impeccable editing by dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s in this book.

PART - 1

In this chapter, basics/fundamentals of Hindi language are illustrated with examples. To learn sentence formation and to speak Hindi fluently, a perfect knowledge of the lessons in this chapter is very essential. If this part is understood completely, it can be taken for granted that about 30% of the process is over.

ALPHABET / varNamAlA

Hindi alphabet is named as ‘VarnamAlA’ and it consists of 46 letters. Of them, 12 letters represent vowel sounds and 34 represent consonants.

1. Vowels are:

Below are the  letter/s used to represent vowels and the corresponding vowel signs. Each vowel is to be pronounced as the vowel sound of the English word shown below:

Vowel Sign

ऋ   /Ru* -  Usage of this letter has been withdrawn and instead of this, consonant ‘r’ is used most. But its usage is still there in a few Hindi words and they can be understood with the help of English longhand mentioned along in the ensuing pages.

2. Consonants are:

Above shown are the combination of the consonants with the vowel sound ‘a /   अ ’ in Hindi. (Ex:   क = क् + अ   (ka = k + a).

NOTE:  The addition of vowel sound ‘a’ above is just for a comfortable and easy pronunciation of the consonants. Instead of ‘a’ if ‘i’ is added, consonant ‘k’ is to be pronounced as ‘ki’.  It is a practice to write every consonant by adding ‘a/ A to it as it would be difficult otherwise to pronounce the same.

Actual pronunciation of the consonant ‘k / क् ’ is the last sound pronounced in the word TI CK . In the same way , actual pronunciation of all the consonants without adding ‘a’ is shown below. These base consonants are shown in bold both in Hindi and English.

ACTUAL PRONUNCIATION OF CONSONANTS WITHOUT VOWELS:

1. CONSONANTS WITH VOWEL SOUNDS:

2. WORD BUILDING - CONSONANT + VOWEL + CONSONANT:

Lets us form some words now.

3. CONSONANTS WITH THE SAME CONSONANT:

Consonants and vowels form the words.  In Hindi, when a consonant is added to the same consonant, it is shown by writing half of the same ¹  consonant before the first ²  consonant OR the original consonant (without any vowel) + the same consonant with a vowel.   The pattern is shown below: Ex:

4. CONSONANTS WITH DIFFERENT CONSONANTS:

In Hindi, addition of two consonants is shown by writing the half portion of consonant 1 before the consonant 2.   The pattern of combination of 1st ¹  and 2nd ²  consonant + adjoining vowel ³  is shown below:

4a. After a consonant/vowel, if ‘r’ is followed by a vowel, it is written as below.

4b. If consonant ‘r’ is followed by another consonant, it is shown by ï sign with the consonant though ‘Ar’ is spelt before that consonant.   For Ex:

5a. If consonant ‘m / म   ’ is followed by a vowel,   it is written as usual.

5b. But if consonant ‘m /   म    is followed by another consonant, it is shown by putting a dot   ( ं   sign) above that consonant. For Ex:

6. The consonant spelt as ‘ksha’ is used directly without any short form.   For ex:

7. The vowel ‘ru’ [ ृ ]   was used to be added directly beneath a consonant.   For ex:

***

PARTS OF SPEECH

Here are the parts of English speech in Hindi:

I. NOUN / संज्ञा   (samjnA)

List of some nouns (names of things) is given at the end of the book.

II. PRONOUN / सर्वनाम   (sarvanAm)

English prnouns in Hindi are as follows: