Survival Hindi. Sunita Mathur Narain

       Measurements & Sizes

       At the Post Office

       At a Pharmacy

       At the Barbershop

       At the Beauty Salon

       Using the Telephone / Cell Phones

       PART 6 Enjoying India

       Holidays

       Holiday Greetings

       Top Destinations in India

       Sightseeing

       PART 7 Key Names & Signs

       India’s States and Union Territories

       Common Signs

       Road Signs

       PART 8 Additional Vocabulary

       Food Terms

       General Word List

      WELCOME!

      We welcome you with the traditional Hindi greeting “Namaste,” which means “I bow to you,” and are very pleased to take you on a short journey through Hindi, the official language of India.

      With a little bit of instruction about how Hindi works, we will help you properly communicate with the locals in India. We’ll help you speak to others on various basic “survival” topics, such as introducing yourself, asking for directions, ordering food, paying a bill, bargaining with a local vendor, and even reporting an incident to police. Essentially, all the things you might find most useful to say are in this survival guide for getting by in Hindi.

      Our years of experience teaching Hindi to non-natives, along with vast personal interactions with foreigners in India, have armed us with an abundance of detailed cultural and linguistic information. We hope that here in Survival Hindi, it will serve to ease your journey, and give you a sense of joy in more fully understanding India and its people. Let’s begin!

      INTRODUCTION

      “The Language of the Gods”

      Hindi, spoken today by nearly 500 million people as a first language, is derived from the ancient language Sanskrit, considered one of the most intriguing, musical, and divine languages ever spoken. Sanskrit is recognized by its unique written alphabet, Devanagari, meaning “Language of the Gods.” Hindi retains the use of Devanagari today as its own alphabet. Of the numerous daughter tongues originating from Sanskrit, Hindi is the most widespread, and is one of the 22 official languages of the Republic of India.

      According to Hindu mythology, the human voice, or vak, was provided to mankind by the goddess Sarasvati, who presided over wisdom, knowledge, learning, music, and the arts. Vak is also often personified as a separate goddess commonly identified with Bharati (Bhaar-tee) or Sharda (Shaar-daa), the goddess of speech. The term vak is a cognate to the modern English word voice (Latin vox), and is derived from the verbal root vac-, meaning “to speak, tell, utter.” It also shares meaning with such words as “speech” and “talk.”

      The Alphabet

      Hindi script (Devanagari) is made up of 46 basic characters; there are 33 consonants and 12 vowels. Each character stands for one syllable.

      The Devanagari script represents the phonetics of the Hindi language. This means that Hindi is spoken the same way it is spelled. Its alphabet is scientifically arranged.

      Along with the written Hindi, each phrase in this book offers you an easy, English-based transliteration to help you pronounce it. Here’s how it works.

      Pronunciation Guide

      Long Vowels

      ā (aa) car

      ī (ee) beet

      é (a) gate

      ū (oo) fool

      Short Vowels

      i (it)

      u (put, foot)

      Nasal Sounds

      A dot over a consonant or a vowel, or an “n” in parentheses, indicates a nasal sound. Imagine you are half-saying an “n” or “m” sound after that syllable.

      hai(n) mei(n)

      ṁ as in “ṁandir ” (mun-dir)

      é̇ as in “lé̇gé” (layn-gay)

      Sometimes you’ll see a nasal ending after a long vowel:

      ā̇ as in “sārdiyā̇ ” (saard-iyaan)

      Vowels

      Consonants

      Each consonant of the Devanagari (Hindi) script contains the inherent vowel “a ” in it. Without its help no consonant is considered to be complete. There are 33 consonants in the Devanagari script.

      We can look at them organized according to the kinds of sounds they are—and where in the mouth the sounds are made.

      A Bit More About Pronunciation...

      You’ll see the pronunciation of a word or a phrase written in italics after it: Hindi (hin-dee). The words are broken into syllables, separated by a hyphen (-). Keep in mind that these hyphenated English phonetics should be pronounced in a smooth, even flow. Read them out loud several times to train your tongue and lips in making the proper sounds smoothly. Here are notes on a few special sounds: