How to Learn Hindi: Learning a Foreign Alphabet

If you are trying to find out how to learn Hindi or are taking a Hindi course, you will also need to discover how to learn the Hindi alphabet. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, a beautiful style of writing that is easily identifiable by a bar that runs across the top of each letter. It is the alphabet that Sanskrit has been written in since the 1800's. Its use as the alphabet of sacred Sanskrit texts helped to give the script its name. Originally referred to as the "nagari", or urban, alphabet because of its use by the urban elite, it came to be called the "devanagari" alphabet, or the urban alphabet of the deity, because of its use in writing about the deity. The alphabet is now used in Marathi and Nepali as well as several other languages in addition to Hindi. And it goes without saying that if you are taking a Hindi course, you will need to know how to learn Hindi in its written form as well as orally.

But if you are reading this article, you are an expert at learning to read and write another alphabet. The best advice I can give you for learning a foreign alphabet is the same advice that you got as a small child learning to read for the first time. Do you remember back then? Well, let me remind you. Here are some easy steps for how to learn Hindi in its written form -- or learn any other foreign alphabet, for that matter.

First, write the each letter individually over and over again. Write lines and lines of them. Practice saying the sound of the letter as you write it. When you feel comfortable with a letter, move on to the next one until you have gotten through the alphabet. Then start at the beginning again. That's the first step you should take if you are trying to find out how to learn Hindi in its written form and you should practice this step a lot.

Examine the alphabet to find letters that look alike. If letters look alike you may find it easy to confuse them. Remember how hard you had to work to tell "b" apart from "d"? Find letters that you might confuse in Hindi, or whatever foreign alphabet you are learning, and practice them together. Write one and then the other, concentrating not on the similarities but on the differences. Practice the sound of the letter to yourself as you write it. Get to know the easily-confused letters individually. Then it won't be so hard to tell them apart and you will have an easier time throughout your Hindi course.

Copy an English book into Hindi. Don't translate it. You aren't there yet. Transliterate it. Write the English words in the Devanagari alphabet. It's pretty that way. And it's great practice both for writing the letters and for learning the sounds. You can do this even before you have started a Hindi course, because you don't need to know Hindi. You just need to know how to learn Hindi in its written form.

Read aloud in Hindi. If you are taking a Hindi course, you probably have a textbook. Turn to the last few chapters and find sentences or paragraphs. Just read them aloud. Maybe you will be slow at sounding the words out. That's okay. Just keep at it. And you probably won't understand what you are reading. You will get there later. Right now you just want to practice making the right sound when you see a letter. Keep it up and you will read faster and with greater ease.

So, in other words, take the steps that you took when you were first learning how to read. And you seem to have done that pretty well. You can read this post, can't you? Just keep working on it, using the tips I gave you in this post. Then even before you start your Hindi course, you will know how to learn Hindi in its written form.