Find Hindi podcasts and videos. Do a Google search for podcasts and videos. Some of the search results will be aimed at teaching Hindi as a second language. On the other hand, you will also find results that are aimed at people who already have a level of proficiency in Hindi and just want to enjoy the music video or a radio talk show in Hindi. Look for all of these resources. If you spend time and attention with them, you will learn Hindi vocabulary, usage and grammar. Just as importantly, however, you will learn a lot about Indian culture.

Become a Bollywood movie fan. “Bollywood” refers to the Hindi-language film industry centered in Mumbai. It is a very active segment of the Indian film industry and there are a lot of Bollywood movies produced yearly. In the United States, you can get them on DVD or computer download from Netflix and Blockbuster, as well as finding them elsewhere online. Watching Bollywood movies not only lets you know how to learn Hindi, it also instructs you on current Indian fads and fashions. Since Bollywood movies are usually musicals, studying the films gives you an entree into studying Hindi language songs. It can be challenging to understand song lyrics even when you speak the language a little, but learning a song can give you a memory hook for the contents. Just think of how many people still sing the “ABC Song” to themselves when they alphabetize their files.

Set up a conversation group on Skype. The best way to learn a language is to speak it. And that requires you to form a community of Hindi-language speakers. If you are taking a class in a university or a language school, you already have a Hindi-speaking community. But if you are studying Hindi by yourself, you need to reach out to find them. Use Twitter and Facebook to find interested Hindi students, then set up a weekly conversation hour on Skype or a free conference call service, so that you can all chat, make friends all over the world, and practice your Hindi.

Take an online Hindi course. Once you have decided to learn Hindi, what steps can you take to accomplish your goal? You may be lucky enough to be enrolled in a university with a Hindi program. Or perhaps you live in a town that has a language school that offers a Hindi course. Maybe you have found a Hindi tutor for private lessons. Or maybe not. Finding a Hindi course is not that easy in most parts of the United States. A great alternative to a live class is a good online Hindi course. With an online Hindi course, you will get systematic instruction in vocabulary, grammar and usage. With the best, you will also get interactive quizzes and games and even a forum for online communication with teachers and other students. Online courses are also significantly less expensive than other language-learning alternatives. So an online Hindi course may be a great advantage to you in your efforts how to learn Hindi.

In the age of the internet, we have options for language learning that didn’t exist in the past. Take advantage of them now. Go online and you will find a lot of helpful resources for how to learn Hindi.

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First of all, start with a positive attitude. Remember that old quote by Henry Ford? “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” Have you ever heard anyone say that they just can’t learn languages? When they think that, they make it true. I want you to think that you can learn Hindi. Then work hard at it. Don’t let any perceived obstacles stop you. You will succeed at your goal.

Break the project up into small tasks. Don’t think about learning the whole alphabet in a single day. Work on the first five letters. Do you have a vocabulary list of fifteen words? Work on the first half of it. Go back for the rest later. Understand that learning a language is a long process with successes coming every step of the way. Value each of those steps and, one by one, they will take you to your goal of speaking fluently and easily.

Entertain yourself and impress your friends by using as much Hindi as you have learned. Greet your friends in Hindi. Write or say a few simple sentences, just for practice. Then change the verb or the noun to prove to yourself that you can write or say even more than you thought.

Use good time management skills. It’s better to work a little on a new skill every day rather than it is to work for lengthy periods of time less often. In fact, try to schedule two study periods a day. In the first session, you learn new skills. In the second session, you reinforce them. Repeating material is a very important habit for how to learn Hindi. That’s why your teachers used to give you homework. You don’t want to progress too fast. You want to make sure that you have learned each lesson thoroughly. A short second daily study period will be helpful to you for that.

Reward yourself each time you reach a milestone. When you have finished a lesson, rent a Bollywood movie. When you have finished five lessons, treat yourself to a delicious meal in an Indian restaurant. When you have finished the course, book your trip to India!

At the beginning of your Hindi course, it may seem that you will never finish. You may think that you won’t ever be able to decipher the alphabet or understand the dialog that you hear in your audio files. But you can do it. Take the steps above and you will find that you know quite well how to learn Hindi.

Article Source: How To Learn Hindi: Some Tips For Your Success

1.    Word Order.  In Hindi, there is some freedom in word order.  Word placement can change for reasons of style or emphasis, but not as much as in other languages that are more heavily inflected.  In Hindi, the verb usually comes at the end of the sentence.  In a simple sentence, the word order of a sentence is usually
* subject
* object
* verb.
Hindi uses postpositions instead of prepositions.  That is, the word follows the noun instead of preceding it.  Adjectives precede nouns, as in English and German, but unlike Romance languages like French.

2.    Case.  Hindi is a weakly inflected language.  That means that, although the endings of a noun will tell you its role in a sentence, the categories are broad.  Hindi has three cases:
* the direct case is used for the subject of a sentence and for other nouns that are not followed by a postposition
* the oblique case is used for nouns that are followed by a preposition
* some nouns have a separate vocative case, the form of the noun used when the noun is used as a form of address.
Singular and plural nouns are not always distinguishable.
3.   Gender.  Hindi nouns recognize two genders, masculine and feminine.  The masculine gender is used for male people and animals and for other objects deemed by usage “masculine.”  Similarly, the feminine gender is used for female people and animals and for other objects deemed by usage “feminine.”
4.    Pronouns.  In Hindi, nouns do not reflect gender and the third person singular, comparable to the English “he,” “she” or “it,” actually corresponds to the English “this” or “that.”  In addition to the direct and oblique case that Hindi nouns have, pronouns also have
* the accusative case, which is used for direct objects and
* the genitive case, which shows ownership.
There is no vocative case for pronouns.
The second person, corresponding to the English “you,” conveys three levels of honorifics.
* the formal form, which can be either singular or plural and is used in formal settings or when speaking to someone older or otherwise senior to the speaker
* the informal form, which can be either singular or plural and is used in informal settings or when speaking to someone younger or otherwise junior to the speaker
* the extremely informal, which exists only in the singular.  It is used only between very close friends or in sacred poetic language and can be perceived as an insult if used inappropriately.
5.     Verb Forms.  Hindi verbs agree with their subjects in both number and gender.  If the subject of a verb is a pronoun, the verb agrees with the noun that the pronoun represents.  Hindi verbs indicate both tense, that is, whether an action is past, present or future, and aspect, that is, whether an aspect is habitual, progressive or perfective.
6.   Interrogatives.  As in other languages, questions can be formed in Hindi by using who, what, when, where and why.  Additionally, the Hindi word kyaa, when placed at the beginning of a sentence, indicates an interrogative.  Intonation can also indicate when a sentence is a question.
I hope that this Hindi course in a nutshell helps you discover how to learn Hindi.
Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/A-Hindi-Course-In-A-Nutshell/954029

Kids pick up languages very easy. The younger the better. There are a number of things you can do to encourage this learning. It doesn’t need to be formal. In fact the less formal and fun the learning process is, the better results you will have in teaching your kids to speak a foreign language.

1. Get Books & Read

Alternate your bed time story with a book about a foreign language. You can use picture books or my first words to help them associate pictures with words. Other nights use English books so that they can learn both.

2. Background listening

You should use CDs or TV stations that speak the foreign language you want your child to learn. To prove the point – recall any situation when your child repeats something you said to another person within earshot! You might not think they are listening but they are. The more kids are around the language the quicker they will learn.

3. Interactive games & software

Formal learning bores adult never mind children. You can use software and online website that provide a more fun way for them to learn the language. Software helps the pronunciation of certain words compared to a book. Another benefit is that you can usually set the level that suits your child.

4. Fun

You should try and encourage your child to learn by speaking the language yourself. Use opportunities such as when you leave the house or request them to get something for you, to use key phrases of the foreign language of your choice.

Learning another language can open a number of doors for your children in later life. The learning should be a natural process. Don’t put too much pressure on then if they are not interested in the beginning.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?4-Ways-to-Help-Children-Learn-a-Language&id=3665003

One step up from books is learning Hindi by listening to language tapes. Again, it might be possible to borrow these from your local library. Audiotapes (or CD’s) have many advantages over books. First of all, they’re portable. If you spend a lot of time in your car, you can use language tapes to learn Hindi while you’re on the road. You can rewind to listen again to anything that parts that give you trouble. You will also get to hear and imitate an actual person speaking Hindi, as opposed to trying to guess at pronunciation by reading words on a page.

An alternative to learning Hindi from books or language tapes is to take a multimedia approach. There are many computer programs and websites with resources that will help you to learn Hindi. One of the advantages to this method is that you will probably have video snippets to watch in addition to audio speech models. This way you can compare your speech to the examples and make sure that your pronunciation is accurate. A software program will also check your progress and may be able to recommend that you review certain lessons if you are having trouble with a particular concept. While a software program is not quite as portable as language tapes, if you have access to a laptop computer you can maximize the amount of time you spend studying Hindi.

If you truly want to learn Hindi, the very best way is through immersing yourself in the culture and language for several weeks. If that isn’t a possibility for you, then choose your study method based on how you learn best. Books can be useful if you also have access to movies or a native speaker so that you can hear Hindi spoken aloud. Audiotapes can be an effective learning method, particularly if you spend a great deal of time on the road.

Websites and computer programs are a great way of combining audio with video to maximize your progress. If you’re looking for even more great resources on learning Hindi, check out this site for some other ideas.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Simon_Cad
http://EzineArticles.com/?Different-Ways-to-Learn-Hindi&id=3527604

People Taking Bath During Kumbh Snaan

MILLIONS of people are making their way to the banks of Ganga in Haridwar for the Kumbh mela. They will take dips in the river on auspicious dates over three months beginning January 14, 2010 convinced that it will grant them salvation, ‘moksha’.

Raman Nanda feels light as he comes to terms with the cycle of life and death

My thoughts go back to the Mahakumbh 2001 in Allahabad where I finally ventured for a dip in the dirty, freezing cold waters for a transformative experience.

I asked a pujari about the holy bath and how one should approach it. “Stand in the river and do ‘aachman’ – collect some water with joined palms and throw it back over your head as an offering to your ancestors. When you dip your head under the water, think about your loved ones. Do take a few dips in the name of relatives who have not been able to make it to the Kumbh!”

Seemed simple. So, on the auspicious bathing day on a freezing cold January morning, I joined the stream of innumerable human beings headed for the river. I felt I was being carried to the river.

Read the full story

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, inaugurated the 8th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in New Delhi. Following is the text of the Prime Minister’s inaugural address:

“It gives me very great pleasure to join you at the inauguration of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2010. Every year on this day we celebrate and honour the contribution of the overseas Indians is making for the development of their spiritual and ancestral home. We are immensely proud of the achievements of our diaspora. Your achievements have made a great contribution in changing the image of India to the world at large. Let me therefore join Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs and the Chief Minister of Delhi to welcome you to New Delhi and wish you a very happy New Year.

This year we have the great honour and privilege of having the distinguished Lord Khalid Hameed as our Chief Guest. Lord Khalid Hameed epitomizes the spirit of the global Indian. He is not only a very distinguished professional and entrepreneur in the field of medicine and healthcare but he is also an active leader in community services, including most importantly those that promote inter-faith harmony. It is our privilege Sir to have you as the Chief Guest this year. I extend a very warm welcome to you Sir and I thank you for immense thought provoking address on inter-faith harmony.

Yesterday, we held the first meeting of the Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians. Some of the best and brightest men and women working in different parts of the world in various fields happen to be people of Indian origin. This is a tremendous knowledge pool and we would like the Council to reflect on where India should be heading in the next 20 years and what we should do in government, in business, in education and in arts and culture and in promoting inter-faith harmony to get where we ought to be 20 years from now. I would like to acknowledge the presence of the Members of this Council and I thank them for their time and effort in a very valuable cause.

The year gone by was an eventful year for India. We undertook the largest democratic exercise in the world during the general elections that were held in May, 2009. These elections reinforced the values of pluralism, tolerance and secularism that are a defining ethic of Indians, whether living in India or abroad.

I recognize the legitimate desire of Indians living abroad to exercise their franchise and to have a say in who governs India. We are working on this issue and I sincerely hope that they will get a chance to vote by the time of the next regular general elections. In fact, I would go a step further and ask why more overseas Indians should not return home to join politics and public life as they are increasingly doing in business and academia.

We are all legitimately proud of India’s vibrant democracy. But I cannot say that we have delivered in full measure on the enormous promise and potential of our country. I recognize the frustration well wishers feel when they lament why things don’t work faster or why well formulated plans and policies don’t get implemented as well as they should be.

It is probably true that we are a slow moving elephant but it is equally true that with each step forward we leave behind a deep imprint. There is a price that we pay in trying to carry all sections of our people along in national development. It is perhaps a price worth paying. Each citizen should feel that his or her voice is heard and have a sense of participation in national development. This is the only way we know to accommodate the enormous diversity of opinions and interests in our country. It is also this characteristic that makes our democracy so vibrant.

But underlying our system is an inherent political and economic resilience that gives our country and its institutions great strength and buoyancy. During the year gone by, the world faced an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. But the Indian economy weathered the crisis quite well. We were affected but no so much as many other countries. We hope to achieve this year a growth rate of around 7%, which is one of the fastest in the world. We are equally optimistic that we can return to and sustain an annual growth rate of 9-10% in a couple of years.

The rapid growth of India’s economy in the last few years has helped lift millions of people out of poverty. We have been able to expand access to education, healthcare and economic opportunities to a vast majority of our population. This is, however, a work in progress and much more remains to be done. I solicit your assistance to achieve those goals. We wish to accelerate the efforts to effectively address the key constraints in the areas of infrastructure, agriculture, health and education. These are the key priorities for the second term of our government.

We seek the active involvement of the overseas Indian communities in accelerating the pace of our economic and social development. In this context, it is important that we make efforts to connect the second generation of overseas Indians with their ancestral heritage and involve them actively in India’s march forward.

India is today one of the top investment destinations. Economic opportunities are expanding everywhere. Overseas Indians however, while being good savers tend to be somewhat conservative investors. Most remittances are placed in bank deposits. Foreign Direct Investment in India by overseas Indians is low and far short of potential. I would urge overseas Indians to take a careful look at long-term investment opportunities now on the horizon in our country.

Indian industry is rapidly developing a global orientation. Many Indian companies are transforming themselves into multinational corporations with global brand names. As Indian industry steps outward, the Indian diaspora could do more to inter-link Indian industry with global markets. They could reinforce the improving brand image of India. I sincerely hope that the newly established Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre will become an effective hub for promoting two-way interaction between the overseas Indian community and our institutions.

About forty percent of the total remittances of over 50 billion US dollars in 2007-2008 came from skilled and semi-skilled overseas Indian workers. The security of our overseas workers and students is a top priority of tmy government. Many of them have been badly affected by the economic crisis. We are conscious of the need to structure an appropriate ‘Return and Resettlement Fund’ and we are working on a project to provide a social security safety net for the returning workers.

We have been negotiating with the governments of countries with large emigrant Indian populations to improve the welfare and protection offered to our workers. Over the last year, we have signed labour agreements with Malaysia, Bahrain and Qatar that create institutional frameworks to look into issues such as recruitment, terms of employment and workers’ welfare. We also signed social security agreements last year with Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and are now negotiating such agreements with a number of other countries.

The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has also established the ‘Indian Community Welfare Fund’ in 18 countries in which there is a significant overseas Indian workforce. These funds support ‘on-site’ welfare measures including food, shelter, repatriation assistance and emergency relief to overseas Indians in distress.

In the coming years, India will need to invest much more in building physical, social and human capital. We must together position India as a supplier of skilled and trained manpower across a wide spectrum of skill sets and sectors. The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs is already collaborating with Indian Industry and the state governments in this effort. We would like to benefit from the services of overseas Indian professionals and volunteers to help Indian workers upgrade skills in specific trade where there is growing demand. At the meeting of the Council yesterday some very valuable suggestions were made to upgrade the quality of higher education system in our country.

We are now working to enhance work opportunities for our skilled manpower particularly in the west. We are trying to build labour mobility partnerships with key countries in the European Union and have finalized one such partnership with Denmark. These agreements will help to maximize benefits from labour mobility while addressing host country concerns such as irregular migration and integration problems.

We live in an increasingly integrated world; a very fast changing world. In our lifetime we have seen India walk with greater confidence and ability. In the lifetime of our children we would want them to see the India of our and their dreams – an India that lives up to the expectations of those who struggled to make it free and those who toil to take it forward and an India that wishes to live in peace, as it seeks prosperity for all.

As India seeks to realize its destiny in the 21st century, our engagement with the world draws its spiritual motivations from the values of our freedom struggle and our cultural and spiritual heritage. I end with a thought from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore who once observed:

‘For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our ownselves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union’.”

We are happy to find that more and more people continue to utilize this Hindi language site and would like to see  even more satisfied site users.

In this regard, we are planning some changes in the site structure to help learners arrive at relevant lessons quickly or look into other site information to get desired resources easily.

The changes being planned :

• Learning resources being re-organised in separate sections for General Information, Speaking, Reading, Writing etc.
• Putting these learning resources in different level to allow learners to advance from a lower level to a higher one and mark their progress.
• Segregating services section from learning resources to the extent possible.
• Compiling list of  web references that may be useful to our learners.
• Improving support system to include blog, forum, facebook pages.
• Gradually shifting general support from an email based one to FAQ/Forum/Blog posts.
• Using this blog for dissemination of Hindilearner news besides the topics we already cover here.
• Maintaining a database of learners and their feedback for further improvement in the site.

Why All These Changes?

The main reason is to make it more interactive.

Another important aspect is to gather all the user queries and answers to them at some suitable place, so that all site visitors can have a chance to benefit from it.

How Are Site Visitors Affected?

There will be no difference in the manner visitors are allowed to use the site contents.

The only thing that a visitor will have to do is register as a member (free of cost) and login to ‘Learners Area’ which will include all the lessons & tutorials that is available at this site.

What Do You Think?

Are we being helpful to our site visitors?

OR

You feel that it is unnecessary and is likely to drive visitors away from this site.

Any feedback from our readers on the matter is welcome.

If you want to be a part of the world’s largest confluence of faith and devotion, experience the spiritual fervour, take a holy dip in the Ganges, and purify your mind, body and soul then get prepared to immerse yourself in the sacred congregation of millions of devotees who will be attending the Kumbh mela to seek the divine blessings and eternal peace.

Kunbh mela snaan parv -2010 is being organised from 14th Jan 2010 till 28th Apr 2010. Be a part of world’s greatest confluence of faith and devotion.

Make sure you don’t miss this spectacular spiritual opportunity.

Also read the origin and importance of Kumbh mela at:

Kumbh Mela- Greatest Congregation Of Humanity

Microsoft showcased a set of tools that help users enter Indian language text into computers easily and quickly, at the Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC) in Hyderabad (india).

The beta version of the tools will be made available as a free download soon and will initially support the following six languages – Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

“There is a huge demand to consume and interact with Indian language content today. Tools that make it easy to search, communicate and create content in Indian languages are key for broader computing adoption and the tools we are showcasing today are aimed at addressing this need,” said Srini Koppolu, Corporate VP & Managing Director, MSIDC.

These tools have been engineered by the Emerging Markets Labs team of the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) and the technology can be leveraged to support other syllabic languages beyond Indian languages.These input tools use free-form transliteration. Users spell Indian language words in a natural (phonetic) way using English alphabet, which the tools transliterate into the right words in the chosen Indian language.