Lesson #136: Say What You See
Today we’re going to do something a little different! This lesson has been inspired by one of our twitter followers - are you following us on twitter?
Something that’s really important when you’re learning any language is to practice and practice and practice creating your own sentences! If you want to be able to speak to people in that language then you’re going to need to be able to think on your feet - and that will only happen if you’ve practiced loads. So that’s what we’re going to do today.
Did you used to have those picture books as a child? You know the ones without any words where you had to make up a story yourself? Well that’s what this lesson is like - just a bit simpler. Here’s how it’s going to work - I’ll give you some pictures and you’ll write a sentence (in Hindi!) for each of them. Easy! The sentence can be as easy or as difficult as you like. Let me give you an example. Suppose we had this picture…
We could make a easy sentence like यह मेरा जूता है yeh meraa jootaa hai - this is my shoe. Or we could make a more complex sentence like…
उसने अपने नए जूते पहने थे
usne apne nae joote pahne the
- She was wearing her new shoes.
Do you get the idea then? So now it’s your go. Describe the following pictures in Hindi. Let your imagination run wild - you can make your sentence as simple or as difficult as you like and of course you can use any tense! Be sure to leave your sentences here - comment below - and I’ll let you know if your sentences are grammatically correct - but don’t forget there is no “correct” answer! So here goes…
Hindi Word Stress
Jobert Asked: I love your website. Thanks so much for providing these lessons! My question is about pronunciation. I can read and write devanagari now, and it has helped me so much with Hindi. My problem still is that while I can sound out each of the syllables, I never really know which one to emphasize. When I learned Swahili, the accent was always on the second to last syllable, with very few exceptions. Are there any tips for accenting words in Hindi? Shukriya!
Namaste Jobert and thank you for your question and lovely compliments! That’s a great question actually. So what syllable in a word do we stress in Hindi? And what are the rules for finding the stressed syllable?
Let’s take a step back for a moment. Syllable stress in English is actually real important - it can change the meaning of words completely - and is very unpredictable. Think of the sentence “I suspect you are the suspect”. The word “suspect” here is stressed differently in each case! Crikey. This makes that learning English even trickier!
Ok so back to Hindi. First the good news: stress in Hindi is not really that important. It doesn’t change the meaning of words and it doesn’t have much power - especially when compared to English. Because of that it’s not really something you should worry too much about. Linguists are actually still in disagreement about the true nature of Hindi word stress - some even say it doesn’t exist!
Having said that though, what are the actual rules? Well it’s a little complicated but here goes…
Lesson #135: The Verb लगना lagnaa Part 2
Last lesson we began to learn about the Hindi verb लगना lagnaa. Can you remember what we learnt? We saw how to say some sentences like…
मुझे भूख लग रही थी
mujhe bhookh lag rahee thee
- I was (feeling) hungry
We covered quite a lot in that lesson so be sure to read back over it if you feel like you’ve forgot anything! Today we’re going to learn two other uses for the verb लगना lagnaa. Do you think you’re ready to get going?
Anonymous Asked: What are the consonants in Hindi?
Namaste and thanks for the question! So what the Hindi consonants? Well here they all are (this is the point where you take a deep breath)…
Phew! Do they look confusing to you? Well don’t worry we’ve got lessons over in the Consonants Section teaching you everything you need to know about them! There’s even audio files to help with your pronunciation!
So be sure to check out the Consonants Section for all the information you could want! I hope that helps. Thanks again!
Have you got a question, comment or suggestion? Let me know here.
Lesson #134: The Verb लगना lagnaa Part 1
In today’s lesson we’re going to begin to look at the Hindi verb लगना lagnaa. This is one of the most common verbs in Hindi and unfortunately it can also be real tricky to understand and translate sometimes, it just has so many meanings! So let’s get straight into it, are you ready?
The most literal meaning of लगना lagnaa is ‘to be attached’ or ‘to be stuck’, so we might say something like…
ढक्कन नहीं लगा था
dhakkan naheen lagaa thaa
- The lid was not attached
That’s easy enough yeah? Now you might be surprised to hear that in Hindi we can use this verb to talk about feelings. How does that work? Well let me show you an example to start with…
