Problems with the Audio Files?

I’ve just updated all the audio code on the site - which should mean that it now works a lot better. However if you’re having problems with the audio files then this page should help

You can’t learn a language without hearing it actually being spoken right? That’s why you’ll find there’s a whole bunch of audio files posted around this site, with more being posted all the time! But this isn’t so great if you’ve having technical problems with them. So this is the page to be at if for some reason or another the audio wont work for you. 

If everything is working as it should be then you’ll see a grey rectangle underneath this paragraph with a play button inside it - and when you press the button will hear a recording of the Hindi word “namaste”. 

If you don’t see it - or if it doesn’t make a sound when you click play then we obviously have a problem! (Note if you’re seeing this post on your tumblr dashboard then click here first before you test it!) So let’s see if I can help you fix it…

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Paypal Donations

You may have noticed a Paypal “Donate” button has appeared on the side of the site recently. If you haven’t seen it this is what it looks like….

I wanted to take the opportunity here to be completely honest with every single one of my readers and let you know why I have added this to the site. From the very first day I created this site I’ve always had the mindset that everything should be completely free to everyone and I still strongly believe in this. It’s simple, I don’t want to charge you to learn. I’ve also never wanted to make a profit from the site. I’m not interested in making money - I run this site purely to educate people about the beautiful language of Hindi!

But unfortunately the truth is that this site, like everything else in life, costs money. This is why I’ve had to make the difficult decision to add the Paypal donate button to the site. 

Let’s be clear, I’m not telling you to give me money. I’m simply asking that if you’ve enjoyed learning from this site (and if you can afford it) then please, donate even just a few dollars to help towards the running costs of the site and help keep the site alive for other readers in the future. If you can’t afford it then that’s completely fine so please don’t feel obliged to donate. 

To donate simply click the Paypal donate button at the top of this post, or the one at the side of the page or click here. Don’t worry, Paypal is completely secure and you don’t even need an account. You have my word that the money donated will only ever be used towards the costs of the site. 

Thank you so much in advance, बहुत बहुत धन्यवाद bahut bahut dhanyavaad. George. 

Problems Viewing the Site?

Are you having problems with the site? If so then read on, because this should help you!

Firstly if you’re having any problems with the audio files then head over to this page here which gives a step by step solution and should get it working again! 

Now this site uses Hindi letters (Devanagari), which is ‘foreign’ to most computers. So you might experience problems in correctly seeing the letters. 

Most handheld devices, including the iPhone, will have problems displaying Hindi characters correctly! 

If you don’t have the correct fonts installed you may see square boxes instead of the Devanagari characters, garbled random characters, incorrect characters or even nothing at all. 

Devangari fonts are automatically installed on all Windows, Mac and Linux systems and should work perfectly in any internet browser. However Mobile phones, iPods, iPhones, iPads and many other handheld devises often don’t have Devangari installed or have very poor rending capabilities. 

Unfortunately that means that this site loses a lot of its value when viewed though those devices. The only possible solution for this would be for me to display all Hindi as image files, this would not massively increase loading times for all the pages but would prevent people from working with the Hindi dispayed (ie copying and pasting into google) so it’s not something I’m going to consider for a while.  

To test if you’re displaying Devagari characters correctly on your system I’ve created two example image files below showing what you should be seeing so you can compare that to what you are seeing. 

Test 1:

What you should see: 

Your computer displays:

क का कि की के कै कु कू को कौ कृ कं कँ कः

Test 2: (Taken from BBC Hindi)

What you should see: 

Your computer displays:

बिहार में चुनाव 21 अक्तूबर से छह चरणों में

If you don’t see these the way you should then you don’t have Devanagari installed correctly on your computer! The first advice I can give is to visit Multilingual Support (Indic) on Wikipedia to try and find the issue. If that doesn’t solve your issue then feel free to tell me here explaining your problem and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.