Sonia Taneja - Basic Hindi

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This digital book includes all of the workbook exercises and script writing practices in a downloadable PDF format. To access this material, visit McGraw-Hill Professionals Media Center at http://mhprofessional.com/mediacenter, then enter this e-books ISBN and your e-mail address. You will receive an e-mail message with a download link for the additional content. This e-books ISBN is: 978-0-07-178425-2.

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For Gaurav, Katherine, and her generation Copyright 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Hindi is the ideal resource for starting your study of the Hindi language. This book is well suited for anyone interested in beginning to learn Hindi. Whether you are in high school, college, or graduate school or simply want to explore Hindi, this book is the perfect place to start.

It can be used either as a primary practice text to accompany a Hindi course or as a supplement to bridge the gap between other Hindi resources. With eight parts, twenty-five chapters, and more than sixty individual sections, this is a user-friendly workbook that has a variety of featuresscript practice, accessible grammar, sufficient explanations, practice exercises, categorical vocabulary sets, and cultural informationall in one place. The content is presented in an easy-to-follow sequence that develops from elementary information to complex grammar over the course of eight chapters. In the first part, a step-by-step approach and specially tailored practice spaces are provided for an easy grasp of the Hindi script. In the second part, user-friendly explanations demystify the complexities of diacritic marks and conjunct characters and enable you to begin reading, writing, and understanding Hindi words. In the next six parts, functional and organized vocabulary sets and tables build a practical vocabulary for day-to-day use.

Interwoven with the vocabulary are basic Hindi grammatical tenses and concepts that are explained in an easy-to-understand manner and applied in a variety of exercises. At various points throughout the text, the Hindi language learning experience is also enhanced by useful cultural notes and insights. Also, for leisure reading, an optional reading and writing practice is given at the end of each part, along with a glossary of new words and relevant cultural information. You can read these at your own pace. Answers to all exercises can be found in the answer key at the back of the book. Happy Hindi learning!

GrammarVocabulary The name of the Hindi script is Devnagari and, like the English script, it is written from left to right.

Unlike the English language, however, Hindi has no capital letters. Moreover, all Hindi letters hang from a straight horizontal line or bar (see below). A letter is not considered complete without this horizontal line attached to it. Hindi is also a phonetic language. None of the Hindi vowels and consonants is silent; each of them is pronounced as it is spelled. In the Hindi alphabet system, traditionally there are thirteen distinct vowel sounds, although some of them such as , , and : are omitted in other texts.

These are important to know and have been included in this text for complete coverage. Conventionally, there are thirty-eight consonants in Hindi. However, six more sounds occurring in Hindi have been adapted from Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic. As these are useful for new language learners to be able to identify, these have also been shown below.

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