Tag Archives: learning hindi
Vikram and The Vampire / विक्रम और बेताल Posted by Rachael on Oct 27, 2018
As Halloween is one of my favorite holidays (मनपसंद त्योहार/manpasand tyohaar), and I’ve been fascinated with ghost stories since I was a child, I thought I would share an Indian “ghost story,” if you will, in honor of the upcoming (आनेवाला/aanevaalaa) holiday. When I was a teenager, I came across a collection of tales (कथाएँ/kathaaen…
WhatsApp in India / इंडिया में व्हाट्सऐप Posted by Rachael on Oct 21, 2018
Some of you may be familiar with the popular messaging app known as “Whatsapp” (व्हाट्सऐप). In India and many other countries, this app is widely used as a major form of communication (संचार का प्रमुख माध्यम/sanchaar ka pramukh maadhyam) as you can call, text and video chat through its service for free as long as…
Improve Your Hindi Vocabulary: Prefixes, Part 2 Posted by Rachael on Sep 30, 2018
If you’re just catching up with this blog series on prefixes, take a moment to review my first blog in the series here. Learning prefixes, or particles that appear at the beginning of a word to change its meaning slightly, can be enormously helpful if you are trying to expand your vocabulary in Hindi. Rather…
Improve Your Hindi Vocabulary: Prefixes, Part 1 Posted by Rachael on Sep 30, 2018
If you’d like to improve your Hindi vocabulary, one of the best ways to do so is to study prefixes. Like many languages, English included, Hindi contains a wide variety of prefixes, even more so because it is a highly mixed language (or, खिचड़ी भाषा/khichdi baashaa) with a lexicon that derives from numerous other languages…
Crisis in Kerala, केरल में संकट Posted by Rachael on Aug 20, 2018
During the past week, as billions of people in India and across the globe celebrated India’s Independence Day on August 15th, an unsettling reality has descended on the country. The extreme flooding in the southwestern state of Kerala has gripped the nation with terror. Even those who live far from this state feel compelled to…
Idioms Continued Posted by Rachael on Jul 21, 2018
In my previous post, I discussed idioms that have to do with facial features. Despite the seeming randomness of this choice, I was taught by one of my greatest Hindi teachers that categorizing idioms and learning them as part of those categories makes it easier. And, he was right, of course! The same goes for…
Idioms with a Twist Posted by Rachael on Jul 7, 2018
Each language has its own stock of colorful and (sometimes) seemingly nonsensical idioms or, as they’re called in Hindi, मुहावरे/muhaavre (मुहावरा/muhaavra, singular). Luckily for the Hindi student, this language is teeming with vibrant turns of phrase that you can slip into almost any conversation. As some of my Hindi teachers have taught me, it is…