Tag Archives: sanskrit
Hindi and Urdu – Siblings in Crisis Posted by Nicole Herbert Dean on Oct 21, 2021
This week Urdu caused an uproar कोलाहल on social media. She was in an ad that called for the celebration कोलाहल of Diwali using the phrase, Jashn-e-Riwaaz, which means ‘celebration of rituals and traditions’. The ad written in English was for a clothing and housewares brand called Fabindia. The retailer खुदरा withdrew the advertisement in…
Mandarin, French, Spanish or Sanskrit? Posted by Nicole Herbert Dean on Oct 7, 2021
Ask any student छात्र in Delhi, what language they want to learn and they will answer, Chinese, French or Spanish. So, why don’t school kids choose चुनें the ‘mother‘ of all languages so to speak? From the gypsies of the Thar desert to the African immigrants आप्रवासी of the Deccan Plateau, many languages in India…
Parallel Vocabulary in Hindi Posted by Rachael on Dec 12, 2018
As you may know, Hindi is composed of a vast array of other languages. This multifaceted quality gives Hindi its richness and complexity. In this blog, we’ll explore the diversity of Hindi vocabulary through concrete examples from Hindi’s major source languages: Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. Although Arabic and Persian are not related languages (Arabic is…
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…
Levels of Language: Register in Hindi, Part 2 Posted by Rachael on Dec 23, 2017
In my last blog on the concept of “register” in Hindi, I discussed the more formal register of this language, which is heavily influenced by its “parent language” of sorts, Sanskrit. In this blog, I will delve into a more informal and colloquial register of Hindi: what is sometimes called “Hindustani.” “Hindustani” is a quintessential…
Levels of Language: Register in Hindi, Part 1 Posted by Rachael on Dec 17, 2017
“Register” simply refers to the various levels of speech that exist in any language––such as formal, informal/colloquial, slang, etc. Just as we have different registers in English, like the formal language you would use in a research paper or the slang terms you use when talking to a close friend, there are different registers in…
Hindi vs. Urdu, the Debate Continues Posted by Rachael on Nov 8, 2016
Many people have debated the differences (and similarities) of Hindi and Urdu. Some people believe they should be considered separate languages, while others are of the opinion that the two languages are essentially the same in terms of basic vocabulary and grammar; their differences lie only in their writing systems (Hindi is written in the…