Hindi Lesson 17


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These are the sentences from the last lesson.

I have pain in my stomach, I need to see a doctor, I am sorry I dont understand hindi, I live in greece

Here are the sentences translated into Hindi. Note Hindi masculine words usually end in A eg MAMA (uncle) while female end in i eg MAMI (aunt)

Where is the nearest telephone ?. My name is... , Are you married?, So you speak English !

Here are the answers explained

What is your telephone number? , What are you doing tonight ?, I want to marry you.

Here are the answers.


Extras sounds

Hindi being one of the Indo -European group of languages , nearly all the letters sound the same as in English , There are however a few extra sounds and these can cause some difficulty. Lets look at four of them . The first is the letter TTH, the second one in the figure below.

. The 1st and 3rd sounds are identical to English being T as in Tom and D as in Drum. The fourth DH is just D sounded from the chest. The first hard T in Tom is made by touching the tip of the tounge on the prominent ridge of the hard palate - test it out on yourself. The third , hard D as in Drum is made by touching the tongue further back. TTH is midway between the two , ie on the uppermost ridge of the hard palate.

Were you able to read the words?. Here are the answers.

,It takes a liitle practice but is not difficult to sound TTH correctly.


Next we have the AD'( ughD) sound . Touch the tongue on top as in D , now roll it back further and then unroll it without touching the palate - this gives you the ughD' sound . In Hindi this sound is marked by a dot below the D and Dh sounds. Read the words below.

.

The answers


Another in the T series is the soft t. . If you make the T sound with the tongue and then the THE sound touching the tongue to the top of the upper teeth then the soft t is inbetween this and the TH as in THanks . So here the tip of tongue touches the bottom of the upper teeth and the first third of the tongue is pressed against the teeth and the palate. Read the following words.

and the answers

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The tongue touches the front of the palate for the CH as in CHina sound . For the CHH soundthe tongue touches the palate slightly more back.

The answers

You can often find out from the local temple about any Hindi teachers to get these absolutely right. As these are the letters which often non Hindi speakers tend to mispronounce it is worth making an effort to get them right.

In the next lesson we will build up a vocabulary of the common words.


R.Mandair from Vancouver , Canada writes..

I was just going through your "Learn to read Hindi" section. Very good effort but there are quite a few gramatical /spelling errors that need to be checked out. For example in your lesson 17, the words - DARD (pain; It should be sounding as "Durd", which is an Urdu word for pain, not as "Darad" which you have written as in hindi ), DOCTOR( In Hindi, it should sound as "Daaktar" without an " O"sound ) , SAMAJHTA (understand- it should be with a sound of "Jh" , not "Samajta" as it is written there.), also the last word "Hoon" should be with the badi U ki matra & an ardhchandra bindi on top. There might be more errors , but I only looked at lesso # 17 . I hope this will bring it to your attention .

Just as American and English differ in spelling so the sound pronounciation can vary in parts of India . So the vowels and chest sounds -j and jh - can both be used. Again doctor is a literal translation and its true that some Indians say daaktar but both spellings are correct . An intermediate sound daaktar signfied by a curved character ( on its side with the curve facing up as in a saucer , on top of the d is also used.


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