Teach Yourself Hindi: Complete Course (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) (Hindi Edition)

I was using Rosetta stone and became frustrated about a third of the way through the Rosetta stone course with the lack of explanation of the grammatical structure, verb forms, writing ect...I ordered this book to help out and was very pleased. It comes with two audio CD's that have all the conversations included in the book. The chapters present topics and words in a coherent fashion and build quickly. I was a bit disappointed with the small size of the book when I first opened it but it is packed with information and doesn't repeat itself. An idea is presented once and completely explained and then it moves on, something I find very refreshing. There are 18 chapters as well as a series of informational appendices and a hindi-english english-hindi dictionary in the back. If you want to buy just one thing to learn hindi with, this book is it. I think it would be hard to really improve on the simplicity of this book. An excellent resource and tremendous help, dollar for dollar far more valuable to me than Rosetta stone.

This book helps me so much in learning Hindi! Since I didn't know anything about this language, I don't feel left out now because of this book & I feel like i'm on the same pace as the peers who already know Hindi since they grew up with it.

Very good book, give you to learn the Hindi language step by step. Everything is clear and I hope one day I'll read, write and speak fluently.

This book is abysmally designed. Important information is scattered senselessly throughout the book, so completing the assignments (which are the bulk of the book) requires constantly flipping back and forth, which takes a great deal of time. A compact dictionary/grammar from the same series is available, and I can’t imagine completing “Teach Yourself Hindi” without it. This book should really be a three-piece set: a grammar, a dictionary, and a workbook. Only the paucity of Hindi learning materials makes this book worthwhile—nobody would use this book if a better option existed.

First of all let me say to those wanting to learn Hindi: IT IS NOT HARD TO LEARN. Rest assured. Snell has a few books out. Beginner's Hindi Script, Beginners Hindi, and Teach Yourself Hindi. There is a method to the madness. For those learning Hindi its a great idea to start out with Hindi script. Its rewarding and very easy to learn. When I first opened the Script book it looked overwhelming (like any new system of writing can seem)but I (and you will) learned fast. Don't waste your time with Beginner's Hindi, its slow and boring and the progress in Teach Yourself Hindi is much more rewarding. Teach Yourself Hindi gives you a solid basis in the first couple lessons and makes you feel comfortable (if not GREAT about yourself) and at how easy it is to learn Hindi (in fact, Snell mentions this in his intro). You progress very fast from lesson 1. He uses vocab from previous lessons, the examples he uses are great and memorization and study of these will motivate you to build your own sentences. I'm a ways along in the book and I can honestly say I could go back to India right now and talk to the friends I've made and we could have a decent conversation. That being said, there are 14 more chapters to go that are jam packed with important lessons. So now for my advice: Like I said, it isn't hard to learn but I cannot stress the importance of practice. Practice, practice, practice! Learning the vocab in each chapter allows you to draw from vast new pools and gives you the ability to make more and more sentences (and trust me, its a great feeling!) Despite the fact that there are 18 chapters, fight the feeling to fly through a chapter and think that you've learned everything in that chapter only to move on to the next one. Make sure that you really understand the subjects your're working with, otherwise you're only hurting yourself in the long run. DO THE REVIEWS! I cannot tell you how helpful they are. You think you understand the subjects in the chapter until you are actually challenged to put that knowledge into play. After doing a few of the problems and refining your knowledge, its then that you say to yourself "aha..I'm getting this". Don't give up on the first speed bump you come across. I've come across a few, but really you just need to go slow and think it through. You CAN learn it. While you are studying Teach Yourself Hindi, there are other methods to compliment your study. Get his Hindi Conversation package. Its easy to put on your ipod and take with you and listen to. Repetitive listening will allow you to memorize sentence structure. Watch Bollywood movies! Alot of them are hilarious and give you a great chance to put your knowledge to use. Also a great chance to pick up on some of the rich, Indian culture. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. I would recommend Teach Yourself Hindi without fail. Five Stars all the way, baby. Remember the advice I gave you and you can't fail. Theres a world of Hindi speakers out there eagerly waiting to talk to us westerners, so get out there and start talking to them.

The content of the book has been great and I have been working at my own very slow pace for years. I also purchased Rosetta stone but my favorite companion to this book is Pimsleurs Hindi. More practical practice to begin with. Makes you practice formulating and saying appropriate responses in a dialogue. Didn't waste time practicing how to say "tie" and "skirt" like in Rosetta Stone. Love a previous review that said the book would be better if it were in the parts: Textbook, answers, and dictionary. That's an awesome suggestion! It would be easy enough to do that myself as mine has a simple glued paper binding. I also liked someone else's suggestion to have it spiral bound for about $6.

This is certainly one of the best books currently available for learning Hindi (and also Urdu, because the two languages share a vast amount of vocabulary and the devanagari system of writing is a great deal more precise and phonetic than the beautiful but difficult nastaliq in which Urdu appears.) In fact, the differences between Hindi and Urdu are treated very thoroughly and learners could transition very smoothly between the two with just the amount of knowledge they gain from this course. That isn't all, of course; the writing system and the pronunciation get excellent and comprehensive treatment in the beginning. An authentic pronunciation is surprisingly easy to acquire after a short period of practice (the retroflex sounds, although sounding very exotic, differ only slightly in their point of articulation from the corresponding English sounds. Voiced aspirated, or 'breathy voiced' sounds are more difficult and don't really have equivalents in Western languages. Another virtue of devanagari is that letters are actually grouped by their pronunciations, so studying the pronunciation and the writing system at the same time works very well in reinforcing both. The coverage of grammar in the subsequent lessons also is excellent- particular attention is given to counter-intuitive aspects of the verbal system- (past tenses where the verb has to agree in gender with the object rather than the subject being probably the hardest to get used to). The conversations that accompany the lessons are a lot of fun- the soap opera story about a family (and family business) and all the changes they go through. Definitely this should be one of the first choices for a beginning student of Hindi to consider.

Take it from me, if you want to learn Hindi, spend the money on taking a community college class or invest in those language courses advertised on TV and online. What was I thinking!

通い始めたヒンディー語教室でこの本を使うので購入しました。 期待以上にとてもきれいです。嬉しいです。

This is an old product (which I didn’t know when I spent nearly 2000 INR) and there is a newer edition than only costs 500! Wish I knew sooner so I could return this book, but it’s too late.

古くなっていましたが良いでしょう。 中身に不具合はありませんでした。