Sunday, April 02, 2006

Japanese And Hindi Lessons

Today I have loaded a new huge bunch of lessons: long awaited Japanese lessons and Hindi lessons.

Japanese is one of the most popular languages in the world. Besides, Japan is one of the most advanced economics so learning Japanese will be beneficial for anyone who is going to work with Japanese customers or partners. Don't miss the most important, though fun lesson: Greetings, Request, Welcomes and Farewells. Just working with this lesson will tremendously help you if you go to Japan even for a couple of days.

Hindi is a language spoken by enormous number of people. India is a very large country in South Asia with more than a billion people. Not all those people speak Hindi, there are very many local dialects though Hindi is one of the official languages in India. Nowaday it is very popular among western businesses to outsource some of their development and production to India so no harm in learning Hindi. And this is the link to the Greetings, Request, Welcomes and Farewells in Hindi lesson.

Please enjoy learning Japanese and Hindi. If you see any discrepancy or incorrect translation - shout out loud.


Tongue of the Rising Sun



Japanese culture holds a very strong fascination potential for the rest of the World because of its uniqueness and beauty but also because of the country’s economical power. This has lead many people in pursuing the study of the Japanese language for either business reasons, career improvements or simply to satisfy their own curiosity regarding Japan and its language. And let’s face it; the awe-factor from your friends and newly met people is a lot larger if they hear you talking Japanese than say, French or Spanish, which are more common languages. If you do manage to learn Japanese (which to be honest is not the easiest of tasks) then the other languages will prove to be a breeze and you’ll be regarded as a true polyglot in no time.



Difficulties in learning Japanese



From a Westerner’s point of view, learning Japanese is quite difficult because of the rules that the language enforces in terms of grammar, politeness rules, writing (using a combination of three scripts – Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana) and so forth. These rules are not that hard per say, but it’s quite hard for us to put aside the system that we normally take for granted and replace it with something radically different.



Another showstopper when it comes to learning Japanese is that the language is an agglutinative one. What this means is that it’s a “synthetic” language where each affix represents one unit of meaning rather than have the root of the word change. This concept is not easy to understand, or at least not until you get used to it. Most “Learn Japanese” courses try to avoid making a comparison between Japanese and any other Western languages, simply for the fact that doing so would do more harm than good to the learning process.



Learning Japanese Online



Although the recent craze for learning Japanese has brought forth a lot of institutions and companies that set up organized Japanese courses, you can also learn it online, at your leisure and usually without spending too much money in the process. There are virtually dozens of companies offering free Japanese lessons online and these are a great way to start learning. Another option would be to try out some vocabulary games, despite the fact that they won’t be as useful as a full lesson course. Still, you can try them out since you might memorize words with more ease and improve vocabulary over night.



Last but not least, if you already have a basis to work with, you could try reading translated texts and making a correlation between the two versions to spot new words, determine politeness forms and so forth. After a while, combining all these methods will dish out a noticeable vocabulary increase and you’ll be awing your friends with your Japanese language skills in no time.




Articles about Japanese in different languages:


Japanese: Tongue of the Rising Sun (in English)
Japonés (in Spanish)
Langue japonaise (in French)
Japanische Sprache (in German)
Lingua giapponese (in Italian)
Japanse Taal (in Dutch)
Língua japonesa (in Portuguese)
Limba Japoneza (in Romanian)
Язык Восходящего Солнца (in Russian)
لسان الشمس المتصاعدة (in Arabic)

Hindi – history and properties



From the perspective of the number of its speakers, Hindi is considered the third language in the world (next to English and Mandarin Chinese) with a rough count of 600 million speakers worldwide. Although Hindi has several hundred dialects, most of them resemble one another, similar to the main Chinese dialects. Most of the Hindi speakers are concentrated in South Eastern Asia, although the Hindi Diaspora is also quite well developed.



From a historical point of view, Hindi is considered the direct descendant language of Sanskrit and is a part of the Indo-European language family. Several lingual influences have been made throughout time on the Hindi language, the most important ones coming from Persian, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish and of course, English, which brought a huge vocabulary increase. All these have left their mark to create the Hindi language spoken today and they helped tighten up the resemblance between it and other languages in the area such as Urdu (official language of Pakistan) for example. So if you’re planning on becoming a South Asian polyglot, learning Urdu or any other language or dialect in that particular geographical area, it will be of great help if you already know Hindi.



From a learning perspective, Hindi has some very interesting properties. Hindi pronunciation is quite easy, since the letters are always pronounced exactly the way they are written, unlike most of the western languages. Most “Learn Hindi” courses will start off by saying that there are no particular difficulties in the study of the language other than maybe the slightly harsh grammar rules.



Learn Hindi at home



If you don’t have time or the possibility to participate in organized local “Learn Hindi” courses, you’re probably considering doing so on your own, at home. You have several options, from buying a Hindi language course book, getting some free Hindi lessons online, paying a video conference Hindi teacher or even by playing vocabulary games, either online or offline.



Hindi vocabulary games can be extremely fun and they can very well prove to be a great learning method. Not only will they help you improve vocabulary and memorize words, but they can be a great alternative to the stressful, “serious” lessons out there. Still, vocabulary games can only do so much for you and some of these serious lessons will be required as well. If you manage to complement the two and balance out the learning process between sweat and fun, you’re well on your way to becoming a future polyglot.



In conclusion, whether you’re trying to learn Hindi for business means or simply because you’re fascinated with the language, feel confident that it’s not as hard as it might first look and that there are hundreds of sources you can learn from. As with all other languages, make sure you keep practice constant and you dedicate at least 3-4 hours per week to studying this beautiful language.




Articles about Hindi in different languages:


Hindi – History and Properties (in English)
Hindi (in Spanish)
Hindi (in French)
Hindi (in German)
Hindi (in Italian)
Hindi (in Dutch)
Hindi (in Portuguese)
Hindusa – Istorie si proprietati ale limbii (in Romanian)
Хинди. История и факты (in Russian)
هندي - تأريخ وخصائص (in Arabic)

1 comment:

Michael Gavry said...

Thanks for your comment. I will work with the Japanese translator to place the transliteration in those words.