नमस्ते     namaste

Hindi Tutorial-Lesson 1

Introduction, Devnagri, Transliteration, Vowels

Introduction

Hindi is an Indo-European language. It is inherited from Sanskrit but has influences of Persian, Arabic and lately a lot of English as well as other Indian and foreign languages. These languages have not affected its grammar but they have enriched its vocabulary to a great extent.

Hindi is written in Devnagri (pronounced as Devnaagri) script, also inherited from Sanskrit and modified slightly. The text runs from left to right and books are read from front to back as in English. It has no capital letters. Hindi is written as it is spoken. Each letter has a unique sound, in that way words in Hindi are easy to pronounce and spell.

However, learning a new script requires time, interest and effort and that might be a hurdle for some of you, so throughout the lessons in this tutorial, I use a personal transliteration system, which I call DevT (abbreviation of Devnagri Transliteration.) You need not worry about it, it is quite intuitive and will be explained, whenever needed. It is also quite similar to the transliteration scheme first used by ITRANS. Links to the ITRANS, Hindi and Sanskrit languages in Wikipedia are included in the References, at the end of this lesson.

Hindi has 11 vowels (svar) and 33 consonants (vyanjan). It also has 14 vowel-symbols (maatraa), which are used to combine consonants with different vowels. But don't panic, all this is rather systematic and will be explained in somewhat logical and consistent way.

Since Hindi does not have capital letters, as in the English language, it is little less/easier to learn.

Initially all the letters and most of the words in this tutorial also have sounds attached to them.

Learning the script is really worth the extra effort, since it is both beautiful and surprisingly systematic and scientific (more about this in the coming lessons). So, try that and good luck.

Naming convention: Section 1.2 is the second section of Lesson 1, Section 3.4 is the fourth section of Lesson 3. The same goes for Tables and Exercises.

About The Tutorial:

The tutorial is free and free from the advertisements, and it will remain so.

The first 12 lessons deal with the Devnagri script as it used in Hindi as well as it's transliteration scheme, the DevT.

From the lesson 13 and onwards, one learns to converse and grammar. In these lessons, there are plenty of exercises with answers.

You are also welcome to contact me through e-mail at ajay@hinditeacher.se or my blog.

Vowels (svar)

In the table below, the first column contains the vowel in Devnagri script and the second column has its DevT (transliteration in Roman script). To hear the sound, play the Audio button.

Vowels
DevNDevTAs inAudio
अ a America
आ aa Africa
इ i India
ई ee / I Deep
उ u Look
ऊ oo Moon
ऋ rri Rib
ए e Red
ऐ ai Rain
ओ o Open
औ au How

Notes:

  1. The first vowel अ is the same as a in German, Norwegian and Swedish.

  2. The English vowels ae as in man and bad, and e as in men and bed are both written as ए and in DevT represented by e.

  3. Vowels अ , इ, उ, ए   (a, i, u, e) are short vowels and have their long forms as आ , ई, ऊ, ऐ   (aa, ee, oo, ai).

  4. The vowel ई   ee sometimes will be transliterated as I.

  5. Please note that in Hindi, each letter (vowel or consonant) has a unique sound. It is only when we try to transliterate these sounds in Roman script, then we run into some problems. That's why I would like to emphasize the importance and advantage of learning the Devnagri script. Believe me it is not that difficult.

Repetition:

See all the 11 vowels in a row.

All the Vowels

अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ
a aa i ee u oo rri e ai o au

What Next?

You can make one of the following choices.
  1. If you are a beginner, then proceed to lesson 2. Just click on Next below.

  2. If you know some Hindi and don't want to learn the Devnagri script, then you should get acquainted with the transliteration scheme DevT, used in this tutorial. It is presented in the Appendix 1.

  3. If you are a quick learner then you can also skip next 11 lessons and go directly to Appendix 1 and learn either the Devnagri script or the transliteration scheme DevT.

  4. If you know the Devnagri script (for instance, if you have studied Sanskrit) then you can directly go to lesson #13. Link to that lesson is available in the Index. However, a look at the Appendix 1 could be of some use.

Thanks

If you are reading these lines and have gone through this lesson thoroughly, then we both deserve thanks, I from you and you from me. Keep up the good work, धन्यवाद dhanyvaada thanks .

In the next lesson, we will study consonants and some other interesting stuff. Don't miss it.

And here is the link to the next lesson. In Index you have the content and links to all the lessons.

नमस्ते और धन्यवाद namaste aur dhanyavaad

References

  1. ITRANS.
  2. Hindi.
  3. Sanskrit.