Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners: A Complete Language Course (Colloquial Series) [Paperback]

Bohut acche! Tej K. Bhatia's book is an outstanding, gentle, yet comprehensive introduction to the Hindi language for a beginner. It's difficult to cite the numerous reasons why this book is so valuable for the apprehensive beginning language-learner, but I'll make an attempt to summarize the high points:

(1) Bhatia is careful not to overwhelm the beginning learner with the complexities of the Devanagari script too early. He has the perfect instructor's touch here, rendering most of the early dialogues in Roman characters while gradually easing the learner into Devanagari as he/she gains more confidence in the basics of speaking and comprehending.

(2) Bhatia's book has just enough grammar to give any Hindi learner a handy mental framework for organizing the rules of sentence construction, without being too intimidating. Happily, Hindi grammar resembles that of Mandarin Chinese in some respects, though not quite as simple as Mandarin-- it's fairly consistent, broad-brushed enough to allow sophisticated emotional and logical expression yet accessible enough that even beginning students can basically vocalize their thoughts after just a couple weeks of study. Bhatia does a fine job of really organizing this grammar in the right sequence, explaining the niceties of Hindi syntax while taking some of the language's trickier aspects (e.g. postpositions, as in Japanese, participles, causatives, the oblique) and making them seem eminently manageable.

(3) Pronunciation, often neglected in self-teaching language books, gets more than a cursory treatment here, an asset not to be downplayed!

(4) The tape/CDs have a wealth of spoken material and can be conveniently played at home, on the road or on the plane or train or bus.

(5) Bhatia's book, as the series title suggests, really focuses on Hindi as a colloquial idiom. While this may at first seem trivial, it's a very important asset to his book! In India, there are in effect two forms of Hindi-- the formalized literary version used in ceremonial and official circumstances, and the popular "Bollywood" Hindi that's used on the street and in the markets throughout India and, indeed, much of the world (including in quite a few South Asian shops in New York City, where this "common Hindi" is a sort of lingua franca). It's this colloquial Hindi (very closely resembling Urdu), essentially, that's so rapidly become a world language and taken much of the world by storm as Bollywood movies and music, among other Indian exports, become so popular.

In practice, this "colloquial Hindi" isn't even entirely Hindi, but a hybrid spoken tongue with a Hindi foundation plus plenty of contributions from Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and other Indian as well as European languages tossed in to spice the mix, popular throughout the Subcontinent in its varieties. While Bhatia doesn't delve too much into the varied vocabulary of this "dialectical Hindi(ish)" language, his dialogues and idiomatic expressions do a fine job of conveying true conversational Hindi to the learner and thus providing a nice basis for communicating in the popular Hindi that's actually used between native speakers.

In its dialectical varieties, Hindi-Urdu has close to a billion speakers worldwide, may soon become a UN official language and-- along with Spanish and Mandarin Chinese-- may well be one of the "essential languages" of the 21st century as India continues its ascent. Moreover, since Hindi is a fellow Indo-European language, it has enough similarities to intrigue and delight a native European-language speaker and smooth the learning process. In fact, if you've already learned an important European language like French, German or Spanish-- or Farsi Persian or Dari, which Hindi-Urdu in many ways resembles-- you'll have a headstart in mastering the quirks and structures of Hindi, especially as Bhatia presents it.

Besides which, Hindi is a beautiful and poetic language that sings as much as it speaks, equally at home conveying complicated scientific concepts as in expressing the deepest emotions of the heart. Bhatia is an experienced and talented teacher of this wonderful language, and after just a couple months of studying you'll find yourself able to communicate at a decent level, maybe even humming some Hindi music during your lunch break.

This is a fantastic resource. I have just received my copy and already I am in love with it. It is very well-written, and strikes a nice balance between the structure of the langauge and usability. I especially like that the author is no fan of prescriptivists, and so presents "Hindi as she is spoke". I would not say that it is "better" than Snell's TYH, but it takes a slightly different approach, and is, in my opinion a great complement to the other work.

My only gripes are the way that all the devanagari is stuck at the back (grr!) and that I had to buy the book and CD separately. Even with those minuses, it is absolutely worth it, and I would rate it a must have.

An excellent book for beginners, like the title implies, it is mainly a course in Colloqial Hindi, and almost omits the Devanagari syllbary entirely. There is only one chapter on it, but that chapter is very helpful all the same. The tape that comes with the book is a necessary element; it is integrated with the exercises in the book quite nicely, so make sure you get the cassette as well. The romanisation scheme is weird, but it's not too difficult. As an introduction to spoken Hindi, this can't be beat. For a better knowledge of the Devanagari syllabary, I would recommend Snell's "Teach Yourself Hindi".