Comments for Melbourne Hindi

Comment on How to Vote by Bob Smith

Bob Smith — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:18:12 +0000

Thanks Peter. Nice to have the textual analysis.

It’s the first time I have seen Hindi on a how to vote card. I did not see it on any of the other cards proffered at the booth in Melbourne where we voted.

I have mentioned it to Suryanarana of The Hindu in Singapore and hope he gives it a run in his forthcoming article on the fun and games here.

Comment on How to Vote by Priya Christie

Priya Christie — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:53:00 +0000

This is really heartening, Peter. Nice to know that Hindi’s being used in the forefront of things, in something as important as an electorial system! Anyway good work on the blog, Peter! Yah bahut accha idea tha.. Isse zyada padne ko mujhe bahut rochak hai

Comment on Non-native Language teachers by elisa freschi

elisa freschi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:35:42 +0000

Quite interesting article. However, I wonder why should native speaker be ‘by default’ good language teachers. In my experience, this is hardly the case. I tried to learn modern Tibetan, Hindī and Bengali with native speakers, who did hardly more than telling me that “pen is said kalam” and so on. On the other hand, I had a great time learning German at the Goethe Institut, not because of the native speaker teachers (one of them had a Swedish mother and English as mother toungue), but because they were all professionally trained as language teachers (i.e., they earned a MA in language teaching).

Comment on Hsuan Tsang (602-664) on Sanskrit and Indic Scripts by elisa freschi

elisa freschi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:22:50 +0000

Well, what about this:
vowels (a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ṛ, ḷ, e, o, ai, au, aḥ, aṃ): 14
ka-group: 5
ca-group: 5
ṭa-group: 5
ta-group: 5
pa-group: 5
ya-ra-la-va: 4
śa-ṣa-sa-ha: 4

Total: 47 letters. I just omitted the ṝ, which has in fact been ‘created’ for the sake of symmetry, has no i.e. background and is only found in the accusative and genitive plural of themes in -ṛ (such as mātṛ, mother). Later sources would add kṣ, which is however only a compound, and ḹ, which is a never attested artificial invention, due to the want of having a symmetrical long counterpart of ḷ.
In short: a neutral observer of Sanskrit would have probably counted 47 “letters” (=pheonems, I presume).

Comment on Welcome to Melbourne Hindi by peter

peter — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:25:00 +0000

क्या हम हिन्दी में लिख सकते हैं? जी हाँ