# Any Hindi speakers



## katieshields (Jan 19, 2012)

Hi, having recently moved here and starting working with Indian guys I would love to be able to communicate a bit better with them in Hindi. I am looking for any Hindi speakers who would like to possibly give up a bit of their spare time to teach me  I would ask the guys I am working with but their English isn't always great so would be difficult.

Or.....can you recommend any classes? I can only find private lessons which are very expensive!

Thanks


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

I would have been happy to help.... but I am in Egypt. But seriously though, you wanna learn Hindi? Most Indians speak English anyway.


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## ibkiss (Feb 1, 2012)

I can help ... 
Is there any phrase/word ,you have in mind now ... :thumb:


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## katieshields (Jan 19, 2012)

Thanks  I need to learn everything really, enough to communicate in an office environment


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## ibkiss (Feb 1, 2012)

katieshields said:


> Thanks  I need to learn everything really, enough to communicate in an office environment


hokey dokey ...... 
You can give a shout for anything in that regard or PM me


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## Canuck_Sens (Nov 16, 2010)

Hi, 

Hindi is not an easy language to learn for English native speakers. English people already have a hard time with French imagine with Hindi. However, If you are planning to stay long term I would say go for it. Most Indians speak English as Arabian pointed out. And if you are nice at work and ask people to teach some words they will end up teaching you at work. Hands on training !!!


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

I dont know why. I find this rather odd. The UK has a large population of Indians, many who are students, working in part time jobs alongside British people. No one jumps in to learn Hindi to 'communicate' better with them. Dubai probably has around the same population of Hindi speakers, as London! I cannot help thinking that this is something much more ... aham...then is being put across.... maybe trying to impress someone, or a man... ahem...


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

katieshields said:


> thanks  i need to learn everything really, enough to communicate in an office environment


....


Just an office environment?


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## katieshields (Jan 19, 2012)

ArabianNights said:


> I dont know why. I find this rather odd. The UK has a large population of Indians, many who are students, working in part time jobs alongside British people. No one jumps in to learn Hindi to 'communicate' better with them. Dubai probably has around the same population of Hindi speakers, as London! I cannot help thinking that this is something much more ... aham...then is being put across.... maybe trying to impress someone, or a man... ahem...


No, I just don't want to be ignorant to all of the new languages I am coming across, why should I expect everyone to speak the same language as me and make no effort to speak theirs??? I also want to learn Arabic does that mean I have 2 men? I am from a small town up north so although London may have a big population of Hindi speakers I have yet to get within 300 miles of them....


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## ibkiss (Feb 1, 2012)

So its certain that there's no one to impress ..... Ahem !


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## Canuck_Sens (Nov 16, 2010)

katieshields said:


> No, I just don't want to be ignorant to all of the new languages I am coming across, why should I expect everyone to speak the same language as me and make no effort to speak theirs??? I also want to learn Arabic does that mean I have 2 men? I am from a small town up north so although London may have a big population of Hindi speakers I have yet to get within 300 miles of them....


 I just wished more anglophones had the same opinion as yours. Specially in Canada where almost free services are available for those who want to learn French.

Some federal institutions in Europe want to hire Brits and they cannot because it is pretty hard to find bilingual brits.

I am not saying not to study, do it if you like but there is no point in my view if you are not staying long term


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## katieshields (Jan 19, 2012)

Canuck_Sens said:


> I just wished more anglophones had the same opinion as yours. Specially in Canada where almost free services are available for those who want to learn French.
> 
> Some federal institutions in Europe want to hire Brits and they cannot because it is pretty hard to find bilingual brits.
> 
> I am not saying not to study, do it if you like but there is no point in my view if you are not staying long term


I am staying long term tho, this is why I would like to learn. I agree, if o was only here for a few months, years then there would be no point but I have no plans to move on


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

Katie - English is one of the official languages of India. It is like learning Welsh to speak with a Welsh person who also speaks English! There is no need, really, unless you plan to move to rural India! Most Indian immigrants in Dubai would speak English....

I am not saying dont learn the language, but you need a good enough reason for it. I speak 6 languages, and I am currently doing a degree in Arabic... which is why I am in Egypt now, so I am all for language learning - but for the right reasons.


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

Also Hindi is a second language for most Indians in Dubai.... they are from South India, mostly, who speak regional languages, like Tamil and Telugu. those from different regions use Hindi, and when speaking with Pakistanis, they also use Hindi or Urdu. When you hear them speak Hindi to reach other, its most probably because its all of their second language, which they use to communicate with each other....


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## ibkiss (Feb 1, 2012)

ArabianNights said:


> Also Hindi is a second language for most Indians in Dubai.... they are from South India, mostly, who speak regional languages, like Tamil and Telugu. those from different regions use Hindi, and when speaking with Pakistanis, they also use Hindi or Urdu. When you hear them speak Hindi to reach other, its most probably because its all of their second language, which they use to communicate with each other....


Hindi is the official language of India but the part that says its their second language ... I disagree .. its their mother-tongue & on a certain note there r many who speak Hindi to each other as their first language .! 

Most of them which are from South India also speak Malayalam ,which I guess ,is much harder to learn !!!!  

@katie ... IMO ,there should not necessarily be any special reason to learn a language ..... If your heart wills so ,u should go for it girl ! :clap2:


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

ibkiss said:


> Hindi is the official language of India but the part that says its their second language ... I disagree .. its their mother-tongue & on a certain note there r many who speak Hindi to each other as their first language .!
> 
> Most of them which are from South India also speak Malayalam ,which I guess ,is much harder to learn !!!!
> 
> @katie ... IMO ,there should not necessarily be any special reason to learn a language ..... If your heart wills so ,u should go for it girl ! :clap2:



Of course Hindi is a first language for some in India - but it depends where they are from. For most North Indians, Hindi is a mother tongue and English second. In south India and in rural India, for example, the people amongst themselves speak in their regional language, like Malayalam, Telugu and the rest. The uneducated one's probably only have a grasp of Hindi, because it is a national language. In schools and at work, of course they would use Hindi as well as their language, but at home they would speak their own regional language. 

My family background is from current day Pakistan, but we do not speak Urdu, although Urdu is the national language. We are also culturally very very different from Urdu-speakers, have our own cuisine etc etc....It's the same for India, they have their regional traditions and customs (LOVE South Indian food, YUMM LOL)


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## Jynxgirl (Nov 27, 2009)

To say most speak english is a bit ?????? There are so many indian people here that speak hardly any english (at least understandable communicative manner) that I deal with on a regular basis. Learning hindi seems like a no brainer if you believe you will be here long term. Same with arabic. It just will open up so many doors. Good luck!


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## pamela0810 (Apr 5, 2010)

A lot of Indians speak better English than the native English speakers Jynx. It's just the accent that does them in unfortunately and because you do not understand their accent, does not make them bad English speakers. I don't get it, there are so many Indians in Dubai that hold very steady & well paying jobs, have a great education and can hold intellectually stimulating conversations with people from all backgrounds, yet all the Western people put us inside this one box with the attitude that we are inferior to them. We are a very intelligent race where even an uneducated person can speak a minimum of 2 languages (more than the average American or British person) yet everyone puts down the Indian because they think they are superior...only because they speak English with a better accent. I'd like to see a native English speaker hold down a conversation with someone from an entirely different country in an entirely different language...that would even out the playing field.

Rant over 

Katie, good on you for wanting to learn Hindi. Unfortunately, I can't point you in the right direction but good luck and if you need any help with phrases, etc I'm here to help


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## Tropicana (Apr 29, 2010)

pamela0810 said:


> A lot of Indians speak better English than the native English speakers Jynx. It's just the accent that does them in unfortunately and because you do not understand their accent, does not make them bad English speakers. I don't get it, there are so many Indians in Dubai that hold very steady & well paying jobs, have a great education and can hold intellectually stimulating conversations with people from all backgrounds



i dont think its a matter of accent alone. Accent aside, many Indians in blue collar/lower white collar jobs do not speak English in a manner, which would be understood by most native speakers. 

Its not their fault because it is a 2nd or 3rd language to them. 
But what complicates things is that many Indians (and South Asians) who are definitely not strong in English (as in they dont understand any words beyond basic level, have absolute zero sense of sarcasm/idioms), claim they are "fluent" in English. 


As for educated Indians, yes there are plenty of them in Dubai and many of them are very good in English and may even have clearer accents than someone from Yorkshire. And yes, it is very annoying when all "Asians" are put in some sort of preconceived box of not knowing proper English.


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## Tropicana (Apr 29, 2010)

For the OP:

There are 2 types of 'Hindi/urdu" in Dubai

1) The conversational Hindi/Urdu spoken by all sorts of people from Pathan drivers to Indian workers , most Iranians in Dubai know this Hindi and in fact many Arabs do know few basic words as well. This version of Hindi conists of a vocabulary of probably 200 words, its very coarse and the wide variety of people in Dubai speaking this version means syntax/grammer will be often wrong.

2) Actual Hindi which is common in North India and is spoken by many North Indians/Mumbai natives in Dubai. 

In all probability you can learn the former as its not hard, but dont think that knowing Hindi better than that basic level will help you in communicating with workers whose first tongue is some South Indian language.

I myself know Hindi as a 4th language, but often use words which taxi drivers and other South Indians dont understand because its too "classical" for them


And a word of warning, given that you are a girl, there is a whole different issue of how _some _Asian men misinterpret any "over-friendly" gesture, which may include speaking their language, from a western woman as something else.


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## katieshields (Jan 19, 2012)

Tropicana said:


> For the OP:
> 
> There are 2 types of 'Hindi/urdu" in Dubai
> 
> ...


Can I just ask what you mean by over friendly gesture? I don't want to get myself in any trouble 

I appreciate all your comments and I don't mean to say all can't speak good English as quite a few of the guys can, but like wise a few can't, I just thought it may be a nice gesture to attempt it. I have also booked an English training course for them so I suppose it wouldn't be a necessity for me to learn it. I am just very interested in widening my vocabulary and what better place to do it than a place where so many different languages are heard every day


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

Tropicana said:


> And a word of warning, given that you are a girl, there is a whole different issue of how _some _Asian men misinterpret any "over-friendly" gesture, which may include speaking their language, from a western woman as something else.


You hit the nail on the head. This is precisely why I joked about her wanting to learn Hindi for a man.... cultural aspects also need to be considered


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

katieshields said:


> Can I just ask what you mean by over friendly gesture? I don't want to get myself in any trouble


Ill try and answer that in a way you would understand. Hindi is a language that isn't usually _learnt_ by anyone. Learning it doesn't have many purposes, mainly for the reasons I stated before about Indians usually knowing English. It is quite unheard of, for a businessman, for example who is doing business in India/with Indians to need to learn Hindi (if he is coming from the west) - there is no _demand_ for Hindi language, whether you look at it politically, economically or even academically - unless you want to study the history of Indian religion or something, of course, which might involve going into Sanskrit - which is the 'base' of the Hindi language. No one speaks pure Hindi anymore, much of it actually sounds like Urdu (debatable politically, since this was _one_ of the reasons for Pakistan/India partition!) and lots of Indians are educated enough to communicate in English, and also due to Indian history. Even economically, there is no reason to learn Hindi, even though it is a rising economy along with China. There is more rush to learn Chinese these days, because it is economically viable - there are major cultural and historical differences (between India and China) which make learning Chinese viable. For India, its not viable to learn Hindi, because of the simple presence of English. India was a colony of Great Britain (oh! How Great, it is!) Chinese wasn't ever really colonized the way India was and there has never been much foreign 'diluting' of their Chinese language.

The reason why European languages are popular and easily accessible to learn, is because it is politically, culturally and academically viable. We have the EU, for starters. In the UK, you will find nearly all Universities teaching a Euro language - only ONE in London teaches Hindi! There is a reason for this. 

Now considering all these things - no Indian would _expect_ you to learn Hindi. Doing so can be seen as _over-friendly_... because again considering all these reasons NOT to learn it, why would a person bother taking all the time and effort learning it? That's not me saying, but this is what people (including Indians) would think. The only non-South Asians I have seen learning Hindi, are those white-Hindu 'converts' who like to walk down London's Oxford street, drumming their drums, in their orange Brahman gear screaming "Hare Rama, Hare Krishna" or those who used to like going to Goa for their regular dope fixes. Other then this, people would usually learn it, in order to communicate with their future mother-in-law. 

Just my opinion  

If you still want to go ahead and learn - go and do it


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

pamela0810 said:


> A lot of Indians speak better English than the native English speakers Jynx. It's just the accent that does them in unfortunately and because you do not understand their accent, does not make them bad English speakers. I don't get it, there are so many Indians in Dubai that hold very steady & well paying jobs, have a great education and can hold intellectually stimulating conversations with people from all backgrounds, yet all the Western people put us inside this one box with the attitude that we are inferior to them. We are a very intelligent race where even an uneducated person can speak a minimum of 2 languages (more than the average American or British person) yet everyone puts down the Indian because they think they are superior...only because they speak English with a better accent. I'd like to see a native English speaker hold down a conversation with someone from an entirely different country in an entirely different language...that would even out the playing field.
> 
> Rant over
> 
> Katie, good on you for wanting to learn Hindi. Unfortunately, I can't point you in the right direction but good luck and if you need any help with phrases, etc I'm here to help


Pamela - I agree 100% with what you say. Although, I must say myself - as a 'native' English speaker (English is my first language) there are some major differences between 'native' English and Indian English. Now, many of those in the Indian sub-continent, who have never been abroad and still speak very well, would use very out of date and very different phrases and _idioms_ to us native speakers. Even one word would have a different meaning. For example, many use the word 'hotel' to refer to a 'restaurant', - English speakers from England (or the US/Canada) would never refer to a 'restaurant' using the word 'hotel'. There are some other such examples - I cant think of more right now, but I am sure you get my drift.... 

Accent is something that can be worked around.... and I dont see that as a problem. Its just the use of words and certain _things_ that an English speaker from the subcontinent would not know. Examples could be ... I don't know, maybe 'credit check' or 'alimony' lol. A lot of UK companies offshore their call centres to India and many, many, many people complain about this, mainly due to not the English - but _understanding_ (and other various communication problems). But I think that these can be easily _fixed_. We call it 'Hinglish' LOL


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## Tropicana (Apr 29, 2010)

ArabianNights said:


> out of date and very different phrases and _idioms_ to us native speakers. Even one word would have a different meaning. For example, many use the word 'hotel' to refer to a 'restaurant', - English speakers from England (or the US/Canada) would never refer to a 'restaurant' using the word 'hotel'. There are some other such examples - I cant think of more right now, but I am sure you get my drift....


I can think of quite a few like this example

"Backside" referring to the opposite side of a building

An Indian colleague once told me "he fired me", I thought he meant he lost his job but apparently it meant shouting at someone

The ever common "what is your good name"


But on a macro level, such different uses of words are very minor issues and people can understand each other 95% ...


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## Tropicana (Apr 29, 2010)

katieshields said:


> Can I just ask what you mean by over friendly gesture? I don't want to get myself in any trouble
> 
> I appreciate all your comments and I don't mean to say all can't speak good English as quite a few of the guys can, but like wise a few can't, I just thought it may be a nice gesture to attempt it.



I think you missed the gist of one of the main points

The colleagues in your office who cant speak good English_ are very likely to not know good Hindi as well. They may be proficient in only one Indian regional language and know very little Hindi or English. _

As you dont know Hindi right now, maybe you are unable to understand that whatever Hindi they are speaking right now is very basic indeed.


As for the over friendly part, its not a big deal if you have many Indian colleagues and speak hindi to all of them.

But if not, then it is a possibility that some men might think you are speaking Hindi because you are interested in them.

One of the few places where they might have seen a western woman speaking Hindi might be in Bollywood flicks like Lagaan, Rang de Basanti, Kisna, where the western female lead falls in love with an Indian man and simultaeously learns/ speaks Hindi.


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## pamela0810 (Apr 5, 2010)

ArabianNights said:


> Pamela - I agree 100% with what you say. Although, I must say myself - as a 'native' English speaker (English is my first language) there are some major differences between 'native' English and Indian English. Now, many of those in the Indian sub-continent, who have never been abroad and still speak very well, would use very out of date and very different phrases and _idioms_ to us native speakers. Even one word would have a different meaning. For example, many use the word 'hotel' to refer to a 'restaurant', - English speakers from England (or the US/Canada) would never refer to a 'restaurant' using the word 'hotel'. There are some other such examples - I cant think of more right now, but I am sure you get my drift....
> 
> Accent is something that can be worked around.... and I dont see that as a problem. Its just the use of words and certain _things_ that an English speaker from the subcontinent would not know. Examples could be ... I don't know, maybe 'credit check' or 'alimony' lol. A lot of UK companies offshore their call centres to India and many, many, many people complain about this, mainly due to not the English - but _understanding_ (and other various communication problems). But I think that these can be easily _fixed_. We call it 'Hinglish' LOL



  Hinglish should be made an official language in India and we can credit the Mumbaiites for that one 

I guess the reason why I am so quick to defend any statements about Indians not being able to speak proper English is because many of the Western people assume that because English is their first language, everyone else must automatically be able to communicate with them in a manner that they are accustomed to automatically. It does not always work that way. 

Then we have the expats that post here who can't even construct a proper sentence (let alone the spelling mistakes and the "should of/should have", "could of/could have", "there/their/they are" issues) but get frustrated at the Indian guy at the gas station who is not able to speak to them fluently in English. It's just unfair and a bit of an unrealistic expectation to have.


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## Tropicana (Apr 29, 2010)

pamela0810 said:


> "could of/could have", "there/their/they are" issues) but get frustrated at the Indian guy at the gas station who is not able to speak to them fluently in English. It's just unfair and a bit of an unrealistic expectation to have.



I dont know the reason but Indian gas station workers in Dubai actually speak far better English than many Indians doing lower end office jobs. That is not the case in Abu Dhabi, but i am always positively surprised that many Emarat attendants or cashier know English at a level I would expect from someone doing a "better" job

Personally I get frustrated in the rare occasions when i have to deal with workers knowing neither English nor Arabic nor Hindi. I mean I dont know any other country where you can get a job without knowing either the official language nor English nor the 3rd most spoken language in the country.


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## pamela0810 (Apr 5, 2010)

I was just using the gas station as an example but I agree with you 100%.


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## ash.naz (Jul 29, 2011)

katieshields said:


> Hi, having recently moved here and starting working with Indian guys I would love to be able to communicate a bit better with them in Hindi. I am looking for any Hindi speakers who would like to possibly give up a bit of their spare time to teach me  I would ask the guys I am working with but their English isn't always great so would be difficult.
> 
> Or.....can you recommend any classes? I can only find private lessons which are very expensive!
> 
> Thanks


Oi OI OI.. let me move to dubai will teach u thing or 2... i learnt Arabic nd Hindi meself


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