Customer Reviews

Rosetta Stone: Hindi Explorer

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my spare time I work on developmental aid projects in India. Although it's pretty easy to get along in English, I wanted to grasp at least a little bit of one of the main languages from India. The Rosetta Stone course Hindi did the trick for me. It's fun, it's easy, it's fast. Without one word of help in an other language, this visual and interactive program whisks you through the basics in no time. My Indian friends loved it. Because of the alphabet being different from ours, there are no writing excercises available. It would help if at least a overview of the Hindi Alphabet and a sound description was added to the course. But still I can't wait for a complete 92-lessons-course to become available.

mei thori si hindi bol sakta hu (i can speak a bit of hindi) and knowing full gujarati i guess this program is somewhat useful for me because i only got it to expand my hindi vocab (that in itself was a mistake) as my foundations are solid.

it starts off simple enough going through boy/girl/cat/dog/man/airplane etc. basic vocabulary words which for beginners is good. but moving beyond that as far as defining/teaching sent. structure with pronouns, prepositions, etc--there are no thorough/proper explanations. it fails miserably. mere/mera/meri (my) ap ka (you form.), us ka, yeh (he/she/it near speaker), voh (dist.), ke sath (along with), ko (to), hum (we) etc...was rosetta "stoned" while writing this program? for example, it has a picture with a boy and a dog and the sentance will read "larka aur kuta" in hindi script (btw DO NOT EXPECT TO LEARN TO WRITE ANYTHING IN HINDI USING THIS PROGRAM unless you are like good will hunting when it comes to grasping concepts) and you click on that picture among 4. never is a proper explanation of "aur" (which by the way means "and") provided--so your average beltway american could think it meant along with, beside, etc. this is just one example. there are many verb tenses in hindi and they must agree in number/gender. many are irregular. for example, to say "i go" (janna) you would say "mei jata hu" and to say "i am going" you would say "mei ja raha hu" (in other words "raha" is the "ing" way of saying something in hindi. now granted the pictures show a guy jumping or "in action" when having to pick but that's it. lesson 2 doesn't ever explain this semi "advanced" verb conjugation but rather just "goes with the flow." that means your average non-indian learning this will have difficulty figuring out what is going on. also, once you remember certain words (like horse = "godo") then when the time comes to click the picture you might just click the one witht he horse, not understanding verbs, etc. they have other practice exercises w/out pictures but, again, don't expect to learn to write/read. alphabet is not exactly 26 easy to write letters separated by spaces if you get my drift...

in short, what i'm trying to say is that this program will "teach" you phrases (many of which are useless as a beginner (i.e. teaching "girl on a horse" INSTEAD of teaching "what is your name" (ap ka nam kya hai?)) through MEMORY. There exists no cognitive and logical development. no systematic progression of sentance structure. i have not gone through the whole program's 22 lessons but through several. but i stick by my story as far as far as proper teaching and content that is lacking. phir milege (see you later).

Using this software is an excellent way to learn a foreign language. I would recommend this software to somebody who has had some exposure to Hindi before, and somebody who can read Hindi. Or this software would be ideal for somebody who has access to a person who reads and writes in Hindi, this is because many of the lessons use the Hindi script, and thus require some reading recognition. I liked this software, and I wish there were more Hindi lessons.

I've just spent my first 15 mins with this CD and I must tell you it is amazing. This is how a language should be taught. The method is absolutely revolutionary. This really is how we must have learned language as children. Try it and I think you'll be very pleased.