6 week challenge: Hindi

Hi all. I’ve had a bit of an extended absence from blogging lately, but I’ve returned from holidays. I plan on bringing some new insights from my new project – Hindi.

I’ve joined the 6 Week Challenge that started on August 1st. For those who haven’t heard about it, it’s a game we play to keep our motivation up through a little bit of friendly competition. There’s a high score list, and we each tweet the amount of time we’ve spent studying so that we can gain some motivation by seeing what other people are doing.

I don’t have any specific goal with regard to my Hindi skills after these 6 weeks, but rather a numerical goal for my work. I’d like to average 4 hours per day of language study during this 6 week period, and most of that work will be on Hindi. No matter where I end up, it’ll be far from where I am now (which is almost nothing).

Currently I can read and write the Devanagari script sorta ok, and I know a few words of basic vocab. Previously I’d worked through the first few chapters of Hindi ohne Mühe (the German Assimil book for Hindi). Throughout the Challenge, I’ll be working on both Assimil and Teach Yourself Hindi, since they both seem to have plenty of basic content.

At the start I’ll be focusing mostly on vocab, and picking up some of the grammar along the way. I’m trying to find more sources of audio to listen to, but so far I just have one mediocre audiobook and some online radio stations to listen to.

One thing I’ve noticed so far is that it feels a lot more challenging than the other languages I’ve worked on in the past while, except polish. It feels about the same as polish in terms of vocabulary distance; some words are similar or guessable, but most are totally unknown to me.

I have to remind myself that each moment spent on it and each new word learned is just as important as the last, and that there’s no need to think about all the work ahead of me. All I need is consistent work each day on whatever chapter I’m on, and I’ll get there where I get there.

If anyone knows where I can find some Hindi novels, I’d really appreciate it!