Complete Hindi with Two Audio CDs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself Language) 2nd Edition

This is the best book to learn Hindi. I have used the older version also when it first came out in 2003 but since I used it so much, it became so beat up and impossible to use so I decided to get the new one. I'm glad I did get the new one, the organization is a bit better and many of the mistakes I noticed in the first one are fixed. The content of the book is concise, Hindi was the first foreign language I tried to learn and I have learned most of my Hindi from this book and although I have used classes and other resources, my foundation really came from this book! It is set up with a starting dialogue, then vocabulary, grammar points, another dialogue and then exercises. Before you use this book, try hard to master the Hindi script (it's not very hard to learn) because after Chapter Five the book does not use transliteration. Each chapter covers a lot of grammar and vocabulary and doesn't really go into "touristy" phrases which I think is excellent. The grammar is explained clearly, the pace isn't too fast or too slow, and it doesn't use a lot of linguistic technical jargon. It is also quite a thick book and has an appendix at the end. The main highlight is how entertaining the dialogues are, the author sets it up like a story which builds up with each chapter. It follows a foreign exchange student, Pratap and his host family in New Delhi. Also the book comes with recordings and although the voices on the recordings are a little dull, it is really useful to hear native speakers. I really recommend this book for learning Hindi, if you are serious about learning and don't just want a few phrases for visiting India. The Teach Yourself company really does a great job with the South Asian language textbooks they have out, I wish they would make more!

Rupert Snell's books are terrific. I have been using the older editions, and I can't imagine using anything else to learn Hindi. The dialogues are fun to read. The language is Hindi as it is really used, although more formal aspects are discussed. If you are completely new to Hindi, I would recommend that you start with his book on the Hindi script.HOWEVER, I recently purchased a new copy of "Complete Hindi," and after using it only a few weeks, the binding started to fall apart. A complete chapter came loose. I tried taping it back together, but now the book doesn't close properly. I have taken very good care of this book, because I use it every day and I wanted it to last. If it weren't for the pages falling out, you wouldn't know that this book had ever been touched (except for copious underlining)! I am very disappointed. If it weren't for this, I would have given this book a resounding 5 stars.

I was heading to India and thought it would be fun to learn some Hindi (and spend my time on planes and trains actually learning something). Unfortunately when I put the disks into my computer, they made funny noises and then were rejected. I did not have the time to return the set and try the replacement before I departed, so I don't know if this was just a fluke or the norm for this company. Be sure to try these out as soon as you get them to make sure the disks are in working order!

I just have to give it five stars because, after about a month of using it, nothing about it aggravates me. While it is true that I also bought Introduction to Hindi Grammar (Usha R. Jain) alongside, the book is in no way inadequate in how it describes grammar.There are only 18 lessons to get you from nothing to intermediate, so pacing is important. I allocate two weeks per lesson. I listen to the dialogs every day, and I read them out loud every day. If you do this, you'll start hearing the speakers in your head saying their phrases, which makes learning effortless and frustrating cramming unnecessary. Whatever didn't stick after two weeks, I fill in with a targeted effort. Alongside, I do the grammar drills from the above-mentioned textbook. All in all, I spend about an hour every day - counting that I listen to the dialogs while exercising. Your results may vary, but after a month I still "sound out" the words quite a bit (i.e. I can read the characters, but I don't recognize words at a glance yet.) So be patient. If you stick with it, you'll observe progress.If you pay attention, you can see how the dialogs are carefully crafted to highlight certain features of the language. For example, when they introduce adjective-noun correspondence, they really make a point of using the same adjective-noun pair in both singular and plural, and to have masculine and feminine examples. So don't compare the dialogs to a Charles Dickens novel, but judge them from a pedagogical point of view. If you want high quality literature, buy that instead.Don't forget that there are a lot of Hindi resources out there. I downloaded a publicly available math book for Indian first graders, where they talk about Shapes and Space and study relationships such as "inside", "bigger", "near", etc. A gold mine...plus the pictures are so much cuter.