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Most first generation immigrants have tried to persuade their children to learn their native language. As first-generation Non Resident Indians, we tried to get our children to learn Hindi, and found ourselves handicapped by lack of proper resources. The American way to learn languages, which our children are exposed to, is through a set of fun-filled hands-on experiences where they learn their way while playing. In comparison, our children find the existing methods to teach Hindi dry and boring. When our attempts to find books and resources that will make learning Hindi equal amount of fun failed, we decided to write such books ourselves.

We were helped in this effort by our son, who developed a transliteration scheme that he used to learn the basics of Hindi himself. We took the techniques he used, combined it with funny stories that our daughter seemed to enjoy, and have come up with this set of books. These books try to teach Hindi to students using funny stories, cute and colorful characters, and a variety of activities. The goal is to have learning Hindi be a fun-filled experience, and not a tedious chore. We hope your children will enjoy these books.

Traditional Hindi learning is focused on learning the script and the rules of grammar, which rapidly becomes boring and tedious. Instead of that, we recommend a leveled approach, where the student reads short interesting stories at different level of language difficulty. Each level becomes just a little more difficult. Once the language has been mastered at one level, one can move on to the next level of difficulty. Towards this goal, we have created books that follow this leveled approach to teach Hindi script and vocabulary.

Introductory Level

The initial level is introductory where the main goal of the student should be understanding Hindi script and the proper pronunciation of the vowels and consonants. The most appropriate books at this level are alphabet books. These can be augmented with activity books which allows one to get more familiarity with the script and some basic words.

Level One

At this level, the focus of the student should be to build his/her vocabulary. The best way to build vocabulary is by reading books with simple stories that are formed by repetitive sentences, sentences that are largely similar but introducing new words gradually. Our level one books provide interesting stories created from repetitive sentences. Each book provides the sentence in Hindi, its transliteration in English, and then the meaning of the sentence in English. The transliterated line is written so that a casual reading of the sentence in English would result in a pronunciation similar to that of the original Hindi sentence.

Level Two

At level two, the student has developed a basic vocabulary, and needs to enrich it with new words. The level two books on this site contain simple stories that are composed of small paragraphs. The same principle of transliteration is followed, with the Hindi paragraph transliterated as well as translated into English. The level two books we have created follow this approach to enhance the vocabulary.

Level Three

At this level, the student wants to get more fluent with reading Hindi, relying less on the transliteration and trying to read longer and more complex stories. The level three books that we have created allow the student to build fluency by means of longer interesting stories. The transliteration and translation are provided as a fall-back mechanism, but the student should be able to enjoy the story in Hindi alone.

Beyond Level Three

Once the student is comfortable reading the level three books, he or she can move on to reading short stories in Hindi without relying on the transliteration or translation. There are various collections of short stories and magazines in Hindi that can be used beyond level three.

In addition to the leveled books, we also have some other books that introduce the culture and customs of the Hindi speaking population and India at large.

Activity Books

To make learning the basics of a language fun, activity books provide an interesting way to familiarize the children with the letters, basic words and the basic principles of grammar. We have created a series of activity books which can be used to learn the Hindi alphabet, vocabulary and grammer.

Other Languages

Our Hindi books have turned out to be very popular. Many requests from the web mentioned that they would like to have similar books in Indian languages other than Hindi. With the help of some of our friends who could help us translate the books, we have created alphabet books and activity books for learning other languages. Currently, such translated activity books and alphabet books are available for Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Urdu.