~Charu Chhitwal from Ketchup Moms
Hindi is my mother tongue yet I am not very proficient at writing it. Sadly, I am not alone. So when mothers like me are faced with assisting our kids with their Hindi homework, what do we do? Well we hunt out the best Hindi Language Resources, so our kids learn Hindi better than we did.
Today even an average farmer, in the remotest village of India, aspires for his kids to attend an English-medium school. In the metros a foreign language like Spanish or French is fast catching-on. So Hindi is competing with the worldwide acceptance of languages like English along with the several regional languages within India. Thankfully, in the recent years, it is slowly yet steadily gaining back some ardent fans.
Interesting Facts about Hindi
- The official language of India is spoken by almost 550,000,000 people.
- Hindi is also known as Khari Boli or Khadi Boli, it belongs to the language family of Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Central zone, Western Hindi, Hindustani.
- The word “Hindi” came from the Persian word “Hind,” meaning “Land of the Indus River.”
- My favourite Hindi Tongue-Twister: Kachcha Papad, Pakka Papad.
Learn Hindi for Kids: Web Sites and Apps
My 5yrs old twins are learning to read and write Hindi and English at their school. We read books for them in both the languages. Practice sheets, language crafts, songs and movies are some other ways we keep their language-learning interest intact. Here are some valuable resources for Hindi for kids and beginners.
Hindi Gym
Hindigym.com is an interesting and interactive website for Hindi learners. Navigation-friendly and very useful.
- Free worksheets ranging from Hindi reading and writing practice to board games and puzzles
- Bilingual Books easily available on Amazon
- Fun with Hindi Blogs
Akhlesh.com
Akhlesh.com is a complete Hindi World in itself. Apparently the man behind this site, Mr. Akhlesh Agarwal was an expat in Singapore and faced Hindi resource-crunch for his kids. So he built this amazing resource for anyone who wants to learn or teach Hindi.
- Free printable worksheets
- Audio resources for poems, patriotic songs etc
- Charts covering animals, body-parts etc
- Bilingual source that makes reading and learning Hindi extremely easy for beginners.
Hindi Kids App
Hindi Kids App is available on Google Play, this android app makes learning Hindi literally, child’s play.
- Practice games for letter writing
- The picture/words are accompanied with sounds to learn correct pronunciation
- Colourful and very kid-friendly
Learn Hindi from Books
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Tulika Publishers
300 books are available in English, and most titles are also available in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. Plus, there are bilingual books paired with English available in eight Indian languages.
One example from Tulika: Watch Out! By Shamim Padamsee, translation by Veena Shivpuri. A Sweet Story about lion cubs playing in the jungle, inspired by the endangered Asiatic lion in the Gir forest, Gujarat.
Pratham Books: Audio Files
Pratham Books is a non-for-profit organisation that is encouraging kids to read books in different Indian Languages including Hindi. Under a great initiative for making stories breakthrough any barriers of disability, they even made audio book files.
Explore the website for more resources on Hindi is a very rewarding thought.
Learn Hindi in Movies for Kids
Hindi Films or Bollywood Movies: For the uninitiated India is big on cinemas. And in the Hindi Cinema World we make almost 1000 movies every year, if not more. The Hindi cinemas is very popular outside India too, especially in places like Russia, America and Saudi Arabia. Watching fun movies can be a great revising activity for the language learnt.
Some good movies to watch with kids are:
Taare Zameen Par
English Vinglish
Iqbal
Bhootnath
Most Popular Comics in Hindi
We grew up on a healthy diet of books both English and Hindi. While Archie’s, Tin-Tin and Asterix were super popular, in Hindi we had some gems too.
Chacha Chaudhary
Panchatantra Ki Kahaniya
Learn Hindi with TV Series for Kids
Again, your knowledge of this wonderful language will open doors to such wonderful stories in India. Here are my top 3:
Mowgli- The Jungle Book
Malgudi Days
Little Krishna- Vrindavan ka Dulara
Online Hindi Classes for Kids
Each day I discover something new about my mother tongue. Hindi is a beautifully simple language. We read it just the way we write it. There are no silent words for example. It is the fourth most spoken language in the world and is even spoken outside India in places like Mauritius and Nepal amongst others. I am trying to re learn Hindi along with my twins and finding pride in doing so. And I hope that my kids grow up more familiarised and in love with this rich language. As for now goodbye, or “Namaste!”
What do you think? I love to hear from my readers:).