Meera

I absoutly love Viki! I spend way to much time on there 

After I become fluent in Hindi, I would like to learn Bengali. These are my two favorite languages. It is just discourging because Hindi and Bengali aren't cosidered useful to learn I'd really like to become fluent in Arabic also (but it is soo hard!!). I'd also like to get comfortable in Farsi and Turkish but i doubt I will ever get past the basics.

Ahlan wa sahlan ya qamra!

Welcome Qamra! Nice to meet you.

I like Nancy Ajram, Amr Diab, Tamer Hosny, Myriam Fares, Haifa, Najwa Karam, Elissa, Fayrouz, Om Kalthoum, Sabah, Khalid, Rachid Taha and Marwoun Khouri. I also like Khaleeji music alot but I don't know the names of the singers.

Hello Preya! I love Guyana. I have two freinds from Guyana and we actually talk in Hindi a lot, I don't know how they learned but yeah. There is a huge Guyanese community where I live so I work with Guyanese people a lot and go to resturanst owned by Guyanese people. We also have a Guyanese radio that broadcasts here, they play mostly old Hindi songs but the station is owned by Guyanese. The only word I have picked up from them is Ras 

But Guyana is such a beautiful country and the people are so freindly!

That is so sad I am in USA and even here I've noticed Universties taking away languages because not enough people were interested in them. My university took away Russian, Portugusse and Vietnamese.

One thing I want to stress is that one should NOT learn Japanese from watching Anime or typical overrated movies and TV shows. A lot of the times, the voice actors talk in a way that is different from the way people usually talk in Japan, so your pronunciation may be very off from the norms if you try to only learn how to say words from anime and such. It's suggested to learn pronunciation from native speakers and expert polyglots; knowing how to pronounce the syllabary is enough for you to piece it together yourself.

Do they speak diffirently on radio and live action movies too?

Hey guys I hope this is right place to as this question. Can you guys suggest some good singers and bands in Japanese? The only ones I know of are  Ayumi Hamasaki, Meiko Kaji and a band called Perfume. When I was looking on youtube for Japanese songs a lot of them sang in English?  :shy:

Haha Meera You are truly rocking girl!

AR Rahman, the academy award winner for Slumdog Millionaire is Tamil too! I recommend you listen to his songs! They are all truly international yet have their roots in Tamil 

Yes I love Ar Rahman! He is a genius!  :millionaire:

That is so true! And I hope you have loads of fun learning the language! 

Yes it is very fun! Also hard But oh well the harder the better to stay motivated 

Okay i will try but its not a lot

வணக்கம்! எப்படி இருக்கீங்க? ஒங்க பேர் என்ன?

I hate to be the poker, but the right sentence would be " Kal maine 'lutera' dekhi. Bahut achhi film thi. Ye meri pasandida filmon main se ek hai.

Maine aapke waakya thode sah kar die

सब ठीक है. मुझे चोर्रेच्तिओन्स चाहिए, न?  शुक्रिया जी!

You are really in a roll Meera, aren't you? I love most of these songs.

Yes I love Hindi songs  I think my ipod has 300 Hindi songs on it.

Correct statement would be...

आशा करती हूँ की सब लोग इन गानों को  पसंद करेंगे (मालूम नहीं की अगर वाक्य सही है)

बहुत शुक्रिया जी! 

मेरे परिवार नहीं मनाते हैं. लेकिन यहाँ हिंदुस्तानी लोग मनाते हैं. मुझको नवरात्री पसंद है, सोचती हूँ नवरात्री सुन्दर है. 

My favorite are Hindi films! But I also like watching Persian films and Turkish films. I have seen on  Japanese film called "Shall we dansu?" and I like Korean films too. I also like French films.

This is a cute video to learn Arabic numbers:

نشيد الارقام

Share videos teaching how to write Arabic here!

Hi Preya!! Welcome   Are you from Guyana?

You can find the Urdu and translation on this site:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urdu/umraojan/index.html

However the translation doesn't make sense a lot of times. If you want to read the book in English I suggest reading the translated version by David Matthews:

http://www.amazon.com/Umrao-Mirza-Muhammad-Hadi-Rusva/dp/8171673112/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381341388&sr=8-1&keywords=Umrao+Jaan+ada

It is by far the best translation I have come across so far.

He wrote in Urdu, but I consider Hindi/Urdu to be pretty much the same since they only really diffir in higher vocabulary. I haven't read any of his poems, but through blood sweat and tears I got through Umrao Jaan. To be honest it was such a difficult book to read, especially since the Urdu script is hard to make out sometimes. But Umrao jaan ada, I think is one of the best novels I have ever read. The writting style is fantastic and nothing feels contrived and I liked how there really were no twists or over the top drama that so many books even in English have. The whole novel feels like Umrao Jaan is sitting there with you telling her story. The only problem I had with this novel is it was confusing knowing when it was Mirza himself narrating or when it was Umrao Jaan. But the novel is fantastic.

I know he writes in Bengali, but since my Bengali isn't good engough to read anything in it. But I read Devdas and Parineeta in Hindi. I'm not sure if the translation was accurate but I really loved these two novels. I thought Devdas was excellant, it was such a simple story compared to the movie. I was surprised how diffirent the two were but in my opinion the book was way better, especially how he wrote the ending. I liked Parineeta too but not as much as Devdas. Do you guys of any other novels he wrote that were translated into Hindi?

नमस्ते सब लोग! माफ़ कीजिये, यह देर है लेकिन शुभ नवरात्री!!  :grin:

Hey Preya, do you learn Hindi too?  :grin:  Anyway I think that it depends on your level in the language, you can pick up some things with subtitles, but I don't think you can learn a whole new language just on that. You will need textbooks, grammars and workbooks and listen to native speakers and reading in the language. But it deffintly can't hurt to watch movies with subtitles, when I first started learning Hindi I watched movies with subtitles. I turn off subtitles now because I think now it hurts more than helps because I get lazy reading them and not trying to understand. But in the beggining it is a great way to hear the language and get used to it. It helps improve your accent and you will pick up on words!