Meera

I like Premchand a lot, my favorite is Shatranj Ke Khiladi. I like his style of writting.

मुझे बॉलीवुड फ़िल्में पसंद है. मेरी फेवरेट फिल्म "कहानी", "दिल से",  "दे डर्टी पिक्चर", "३ इडियट्स", "जब  वे मेट"  और "देवदास" हैं. असल में, मुझको बहुत फ़िल्में पसंद हैं. मैं सोचती हूँ की विद्या बालन सबसे अच्छी एक्ट्रेस है, लेकिन मैं सोचती हूँ की करीना कपूर, रानी मुकर्जी और दीपिका पदुकोने भी अच्छी हैं. ज़रूर, अमितभ बच्चन, शाहरुख़ खान, आमिर खान सब कुछ अच्छे हैं!

कल रात मैंने "घनचक्कर" देखा। अच्छी फिल्म है,  विद्या बालन और इमरान हाश्मी के परफॉरमेंस कमाल थे! 

Yes you're right, they're Khaleeji and what they meant was "let's sit down". You seem to know a lot about Arabic since you know about the numbers and the letters.

Meera, you're right too, I'm from the Maghreb region (Morocco) and we do use g in most cities but our accent is totally different, you might wanna consider it a language. By the way I just noticed that you speak Arabic, I'm glad to have you here, both of you 

Haha Salaam Alaikum Joedirt!, No I don't speak Arabic fluently. I took it at university for four years but I'm no where near fluent.

I'm not sure this is a good idea, if people are going to learn Arabic, they better go for the official Arabic language which is spoken in the whole Arab word. These different accents and sub-languages (is this a word?) will only make it hard and confusing for them... Great links though 

Yeah but some people are more interested in the dialects that's why I posted it here. Also most universities teach either Egyptian/Levantine along with MSA (they usually use a popular book called "Al kitaab," which teaches MSA along with these two dialects ), so people who are studying formal Arabic may be interested in the dialects also.

Yes I totally agree about the show "Qabool Hai". Yes, on the other hand spoken Hindi does use many simple common Persian and Arabic words like "kitaab", "jaadoo", "kaghaz", "avaaz", "darwaza" etc. Formal Urdu uses even more of these words.

Yeah a lot of words were passed from Persian and Arabic into Hindi. The phrase Shadi-Shuda which is widely used in Hindi comes from Persian. Maybe not the "shadi"part but shuda comes from the Persian verb "shodan" to become. I know some "purist" Hindi speakers will try to substitute the Persian words for Sanskritic ones, for example they will say "pustak" for book instead of "kitaab" but I don't think it's that common. 

I studied Hindi by myself (and Ironically it's my best foreign language after English) and Bengali also by myself. But I took French and Arabic in school. All other languages I tried to learn have been on my own (and I wasn't so successful at it ).

Yeah for me it is a hobby but I eventually would love to work doing something with languages but I think the prospects of that isn't very good.

These are really good ones! Thanks for sharing them.

That's about all the Tamil I know

Fun with Arabic

http://www.funwitharabic.com/

Writing Arabic

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/lc/arabic/alphabet/index.html

Speak 7 Arabic

http://arabic.speak7.com/

Babel Arabic

http://i-cias.com/babel/arabic/index.htm

These are courses/websites to learn the various Arabic dialects

Syrian Colloquial Arabic Course

http://www.syrianarabic.com/

DLI Egyptian

https://jlu.wbtrain.com/sumtotal/language/DLI%20basic%20courses/Egyptian%20Arabic/

Speak Moroccan

http://www.speakmoroccan.com/

Gulf Arabic

http://www.gulfarabic.com/

FSI Courses- It has Levantine and Saudi

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Arabic

ABC Lebanese

http://www.abcleb.com/

AREG

http://arabic.colegioo.com/

(This has MSA and Egyptian)

Lebanese Arabic Learning Material

http://web.archive.org/web/20091028050420/http://www.mdstud.chalmers.se/~eldada/arabic.html

Arabic Online

http://www.arabiconline.eu/

Madinah Arabic

http://www.madinaharabic.com/

Arabic Class

http://www.arabicclass.com/

DLI MSA course

https://jlu.wbtrain.com/sumtotal/language/DLI%20basic%20courses/MSA/Basic%20Course/

Technically  standard Urdu gets it's higher vocabulary from Persian and Arabic while Hindi gets it from Sanskrit. However I think a lot songs use Persian-y  Urdu because it often sounds more poetic. In my experience many Hindi speakers can understand the higher Urdu vocabulary (I guess from songs)  but Urdu speakers can't understand the higher Hindi vocabulary. I don't think Hindi speakers use these higher Urdu vocabulary in everyday speech. (I could be wrong) But when I watch Hindi serials and news programs I don't hear them. However, if the show revolves around Muslims, for example the show "Qabool Hai" I often hear more Persian words.

I'm not sure about the bank situation but I think they should have a Hindi option. However I see online especially in the youtube comments and on forums that Hindi and Urdu speakers always transliterate the Hindi/Urdu and I wish they would use the script more.

I like using Namaste. Although my Indian friends laugh at me when I use it because they say "it's so formal" 

Well there was an uproar in most of the non-hindi speaking states last time they tried (particularly in Tamilnadu), so there are not going to do it again. Moreover I don't even think it needs further help. Most government operations at state level are carried out in Hindi and it is still spoken by enough people. The so called 'English snobs' are a product of the systems in large cities. Most of India is not like that.

Yeah I'm glad the government doesn't force Hindi on the southern states like Tamil Nadu, I think it is awesome India has so many languages and encourages their regional languages. So many countries try to oppress their regional and minority languages.

I think it is Khaleeji, because I think they are only ones who use g for qaf but I've heard people in the Maghreb region switch between gaf/qaf too so I'm not sure.

Thank you, Linguaholic

Even though I haven't learned it fully, I'm going to say Hindi is the easiest for me, I think just because I like the language a lot and I am motivated to learn it. I learned English when I was very young and first move here, so it was very easy for me to pick up.

Here's a really interesting site with lots of videos:

https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/

It has grammar explanations as well as short movies that are great for practicing listening. There are also vocabulary segments, some games and cultural quizes (that are quite difficult sometimes!).

This site is amazing! Thanks so much for sharing it! This site makes me want to start Japanese now

I'm more interested in speaking and vocabulary building at the moment.

Hey Kristi, if you are not interested in writing Japanese at the moment I suggest an audio course called, "Speak Japanese", it only focuses on speaking and uses everything in romaji. It comes with three or four cds with a tiny booklet with the transcriptions. I think it is quite fun to use too:

http://www.amazon.com/Speak-Japanese-Confidence-Three-Audio/dp/0071664637/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1380132223&sr=8-14&keywords=speak+japanese

There is also "Get started in Japanese" which teaches basic Japanese also using romaji, it comes with two audio cds but you can also get the book without the audio. I haven't finished the book yet but from what I have gone up to it's good. There is also "Complete Japanese" by the same company, that uses romaji but also teaches the scripts but I think that course goes up to intermediate. I have it also but have only used a couple chapters and it seemed pretty good even for a beginner.

http://www.amazon.com/Get-Started-Japanese-Two-Audio/dp/0071749780/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380132329&sr=8-1&keywords=Get+Started+in+Japanese

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Japanese-Two-Audio-CDs/dp/0071747850/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380132651&sr=8-1&keywords=Complete+Japanese

If you want to seriously study Japanese, I suggest getting Genki, I actually was signed up for a Japanese class a couple years ago and it ended getting canceled but I got the book before hand, and decided to keep it in case I took it again and the book was Genki. Again I haven't finished it but it is really good if you want to go really deep into Japanese. However after a couple of chapters it just uses the scripts.

http://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Edition/dp/4789014401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380132716&sr=8-1&keywords=Genki

There is also a new course by Living Language for Japanese, I don't have it for Japanese, I have it for Arabic, but I really like it. It is setup like a workbook and has tons of audio.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Language-Japanese-Complete-Edition/dp/0307478653/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380132809&sr=8-1&keywords=Living+Language+Japanese

I'm no expert in Japanese and I really don't know much about the language but I hope this helped a little.  :grin:

I haven't started Korean, but it's on my very long list of languages I love KPOP, and Korean dramas and I also like some Korean movies. Here in Philadelphia we get two free Korean channels and for some reason I really like watching them and I like how Korean sounds.

Yes, I think many Eastern Indian languages have lost the gender system. Bengali verbs do not even have a plural distinction, so they say "Ami khai" (I eat) and "Amra khai" (We eat). Compare "She khay" (He eats) and "Tara khay" (They eat).

Bengali makes not difference between "eats" and "eat" unlike Hindi which has a plural and gender differences in all verbs.

Yeah and I have noticed in simple sentenced they like to drop the "to be" verb. Like "ini ke?" "Ini amar baba" lol

This is true with any most languages But I like Delhi Hindi and Mumbai Hindi. I like Delhi Hindi because that's the dialect my books teach and I like Mumbai Hindi because I think it sounds cool and funny

It's a pity that our own Indian government is not supporting it.

Yeah I think so too :(Maybe they just don't want people in the south to get upset if they support Hindi?