jeff_lindqvist wrote:A belated welcome to the forum, Jiwon! I remember you from HTLAL. Hindi and Welsh - what a combination!
Thanks for the welcome. I also remember you from the old place.
I am only 'touching' the Welsh courses as a form of meditation that takes me away from all the hassle of my daily lives and more serious language learning, which at the moment is Hindi.
I seem to face some difficulties with Hindi orthography and phonology. The first thing that irritates me is that I have a difficult time distinguishing between short and long I's and U's. I noticed this because when I learn a word, its spelling in Devanagari does not come to me naturally. It seems that I learn the Hindi words by their sounds or transliterations, and allocate the appropriate letters to those sound values. And since I have a difficult time distinguishing short and long I's and U's I end up making spelling mistakes here and there.
So there are two problems I should try and overcome:
1. Dinstinguishing short and long vowels, especially I's and U's.
2. Acquiring Hindi vocabulary in Devanagari, not just in the sound I think I am hearing.
I did half of the exercises for Chapter 9, and while doing translation exercises, I ran into some problems with Hindi postpositions.
1. As a translation for "One day, I will tell you the full story", I wrote:
"एक दिन मैं आप से पूरी कहानी बताऊँगा।"
But the answer key says I should use को instead of से.
I know some vowels that express "speech" use से to indicate the person being addressed in the speech, so it was quite confusing to note that को is used in this instance. I should look up similar verbs (बताना, बोलना, पूछना) and make a list of postpositions that go with them.
2. The question was "I know that he will not answer my letters"
My answer was: मुझे मालूम है कि वह मेरी चि़ट्ठियों को जवाब नहीं देगा।
The answer key says it should be: मुझे मालूम है कि वह मेरी चि़ट्ठियों
का जवाब नहीं देगा।
I wonder whether my answer is grammatically incorrect or awkward in comparison to the model answer. Maybe it is something I have yet to come across, but I would really appreciate it if a Hindi speaker could explain any differences in the two sentences.