Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

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verdastelo
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Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby verdastelo » Sat Dec 19, 2020 8:53 am

A compilation of the courses from the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL). The courses are thorough and available in English (mostly) and in Hindi (some). To download the courses, register on the Indian government website, agree to the terms and conditions, and voila, the PDFs are all yours.

Caution: Although the courses are in English, they were never designed for foreigners. That doesn't mean Indians are aliens and anyone living outside South Asia will find it impossible to comprehend the books. All I intend to say is that the courses presuppose a knowledge of intermediate English and an Indian language (Hindi). It also presupposes shared cultural references which might or might not be familiar to the reader outside South Asia. For example, the dialogue "Whose elephant is this?" in An Intensive Course in Sanskrit and a discussion on whether prettier actresses work in Manipuri cinema or in Bollywood in An Intensive Course in Manipuri.

Another challenge can be the script and sound. Most major Indian languages have an identical sound repository, similar scripts, and similar ways to express themselves. For instance, ਕ (ka), ਖ (kha), ਗ (ga), ਘ (gha) in Gurumukhi (Punjabi) map to क (ka), ख (kha), ग (ga), घ (gha) in Devanagri. Unsurprisingly, the books don't dwell on writing and sounds much. But this can be easily remedied by looking for alphabet lessons on YouTube.

Enough from me, now you might want to watch Professor Alexander Arguelles' review before jumping in.



Assamese


Bengali


Bodo


Dogri


Gujarati (Gujarathi)


Hindi


Kannada


Kashmiri


Malayalam


Manipuri


Marathi


Nepali


Oriya (Odia)


Punjabi



Sanskrit


Sindhi


Tamil


Telugu


Urdu
[/list]


EDIT. Expanded the sections on Hindi, Sanskrit, and Tamil.
Last edited by verdastelo on Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:13 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby rdearman » Sat Dec 19, 2020 10:25 am

I hav added this to the Master list of resources.
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby willcouchman » Sat Dec 19, 2020 2:05 pm

Thank you so much for this!

I did some hunting around for some of these courses a while ago, but without much success!

According to the CIIL website, some of these courses do come with accompanying audio files, as befits their audio-lingual nature (i.e. 10 cassettes for the Intensive Course in Kannada book). I emailed the CIIL some months back, but with no reply.

I googled and apparently one can buy mp3 CD versions at a couple of random places (at least for the Kannada course), but given these books are being made free online, I wonder if the audio files will surface at some point in the future.....

Will
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby verdastelo » Sat Dec 19, 2020 3:14 pm

willcouchman wrote:I googled and apparently one can buy mp3 CD versions at a couple of random places (at least for the Kannada course), but given these books are being made free online, I wonder if the audio files will surface at some point in the future.....

Will


I will suggest you to be careful. I bought four CDs to accompany my copy of An Intensive Course in Tamil a couple of years ago, when a CIIL representative attended the New Delhi World Book Fair. None of them plays on my laptop's DVD player. I have tried two different laptops. No luck.

An alternative is to use the Devanagri transliteration which accompanies Kannada text in the Intensive and भारतीय भाषा ज्योति series. If the idea to learn one foreign script from other foreign script sounds formidable, you can try this online Kannada course from the CIIL. It has audio and if you can think of some way to pretend to be an Indian, it will cost you only 500 rupees (US $10) for 18 months of access. For foreigners, the price is US $50.

DISCLAIMER. I could never get their typefaces to display on my Linux computer. The site might behave itself on a Windows or Mac machine after you download the fonts they suggest.

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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby księżycowy » Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:41 pm

Hello, I just wanted to stop by and say that I have been very successful in obtaining some of the Malayalam and Tamil textbooks and audio cds from Exotic India. (In fact, I was the one that suggested that they start carrying the audio for some of the courses.) I did not have much issue with the cds playing, or ripping on my computer, but I could see this not always being the case.

Naturally, I've also found the pdf versions you've listed above, and have them for digital viewing as well. :P
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby Cainntear » Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:37 pm

verdastelo wrote:It has audio and if you can think of some way to pretend to be an Indian, it will cost you only 500 rupees (US $10) for 18 months of access. For foreigners, the price is US $50.

Given that a great many of us live in countries where average wages are 5 or more times the Indian average wage, it would seem unnecessarily mean of us to try to cheat the system...
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby samothin » Sat Jan 09, 2021 12:45 am

I just found a collection of dramas on YouTube with soft Closed Captions in both Tamil and English. But this is from Singapore, so I could not testify on the difference of Tamil used there.
https://youtube.com/c/mediacorpdrama
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby księżycowy » Sun Nov 06, 2022 1:50 pm

I just happened across a new Kannada textbook/grammar today: https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/catal ... 36?lang=en
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby księżycowy » Tue Nov 15, 2022 6:45 pm

Has anyone been able to login to the Bharatavani website recently? It seems it needs an SMS code now to verify your account, and I haven't been able to get around that yet.
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Re: Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Courses Available for Download

Postby chamanbahaar » Sun Apr 02, 2023 10:15 pm

Hello,

Unfortunately, I saw this post a bit late. I tried opening the links but they did not open. I checked out the Bharatvani site and now they don't have any option to download the books. You can only visit their website and read the book online through their javascript reader. You don't get any download options or view the file in adobe acrobat reader. That's the irony. :| :(
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