Product Description

SPEAK HINDI TO LEARN HINDI

The Pimsleur Method will have you speaking Hindi in just a few short, easy-to-use lessons.

Learn at your own pace, comfortably and conveniently.

No books to study. No memorization drills.

LEARN HINDI AS YOU LEARNED ENGLISH

You learned English by listening. With Pimsleur, you listen to learn Hindi. This Language Program was developed by renowned memory expert, Dr. Paul Pimsleur. His research led him to the realization that the most important use of memory is in language learning. Based on this, Dr. Pimsleur designed a learning program that works for any language. The Pimsleur Language Program is an integrated system which immerses you in the language, encouraging you to hear, understand and use the language all at the same time.

Now you can take advantage of Dr. Pimsleur's research. At the completion of these eight lessons you will comfortably understand and speak at a beginner level.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1359771 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 5
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
Dr. Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and was one of the world's leading experts in applied linguistics. After obtaining his Ph.D. in French from Columbia University, he taught French Phonetics and Phonemics, and supervised the language laboratory at UCLA. He went on to become Professor of Romance Languages and Language Education, and Director of The Listening Center at Ohio State University; Professor of Education and Romance Languages at the State University of New York at Albany; and a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. Dr. Pimsleur was a member of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Modern Language Association (MLA), and a founding member of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). His many books and articles revolutionized theories of language learning and teaching. After years of experience and research, Dr. Pimsleur developed a new method that is based on two key principles: the Principle of Anticipation and a scientific principle of memory that he called Graduated Interval Recall. This program incorporates both of these principles to provide you with the most simple and effective learning method possible.

Customer Reviews

Hindi not as good as German, Japanese
I am a big fan of Pimsleur, having purchased German (4), Japanese (3), Spanish, Hebrew, Mandarin, Russian, and Hindi. So, I have no axe to grind against Pimsleur when I say that this series is not on a par with some of the others. Why? Because the language used is archaic. The words for "Miss", "Please", and others are not a part of every day Hindi. I work with a couple of dozen native Hindi speakers and they agree, to a person, that some of the phrases that I have learned and repeated are comical. Of course it's not a total loss. I am able to speak Hindi and for the most part what I've learned is useful and fun to use. Pimsleur is a great system, the Hindi tapes are worth buying, but they are simply not as good as Pimsleur's other language products. The criticisms that I have read about the lack of grammer tutorials are specious. You and I and everyone else learned to speak long before we had any notion of grammer. If you want grammer go to school or buy a book, if you want to be fluent move to India. In the absence of that buy Pimsleur.

A good place to start...
I really enjoyed these CDs. I feel as if I've learned some useful Hindi and gotten a good start toward becoming proficient with the language. I really like the Pimsleur approach and I'm considering trying some of their other language courses.

I have only a few criticisms:

First, as other reviewers have mentioned, some of the Hindi phrases that these CDs teach are quite formal. I've had Hindi speakers tell me that the way I learned to say certain things is technically correct, but that NO ONE would actually say it like that.

The other problem is that when you're done, you're done! While this course is referred to as "Hindi 1" throughout the CDs, there is currently no path to continue learning Hindi with Pimsleur. If they released a "Hindi 2," I'd buy it.

Artificial Hindi
The language presented on the Pimsleur Hindi tapes is not ordinary spoken Hindi. It is an artificial Sanskritized version. These tapes will teach you many words that Hindi speakers will recognize but would not normally use in their own every-day conversation. Very disappointing. It seems as though someone took the transcript of the Pimsleur French or Spanish tapes and attempted a word-for-word translation into Hindi. Hindi speakers do not normally use separate words for 'please,' 'thank you,' and 'excuse me.' These sentiments are normally conveyed in Hindi through the use of verb endings, particles, etc. Hopefully Pimsleur will produce another set of Hindi lessons using 'real' Hindi sometime soon. I have used the Pimsleur tapes for Spanish and thought that they were excellent. I would like to see the Pimsleur method applied to a 'complete' Hindi course that uses normal spoken Hindi.