Hindi released in beta!
I'm so excited! I've been waiting years for this moment.
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The wait is finally over! Now let’s see how long before the course graduates from beta, Jai Ganesha Deva!!!
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!!!!! IT IS HERE IT IS HERE!!!!!! The excitement, it cannot be contained!
I already enrolled, though it’ll probably take me a Bit to actually try it.
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This is sooooooooo exciting !
I have created a very rough tinycard deck for the first skill.
https://tiny.cards/decks/8ofJ5ay8/hindi-duolingo-1st-skill
And also started to create for Hindi a very very rough draft of the keyboard layout by using a spreadsheet : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hnxAmGKLI_qrTIm-YeNR8yPnJaPJlQrRgFFNsv4v6c0/edit?usp=sharing
Please also comment if you see things wrong in the keyboard spreadsheet, or can assist in filling in the blanks.
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Also, I highly recommend reading the main, and informative post about the release :
Hindi for English speakers in live in Beta
It has lots of useful and interesting information.
I've never used a course before while it's still in beta. Is it normal for the course to be released in beta with such a short tree?
Recently yes but not all of them, certain languages like Japanese and High Valyrian were released as small trees but the courses will expand in the future and Hindi will mostly likely expand when it graduates.
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I think so. I've never worked on a language in beta before but the French one updates fairly regularly. I guess this is just a first draft.
Does anyone know how to report general errors? I'm trying to learn the "letters" and none of the images of letters are actually showing up!
Hi Alavdaisere. They are appearing for me. Have you tried using a different browser? You can also trying clearing your browser cache and/or logging out and back in.
I tried logging out and logging back and clearing my cache. I don't actually think that's the problem, though. To be clear, I can see the Hindi letters when it's matching, but for the multiple choice, all I see is a dot. I think it's an html issue, as I can see the letters when I resize the page.
No, but I did put in a bug report with Duolingo. It's definitely an problem with the html. I love Duolingo, but I'm not downloading Firefox just to use it! :)
Can confirm it is working fine on Chrome Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit)
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I noticed that, but this course was 3 years in the making! I was expecting more :(
This is the first day of it being in beta. The tree will expand over time. That's what happened with the Chinese course also.
It depends of a lot of things (the quality of the course when entering beta, its length, its complexity, the speed of the volunteers to correct mistakes, etc.).
Some courses have graduated from beta after a few weeks or months. Others are still in beta after two years…
I think in part it depends on how much people care. I doubt English>Klingon will ever get out of beta, for example...
Wow, I had no idea the time could vary so much. Thanks for the clarification.
I know, this is both a terribly huge blessing and a bit of a curse. Thanks so much Hindi team!!!
This is great. Thanks for putting it together. My girlfriend's family only speaks Hindi, so it has been a priority for a while. For those who want to go a little further, the Hindi for English speakers course is also great practice. I more-or-less finished it while waiting for this, and as an added bonus the comment sections in that one are sometimes hilarious.
Also, for anyone who wants to type in devanagari, just add the Hi (devanagari) keyboard, and you can also set an option to toggle through keyboards with shift+ctrl or shift+alt. The great thing about the hindi keyboard is it maps quite nicely to english (unlike the Arabic or Russian keyboards, or at least the ones I've used):
a = ा, i = ि, e = े, u = ु, o = ो, k = क, g = ग, j = ज, etc.
Also shift gets you the aspirated variants of consonants (ख,घ,भ,ठ, etc.).
You have to get used to using the 'AltGr' button, as that gets you the the full vowel forms: अ,इ,ए,उ,ओ, and then the tricky thing is AltGr+Shift for the full forms of the long vowels: आ,ई,ऐ,ऊ, but you get used to it.
Hey, you can also make the ॐ symbol everyone gets tattooed on their backs!
Then there's the ् (the halant, or killing stroke), which maps to the x key on an english keyboard. And this is where things get really fun. Add it to a consonant to cancel out the vowel sound, and then it will combine with the next letter: क+्+ग=क्ग, च+्+छ = च्छ (like in अच्छा), etc. Here's the full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Biconsonantal_conjuncts
There are also some 'secret' ones that are not for the faint of heart:
क्ष, ज्ञ, for example.
Anyway, all this to say it's a really fun script. Go wild.
The excellent advice from zeebo7, above, pertains to Windows computers and keyboards. For those who have a Mac, you can install a Hindi-Sanskrit QWERTY layout which behaves pretty similarly, except that you type F to get the virāma. Click "Show Keyboard Viewer" under the flag icon in the menu bar, and you will see what happens whenever you click a basic character or modify it with the Shift, Option or Shift-Option key. For other Duolingo languages that require a Latin keyboard with various umlauts, accent marks and diacritics, the best choice for Mac users is to instal the ABC - Extended keyboard layout. By using the Keyboard Viewer (which is an ordinary window that you can expand to show the individual letters in a bigger font size), you quickly learn that option-6 gives a circumflex for letters like ĝ or ĥ, option-b gives a breve for a letter like ŭ, option-a gives a macron for letters like ā or ī, etc. Once you get used to it, it's much faster than picking one of the highlighted tiles with the mouse.
Hey, Duo, thanks so much for the Hindi course. Even if it's brief, a blind uncle is better than no uncle at all.
I can't access it on my phone (ios), but it works on the website.
Log in on the website, click to the left of your name, and then on "Add a new course". Scroll down and click "Hindi." The next page shows "in beta" on course progress, and should have a button above that which says something like "Start Learning".
Most of the courses in beta are available on the mobile apps. But usually they appear first on the web and then on the mobile apps a few weeks later (except for Japanese that appeared first in the iOS app).
this is fantastic. my wife and I have been anxiously waiting. I hope it is as effective as the german tree we've been using, cus that is really well put together
That seems to be a bug, probably because the first section is mostly only characters. We'll look into it, thanks.
I've finished the tree and also completed about 60% of all skills to level 5 each. I think the tips and notes would be really helpful. Things like subject gender conjugation is really tricky in Hindi and having tips and guides on it would help the learners greatly.
Additionally, are we also going to be taught the entire Devnagari letters or is whatever there is available already is all we get, I wonder.
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Have you read what is said in https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28071490 ?
Could I also suggest, that if any of you have the skills, and would like to make some posts to assist in further information about each of the skills, it could be very useful to other learners as well.
While ultimately there will be Tips and Notes, it is very useful to have multiple references to read about topics. As each of us write differently, and also each of are starting from different starting points. So different ways of explaining things can be useful to be able to refer to.
If someone does take up this challenge, don't forget it is very beneficial to self index you different posts, to also assist in other learners accessing the informative and instructive posts that you create.
Also by posting them in the forums, people can correct things and discuss issues, which also help improve the depth and quality of the information that is available.
Thanks for the link, Linda and also for the encouragement to help expand the course.
Hi, Devanagari has 47 letters (13 vowels and 24 consonants). We have covered pretty much all of them, except for 2-3 which are either too complicated in the beginning or are not needed for words we are covering now.
I have enjoyed the course and I can only imagine how hard it must be to design a course like this catering to a global target audience. So, thanks for this. I hope the tips and notes that you plan to add later will be of further help to new learners alongside those who have a grasp of the language beforehand.
Yes - I am finally a Hindi student! Happy Days!
this will be my second focus; Italian will continue to be my number 1, though :)
Finished the course. Now time to wait another 3 years for a new one :)
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Wow, that was fast. Even though it is a short tree.
How much does the course teach?
I'm a Hindi speaker and did the placement test, and it put me to the very last lesson; but I still went back through some of the lessons to check out the format. The course teaches the basics of the language very well but the tree should expand soon as it's only the first day of release.
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hint : Don't forget to check out the main post about the release, which includes addressing issues like this.
;P ( I am sooooo excited to see this course released )
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I know! I was off Duoling for a week and a half, then I came back today to find that Hindi just launched! I had been waiting a long time for this. I'm so happy.
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Is there any way to get back into the placement test? It asked me one question, I failed to figure out how to access the Devanagari keyboard, tried an English transliteration, screwed it up and was chucked directly into level one.
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Delete the language from your profile (https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204611904-How-do-I-delete-a-language-from-my-profile-) and start again.
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Oh, is that the only way? I've spent the past hour or so working through lessons - think I might as well plough on now. Thanks anyway.
do you know when it will be available one the app? for now it is only ont the laptop
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As others have mentioned, there will be all sorts of factors as to how soon it will be also released on the App. So we have not as yet been given any indication.
I am also sure they will first be waiting until the web version starts to pass in flying colors whatever tests and statistics that have been determined necessary, before undertaking the work of propagating it onto the apps. However I have no inside information on this.
I though have trust that they will be doing this as soon as they can.
Great! I've finally able to see the link for the course (couldn't yesterday, probably needed to clear my cache) and I'm now officially a Hindi student!
How do we report bugs? The audio for Basics-2 doesn't seem to work.
"Select what you hear" doesn't play anything.
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Hurray! Waited so long :-) No finally let's try to learn some Hindi befrore leaving for our 6th trip to India.
Finally!!! I was waiting for this. Im really excited to learn hindi thanks duolingo
