Huh, I would have expected given the Indian government’s goals they’ve had for a while about Hindi as a national language, there’d be more “Learn Hindi for English speakers” materials, at least targeted at non-Hindi-speaking Indians, given English is the 2nd most common language (albeit as a 2nd or 3rd language). Do they teach Hindi primarily through regional languages then? Or has it been going on long enough that even in non-Hindi regions it’s permeated enough that it can be treated as a native language?
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They enforce the language as a compulsory subject for students at all levels (except high school I think), even in the south. Unfortunately, that’s why I don’t have good resource recommendations - I was pretty much forced to memorize everything at a young age, which came at the expense of completely neglecting my native language. 
That’s also why you’ll probably see a lot of older adults in non-Hindi-speaking cities struggle with Hindi, whereas people from my generation and the ones after are better at it.
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bungakushoujo's personal indian movie corner
Bungakushoujo here for the drama and the takes
You’ve probably vaguely heard of DDLJ or seen it referenced, it has a very famous last scene involving the heroine running after a train which gets referenced constantly in romance movies, and in some western ones too.
The actors in it are Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), here he is in the 90s full of boyish charm:
And Kajol:
DDLJ is very very famous and was very influential, and they did a bunch of romcoms together as a pairing afterwards. Unfortunately it still sucks really bad. Which is sad because I can’t even enjoy kajol wearing adorable 90s fits.
Now you know!
indian movie corner
omggg how do we have the same taste this is great
I haven’t seen it! I’ll tell my partner to put it on the list for indian movie night.
edit: they said it’s already on the list 
i’ll let you know when we get to it!
OMG ponniyin selvan, no i actually haven’t watched it yet!! but i know it haha, my partner actually was reading ponniyin selvan (in english) last year or something? before the movies came out. i think they’ve watched the movies already but we just haven’t watched them together yet because these historical epics are such a time commitment hahaha but i do love a historical epic 
the costumes are so delicious. i’ll let u know for sure when i watch it!
The only one of these I’ve seen is Om Shanti Om, but tbh that movie was so cute and fun! Actually a really good underrated movie is Rangeela, which came out like the same year as DDLJ but is wayyyy more progressive in its themes. It also has a movie-industry theme because the main girl is trying to be an actress.
Love all the conversation happening in here before I even get to any studying This is great!
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Oh my, I have my own corner!
I have indeed seen this before!!! Now I know! 
Okok it all makes sense now, the abbreviation was throwing me.
Even though you said it sucks, I kinda wanna watch it now. Your recommendation had the opposite effect!
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You can watch it as long as you agree to listen to my rant about all the reasons I dislike it afterwards. Although watch me say all this and then you really like it hahaha.
But it is very influential to the genre so it’s one of those things that you have to watch to understand the other indian romcoms that come after it, kind of like watching Halloween (1979) to understand slasher movies. So worth a watch for the culture.
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That sounds like a deal! 
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The most famous Indian movie here is probably Ek Tha Tiger, but despite it being reasonably successful according to Google, it’s not because people here actually watched it, but instead because there’s a fight scene on some trams in Dublin which is very amusing if you know the local geography. Though I suppose teleporting trams would improve our public transport…
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indian movie corner
I love it!!!
woohooo I’m so excited for ya’ll to watch it!!! can’t wait to hear your thoughts 
oh that’s great! the books are very loved here. I tried reading it in eng but felt bad cause I can read it in tamil right? (RIGHT?) and then i tried reading it in tamil and realised it’s an entirely different language altogether (as in, it’s more traditional - imagine using only 敬語 in a novel) 
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first update!
Ok, after chit chatting so much about how I will learn Hindi I figured I better actually get started. (But isn’t talking about language learning on the internet basically the same as doing it??)
I loved bungakushoujo’s anecdote in her log about learning kanji slowly and thoroughly from the kanken step books:*
And that got me all fired up for slow and sustained growth!! 
*I want to do the same thing with the kanken step books so bad, but i gotta stop trying to add stuff to my Japanese routine. ok japanese digression over
I decided to choose one character/syllable per day to practice. Starting with ‘ka,’ which has a vowel pronounced in the middle of the mouth, unlike the Japanese ka which is brighter. [cut to me in my car like 
ka … ka]
I downloaded some worksheets and printed them out to practice at work.
Yayy, so satisfying!!!
But… I need more…
Ok, I think I know that one now.
I could seriously sit down and learn scripts for languages all day, which is why I have to restrain myself with Japanese; it would be easy for me to start practicing Japanese handwriting like a madman and end up not spending any other time interacting with the language.
I still had like 2 hours left of work at this point so I was starting to think I should have chosen two syllables to learn instead of just one. But I couldn’t remember what the next syllable my textbook introduced was, so instead I copied out a page of the Japanese book I was reading.
as you can see, I don’t know how to write any kanji… another reason I need the kanken step books
Then I got home and was taking a look at my textbook to see what the next syllable would be and…
Hold on!! The textbook stroke order has the little left loopy first, but my worksheet had the center line first! The worksheet… lied?? Or maybe stroke order just isn’t as important in this script as it is for kanji. 
That’s all for now, tune in next time to see more pictures of my kindergarten handwriting as I slowly learn this script. 
Indian movie corner
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whispers you could also just start an anki deck based on them and do one new card a day like me, we could be study buddies…
I’m feeling very spiritually connected to you right now
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my क has never looked like that wow
textbook what now?? I don’t think I’ve ever learned stroke order for Hindi. As you said, maybe the purpose of it is to help you learn how to write rather than something that’s a rule like in Japanese? (I asked my mom lol and she doesn’t remember learning stroke orders like that either)
Even for the क, we always do the middle line first before the curves. But wow, so cool to see you write it all out!! 
?? false observation, that looks perfect
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Ahhhh, so tempting! How are you making your decks? 
My textbook keeps talking about plosives and so on and I’m like wow this is just like bungakushoujo’s study log
If the only thing I had to do to learn a language was write the characters neatly, I would be an expert in so many languages hahaha it’s my favorite part
Ah, so I was overthinking it because stroke order is important in Japanese. Got it! 
Yaay, I got a trophy!
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I realized I forgot to reply to this!
I make some pretty simple cards that basically follow this format:
Front: ゆううつ
Back: 憂鬱, melancholy/depression
I try to write the kanji before flipping the card over, then I check to see if was able to write it correctly from memory.
Because the front is only hiragana I sometimes have words that are homophones, but in that case I’ll add a little hint about the meaning so I know which one to write.
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4.16.25 update…
Long time no update!! But don’t worry, that’s totally intentional, since we’re all about slow and sustained growth here.
My textbook is so funny. It’s all like,
Page 1: Here are 14 new devanagari syllables
Page 2: Ok, now that you know those, let’s learn some words
Me: wait hold on back up
So I’ve been veeeryy slowly learning 1 syllable at a time until I was done with everything introduced in chapter 1. I learned 8 consonants:
क न प म य ल व ह
(ka, na, pa, ma, ya, la, va, ha)
and 4 vowels:
अ आ ई ऐ
(a, ā, ī, ai)
As well as the mātrā forms of each vowel, which is when the vowel is pronounced with a consonant:
का की कै
(kā, ki, kai)
And, if anyone is like ‘but soggy did you go sicko mode and write all of these out like three hundred times??’
Why yes, of course I did. Because the S in Soggy stands for Sicko.
My favorite are the ones that are curly:
Also, I made this satisfying chart to illustrate my newfound knowledge:
Ok, well, now that I’ve done this much I guess I actually get to start learning vocabulary words
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omg your handwriting is so pretty I would totally frame it
i love this chart so much! we used to recite it in class ahha, that was the most fun I had learning this language
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How is the hindi going 
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I’ll post an update soon…! (after I do a bit more studying 
)
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6.5.25 update
Woohoo, I’m back! And I have a milestone to report. I’ve finished…
Chapter one of my textbook. 
I don’t really like how this textbook is structured, it’s not very friendly to the self learner. [flips pages rapidly] And I don’t see Mary and Takeshi anywhere!!
Chapter 1 taught very basic sentence structure. Hindi is a Subject Object Verb language so I was like ha, I know this already from Japanese. I’m a genius. The similarities to Japanese actually started me down the path of wondering if finding a Japanese → Hindi textbook might be a better option, because so far with the basic sentences, translating them to Japanese just feels more natural. Is this a good use of my time or do I just want Japanese resources because I’m a sicko about learning Japanese, and I want to make everything about Japanese? Who’s to say.
Here’s a picture of my homework to prove that I studied:
And with this I’ve unlocked a new way to bother my partner, by sending them pictures of random stuff around the house like ‘yeh kya hai’ (what is this).
Chapter 2 has more Devanagari to learn, so it might take a little while to get through those syllables, but if I do it in less than 6 months I’ll be at a faster pace than this chapter! Onward and upwards! 
Indian Movie Corner
Summary
This is an adorable movie with a great message about love between caste/religion/country. It would be like a 4.5/5 if it wasn’t contaminated by Salman Khan. Having to look at his cold, dead, soulless eyes took at least a half star off of the enjoyment of this movie. Do you think if you touched Salman Khan’s skin it would be cold… and clammy?
(Tamil original) An entry from the Tamil film industry (Hi prath) and good movie! I appreciated what this movie was going for, but… And I never say this about Indian movies… it needed to be longer. The plot parts felt rushed, to get to what the director actually wanted to show (long adoring shots of Aishwarya Rai with her hair blowing in the wind). I did like his take on the Ramayana and Vikram’s acting was great.
This was a rewatch. Sometimes I just wanna see like srk’s moist deer eyes while he wears a cozy sweater or something. Sad to say that this movie hits differently in the current political climate.
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Despite the loss of Marie and Takeshi, I feel like you gained a more practical narrative - based on the strong house (no messing around), and the pen comes in at number 7 (with an adjective!). Whereas I’m pretty sure you can finish Genki without getting around to a strong house. And I never found out what colour the pen was.
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You have very pretty handwriting both in Japanese, English and Hindi 
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