Lesson #66: हाथी की मित्रता - The Elephant’s Friendship
I’m the first to admit that this blog is lacking in material for listening and speaking practice so today we’re going to do something completely different to help and improve our Hindi listening skills!
Below is a short youtube video, telling a little story of an Elephant. I want you to watch this video and to try and understand as much as you can; see what words you can pick out and see what phrases you recognise. There’s probably going to be a lot you won’t be able understand, so please don’t panic if you get lost. This really isn’t a test, I just want you to get used to listening to real spoken Hindi. Do you think you’re ready?
हाथी की मित्रता haathee kee mitrtaa - The Elephant’s Friendship
The video has the narration in Hindi at the bottom, however the font size is quite small so I do apolgise. If you find it too difficult to read then click on the video and it will take you to youtube where it will play on a bigger video.
How was that? Difficult? Confusing? If so, don’t worry. We haven’t covered most of the grammar and sentence structure yet, so you’re bound to get confused.
But, and this is the important part, did you recognise any words you know? Listen through to it again. What Hindi words that you know can you hear? Did you get the general idea of the story? Watch it once more!
To help you a little, here is a glossary of a few of the Hindi words in the video. Watch it again and see how many times you hear these words;
हाथी haathee Elephant
मित्र mitr Friend
बनाना banaanaa To make - This verb is used in the future tense a few times (which we learnt in Lesson #53)
कोई koee Any
सकना saknaa Can - We learnt this verb in Lesson #64.
था / थे / थी thaa / the / thee Was, Were - We will learn about these words in Lesson #69.
गया gayaa Went
I hope that went ok for you! Remember I don’t expect you to be able to understand the video completely, this exercise is really to help you with your listening skills and to see if you can recognise words being spoken.
