The Department of Asian Studies is glad to provide the following introductory Hindi coursebooks by Professor Emeritus of Hindi, Herman van Olphen. Click on an individual book’s cover to download it as a PDF.
The first-year Hindi course was adapted from the Gumperz and Rumery Conversational Hindi-Urdu Vol.I (Radhakrishnan Prakashan, Delhi, 1966) by supplementing the existing conversations with Hindi film songs, grammar explanations, exercises, and advertisements and other realia from Hindi newspapers and magazines. Hindi Praveshika includes an introduction to the Devanagari script and simple conversations and exercises such as might be used in a beginning Hindi class. Most of the materials date from the 1970s but the songs are available on YouTube and at this level the language has not undergone a great deal of change. Although the exercises are mostly contained within the books, there is an extra workbook that can be used with Volume I.
– Part One
– Part Two
