Hindi Hub Articles


 

 

I was challenged to learn a new language for the first time in school. As our education system requires, every student should learn two foreign languages. Depending on the school, the students were learning English and French (as mine did) some of them English and German, and some of them English and Italian. I loved English (can’t say the same about French)!!! I tried hard to learn it. Believe me, this was a challenge in a class with 30 students and only one teacher! I learned mostly from books, reading and writing… and surprise, when the moment came to talk in English, I couldn’t find my words!!! Did you have the same problem? I know many friends who had the same experience. Some of them learned English with a dictionary and phrase books, and some of them joined English classes. Few of them became fluent in the new language fast, but most of us… we were trying and trying really hard.
After many years, moving to India, I was forced to learn Hindi. A difficult language!!! Different sounds, different script, and once again learning from books did not work. I’ve tried for some time, and reached a beginner level. I was able to survive, but I wasn’t content because of the inability to share my deep feelings and experiences with my Indian friends. Miscommunication due to the lack of language knowledge made life really difficult sometimes. In that moment I learnt about OnSite Language Services, an immersion language learning program which helps English/Spanish speaking people to learn Hindi/Urdu and other Indian languages. Its motto is “Immerse to Converse”, because they believe that immersion is the best way to learn a new language.

The principles of OSLS are natural, and yet I haven’t thought about them! Let’s learn as children do! What does it mean? Children learn through their everyday experience not through lessons; they acquire language which they need to use; they speak before they write and read. Through OSLS you become a child again; you learn to listen to the new language and to speak before you read or write. This does not mean that writing or reading is neglected, but the program concentrates on speaking. Being a community based language learning program, the students learn the new language mostly out in the community with natives or in private sessions with a language helper. This makes the relationships easy to build and learning culture a natural process. Of course, learning requires sweat, frustration and… humility: to recognize that you don’t know everything, to accept that people will laugh at you and to persist in having embarrassing language contacts.

So, what did I learn from my language learning experience? I learned… how to learn! I learned that immersion language learning is the most efficient method to learn a new language… as long as you work hard!!!

 

As long as you live in India, you will never be too far from a movie theatre showing Hindi Movies (or Bollywood movies as they are sometimes called). You have the freedom to choose a movie out of all the new bollywood releases and you have the freedom to choose a cinema hall that you like best. You then happily settle down in comfy cushioned seats in the air conditioned hall munching popcorn, and scream away to glory when your favourite star makes his first appearance in the movie. The soft hearted amongst you also manage a couple of sobs when the twin brothers bichadofy in kumbh ka mela. Since most hindi movies have happy endings, your time is well spent, and you go back home happier. You dont really need a site like www.moovyshoovy.com as long as you keep your feet planted in India.

But lets assume you are an Indian living out of India.  It’d be quite a rare sight to see a hoarding which says “now showing – Bollywood movie – Kumbh ka Mela”, outside any cinema hall – something which you are so used to back  home !  The point that am getting to is that – these beloved  Indian friends of ours are deprived of one of the 4 basic necessities of Indian life – Roti, Kapda, Makaan and Bollywood Movies.

And this is where websites like MoovyShoovy comes in. No, no, no,  I dint mean that moovyshoovy.com distributes roti kapda and makaan to Indians abroad, but it surely takes care of the fourth basic necessity for any Indian – Bollywood movies. With hundreds and hundreds of bollywood hindi movies available online, it makes you feel so much at home ! At www.moovyshoovy.com you can choose to watch movies from a huge collection of online hindi movies. All the movies are very well indexed, for example, you can browse old hindi movies as well as  new hindi movies,  and you can also sort movies by the year of release, and in alphabetical order. And in addition to these, if you are a huge fan of Arshad Warsi or Salman Khan like me, then you can easily sort out  all Arshad Warsi movies, or Salman Khan movies and watch them online  – same goes for any other hindi bollywood actor. I really like the actor section where you can find a list of all the Bollywood hindi movie stars, and clicking on any of them will display a list of all the hindi movies starring that actor. And for those who donot like to miss any movie by their favourite director, there is a quick way of sorting out all the movies by director name. Same goes for Music director as well !

The search feature at moovyshoovy.com is quite nice, for example suppose you are searching for the once-angry-young-man Amitabh Bachchan Movies, and by mistake you type “Amibath”, the search engine at moovyshoovy.com will prompt you if you did mean to search for Amitabh Bachchan Movies or something else. Something similar to what google does, but specially designed for apna Indian film industry ! And while on Amitabh, did you know that in many of the old Amitabh movies, it was very common for his character in the film to be called “Vijay” – So, I wouldn’t be surprised if you searched for the actor Vijay in hindi movies, and it asks you “Did you mean Amitabh Bachchan ?” .. hahaha

www.moovyshoovy.com