Language’

• Interviews

HUF director Rupert Snell recently interviewed Rajesh Kumar, an experienced Hindi teacher who has taught in a wide variety of settings. Topics discussed include Kumar’s childhood and education, his work in India, and his experience teaching Hindi in Russia. The interview should provide excellent listening comprehension practice for intermediate Hindi students.

• Events
• Scholarships
• Student Events

Emily Brandt, UT alumna and 2012 Critical Language Scholarship Ambassador, will host an informal Q&A session for HUF students interested in the CLS program on Thursday, November 3 at 6:30pm over coffee at the Starbucks on 24th St . The Critical Language Scholarship, a program of the United States Department of State, will offer intensive summer language institutes overseas in thirteen critical need foreign languages for summer 2012.

• Learning and Teaching
• Resources

The Hindi Urdu Flagship has just relaunched Dr. Jishnu Shankar‘s Hindi slideshow series. Now named Presenting Hindi, the series features a redesigned interface and new presentations (with more to come). The series covers a broad range of fundamental grammatical features and ‘topic-specific’ language categories such as health, economics, and politics. Each presentation makes use of real-world Hindi cultivated from current Hindi periodicals and print advertising; a number also incorporate video material from Bollywood films and Indian television.

• Interviews

As part of his visit to the Hindi Urdu Flagship, Bollywood lyricist and script writer Ali Husain Mir sat down with HUF associate director Syed Akbar Hyder and former HUF director Herman van Olphen to discuss his background in Urdu and the state of the language in modern India. The interview should provide good listening… Read More

• Learning and Teaching
• Resources

HUF is pleased to introduce our newest web feature, Kāvyārtha — an interactive guided tour of unique moments in Hindi poetry. In this collection of online articles, HUF director Rupert Snell focuses on poetic structure and aesthetics as a means of approaching the artha (the meanings and ends) of kāvya (poetry) in Hindi. The series begins with a focus on Braj and Awadhi, it will gradually expand to encompass Khari Boli and modern Hindi poetry.

• Learning and Teaching
• Teaching Workshops

At the beginning of each year, the Hindi Urdu Flagship holds a workshop on teaching South Asian Languages to undergraduate students. The primary purpose of this workshop is to train our new TAs, but it also provides an excellent opportunity for a general exchange of views on language teaching, and we encourage anyone involved in South Asian language teaching at UT to attend. The schedule includes a useful session on the use of Blackboard (the full schedule is listed below). The workshop will be held on Monday, August 22nd from 2-5pm in the Meyerson Conference Room (WCH 4.118).

• Books
• Faculty Publications
• Resources

Students of Hindi worldwide may be interested to know that Rupert Snell’s five Hindi books in the Teach Yourself series have been published in new editions. In response to queries from individuals confused about names and editions, we have listed below the latest edition of each book in the series. Further information can be found… Read More

• Events

HUF faculty and staff gathered Wednesday afternoon to celebrate and bid farewell to the 2010-11 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants (FLTAs). Hajra Butt, Urvashi Kuhad, and Mohammed Rukan helped teach Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali respectively during their 9-month stay at UT Austin.

• Events

On Tuesday, May 3, the Hindi Urdu Flagship had the pleasure of hosting over 30 ninth-grade students from the Dallas-area Hurst-Euless-Bedford (HEB) school district. HEB is one of the few K-12 school districts in the nation to teach Hindi at multiple grade levels.  HUF students, teaching assistants, and faculty met with the HEB Hindi students… Read More

• Events
• Talks

Students and faculty packed the Meyerson Conference Room to hear Kavita Datla’s wonderful presentation on Urdu language politics in early 20th century Hyderabad. Datla’s talk provided a nuanced take on the political struggles over India’s multiple linguistic traditions and enlisted a lively and informative question and answer session