Hindi

Here's the deal. I'm taking a Hindi class once a week. I've been doing this for about six weeks now. I know a few nouns and adjectives and verbs. My big weakness: creating sentences. It is so much easier to decode a sentence than to create one.

My Hindi teacher gives me an assignment every week. I am supposed to prepare a monologue -- that is, my job is just to talk about me for a while. It sounds easy, but I'm still no good with sentences, so anything beyond subject-object-verb isn't very good.

I'm going to bother you guys for help. I'd like to practice with you so that I can learn to make better sentences. The sentences are simple and stupid, but that's all I know now. Here is a sample:

What do I need help with? Simple: tell me what is wrong with this paragraph. Do not be nice. If it's wrong, please tell me. I like criticism.

What am I trying to say up there?

St. Patrick's Day is on 17 March. On 14 March in Somerville I will run a 5 km race. There will be five thousand people in the race. After the race there will be music, potato leek soup, and free beer.

Is it wrong? Right? (Don't ask me what potato leek soup is... must be an Irish thing...)

Alphabet

Information about linguistic terms (via Wikipedia):

• Stop consonants
• Nasal consonants
• Approximant consonants
• Fricative consonants
• Voicing
• Aspiration
• Guttural consonants
• Palatal consonants
• Cerebral consonants
• Dental consonants
• Labial consonants

Representations of Hindi sounds and characters:

• International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST)
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)