Hindi might be better described as a "family or related languages with varying degrees of mutual intelligibilty" than a specific one. Other Indian languages also have varying degreees of mutual intelligibilty. Traditionally, Hindi was written with Devanagari script, as several others have been. Currently the other main languages that use Devanagari script are Marathi and Nepali. Some would argue that if you write Urdu in Devanagari script, you could call it Hindi. I believe the biggest difference between verbal Hindi and Urdu is in the number of dialects. My Bengladeshi friend is verbally fluent in both, can't read either script, and says there are differences. She's the lawyer, I'll leave it to the experts.

Today, many Indians do use Roman letters to write in Hindi, but Devanagari is MORE phonetic. For example, when you write "Hindi" in Roman letters, it has two i's. When Hindi is written in Devanagari the i's are different. "Hindi2" is REALLY about using "Devanagari to" provide phonetic cues for learning pronuniciation of words in new languages. "Hindi" is easier to remember and spell. As demonstrated by the example with Urdu, sometimes the biggest differences between Indian languages are the scripts. Sometimes differences between languages are minimized when written in the same script. Even when languages truly are significantly different, it may be useful to learn different languages with the help of the same phonetic script.

MD is always right

Users of Hindi2.com have the option to view documents in various formats.

• Full text with choice of 1-3 languages and scripts in a series, with point-and-click audio
• grammatically: sentence-by-sentence (with point-and-click audio)
2-3 languages/scripts of choice side-by-side
1. 4 in a specific grid: primary language above language learning, and Devanagari on right
2. all current languages will have Roman letters on left
3. as languages with other native scripts are addeed, the Roman letters will be replaced with alternate native scripts
4. Devanagari will remain the common phonetic script for all languages in the database
5. Devanagari will require modification for use with some languages
6. Modified Devanagari (MD) will always be "on the right" in a grid
7. MD will provide the "right phonetic cues" as reliably as possible
8. Phonetic cues are a double edged sword, since there may be legitmate alternate ways to pronounce words
9. alternate legitimate pronuniciations of words may or may not be suggested
10. Founder appreciates suggestions for valid alternate pronunciations
• literal sentence-by-sentence: word-by-word with language learning above primary
• English
• Hindi
• Cebuano
• Native script
• Devanagari