Α HINDI PRIMER IN ROMAN CHARACTER BY J. F. BROWNE, B.C.S. LONDON TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL 1882 [Ali rights reserved] PREFACE. THIS small work is the second of a series of Primers, Readers, and Vocabularies intended for the use of those persons who wish to acquire a fair conversational and practical knowledge of the modern languages of India without undergoing the labour of mastering the difficult and intricate alphabets in which they are written. Such publications will, it is hoped, be of great use not only to Europeans, but to the many natives of India, who, although more or less familiar with the English language and the Roman character, are quite unacquainted with any Indian alphabet or dialect other than that used or spoken in their own district and province. The grammatical forms and rules laid down in this Primer apply with equal force to the so-called Hindustani or Urdu dialect, which differs from Hindi only in so far as it admits of the freer use of Persian and Arabic words. Indeed, the author cannot but think that the time is not far distant when even such a distinction will have ceased to exist, for there is a growing tendency on the part of the educated Urdu-speaking inhabitants of India to abstain from the use of any foreign words which are not equally well understood both by Hindoos and Mohammedans. J. F. BROWNE, |