Tips to Learn Marathi

Many users of this blog asked me about tips to Learn Marathi fast. So I would like to share my thoughts about it. These are the things which I followed when I learned Tamil and Gujarati myself. I learned the basics of these languages through the book

  • Learn Tamil through Marathi by Balaji publication
  • Rapidex Tamil-Hindi learning course

and then developed myself without anybody’s personal help.

So these are proven methods which will help you to learn not only Marathi but any new language.
You can surely try it.

  • Learn Grammar :
    Read the blog at least once so that you will get to know different grammar rules. You may not remember everything but concepts will be at the back of your mind. As and when you keep reading the blog further or reading Marathi text elsewhere you will be able to relate concepts you had read before. When you will frequently come across the use of these grammar rules, you will remember it. Learning grammar alone can make you an independent speaker. No matter how many ready-made sentences you read, until you understand the rule behind it you will not be able to form sentences yourself. Few people do not like to study grammar, but they keep listening/reading the language and sense the grammar. This is the same way a baby learns the mother tongue without formally knowing grammar rules. Whatever approach suits you; but learn grammar.
  • Watch Marathi news channel:
    Read or listen to the news in any language you know, and then watch the same news in Marathi. As you already know the news, listening to it again in Marathi will be easy to understand. You can relate the words. Thus learn new words. In news channels formal Marathi language is used so it will be easy to understand.
  • Start reading newspaper:
    It has the same benefit as watching the news channel. It has formal language and news knowing you can relate to text faster.
  • Buy dictionaries:
    Buy 2 dictionaries English-Marathi and Marathi-English. This will be helpful while reading newspaper. Without dictionaries you can not increase your vocabulary.Dictionaries are available online as well.
  • Then start watching Marathi serials ( daily-soaps ) :
    Then start viewing daily Marathi serials on Marathi channels. These serials have conversations happening in your day to day life. This is very useful. Go for serious nature programs.
    Do not try Marathi movies initially. Also Do not go for comedy serials/dramas initially. To understand comedy, one needs to have very good knowledge of the language (hidden meanings, double meanings, etc. ) and social context. So comedy serials/movies will not help you initially. Rather it will discourage you as you may not be able to enjoy it.
  • Start reading Marathi magazines
  • Unless you dare to speak you can not be confident:
    Wherever possible speak in Marathi with whatever knowledge you have. Ask another person to rectify you. Understand mistake and try again. Keep trying, and one day you will realize that you are speaking without any mistake.
  • Practice makes man perfect:
    As applicable in any aspect of life, this rule is valid in the language learning paradigm as well.
    Read more to increase vocabulary. Listen more to increase understanding capacity. Talk more to make you confident. While reading you follow your own pace. You will have time to read the sentence, understand it, check new words and thus increase vocabulary. Watching/Listening Marathi helps you increase your capacity to understand others but while listening to others we tend to gloss over the details i.e. new words.
    So two things help in two different ways
  • Remember Marathi and other Indian languages have dialects. So focus on standard Marathi first :
    I think in English only pronunciation of differs depending on region or country but basic grammar rules do not change.
    But in India Marathi and all other Indian languages have dialects. Each dialect can have little different grammar rules for verb formation. Each dialect can have a different set of words. That is why you feel the native Marathi speaker sounds different than what you have learned.
    Do not get confused. Focus on standard Marathi. Be confident in it then you will be able to relate the dialect and understand it correctly. Even native speaker of one Marathi dialect generally is not able to speak other dialect, though he understands it.
    So be confident in Standard Marathi, then try just understanding other dialect and you may continue using your dialect( that is standard Marathi )