Reading and writing in Hindi is still very difficult for me, but I am glad I am able to sound out words and characters because it is often the best way to learn new vocabulary. In India, written Hindi is often portrayed in transliteration, meaning that it is the sound of the Hindi words written out in Roman characters. This made reading easier to some extent, but difficulties arose because there is no set spelling in transliterated Hindi, so words would always be spelled differently. For instance, the word for girl, "lardaki," has sounds that are difficult to express with roman characters, so it is often transliterated as "ladiki" or "lariki" a well. However, Hindi script has characters that portray this specific r/d sound that is confusing to transliterate, so for instances like this it becomes important to know the Hindi alphabet. When learning new vocabulary, I am especially grateful that I learned Hindi script because otherwise, I wouldn't know how to pronounce words properly or distinguish certain similar sounds.
Nevertheless, my reading and writing skills are very amateur and require that I sound out words character by character. There are a few words that I see and automatically know their meanings, but I need to establish that level of recognition with a greater number of words, especially words I might frequently see on signs or public areas. A good way to find these might be to translate common words on signs in the U.S. (stop, go, train station, bus stop, etc.), or to look for signs in Hindi TV and film.
To increase my writing ability, I think I should take closer note of how words are written when I learn new vocabulary. I find that I'll memorize a word or phrase by its sound and then, when I try to write it, I cannot remember which characters are used, whether it uses long or short vowels, etc. If I attempt to memorize not only how a word sounds, but also the way it looks, I will have no problem writing in Hindi.
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