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There are a slew of bilingual products out in the world today, many of which have ignored the Hindi language completely (as the 3rd most spoken language in the world, this baffles me) – but to my surprise and delight, I recently came across WorldWide Buddies and their MiniLingo Hindi/English Bilingual Flashcards.
When I received these cards, my 4-year-old daughter was instantly excited – she could tell that the cards were for her. They have beautiful and playful illustrations that are appealing to children.
How does it work?
Once you open the box, you will see 42 flashcards that come in pairs. One card is in English, while the other pair is in Hindi (using both Devanagari and the transliteration of the word). For example there is a card that says “Girl” and the other matching card says “लड़की” with “larki” in Hindi on it.
You can play 2 games with these cards: 1. Memory, where you lay out the cards face down, flip the cards over and try to find the matches. 2. Snap, where players deal cards, flip over the top card in their pile and try to make pairs. Once a pair is found the player must yell "snap."
How we liked it:
These cards were wonderful! My daughter and I played Memory with half a deck at a time – because understandably doing 21 matches was a bit too much for my 4-yr old’s attention span.
As we flipped over the cards, we made sure to say the Hindi word out loud so that she could make the connection. I would avoid saying the English word at all because my daughter already knows all the Hindi words in the deck.
TIP: If your child is new to Hindi/Urdu – then saying both the English and Hindi out loud, is a great way to re-iterate the meaning of the Hindi word. I suggest, as your child starts to understand what the Hindi word means (especially because they can see the illustration), use less and less English as time goes on.
What I really appreciated about the cards is that it uses phonetics and English lettering for people who cannot speak the language themselves (something I do in my “My First Hindi Words!” baby books as well). This makes the cards approachable to even spouses who cannot speak the language, grandparents or just new learners.
I was relieved to see that unlike so many Hindi/Urdu products available, this deck does not use words that are overly formal/uncommon Hindi words just for the sake of translating accurately from English. As a result English words like “ice cream” remained “ice cream” in the Hindi card, because that is realistic to how people actually talk in the subcontinent.
I do wish the cards were a bit thicker so that my daughter could flip them over herself, but overall for the price ($13.99), the deck provides a good value.
That being said, the lightness of the cards and size of the product, does make it an ideal travel toy. I can foresee us using these cards on a long flight to India, and keeping them handy in her backpack!
Get The Cards Here:
