Tips to Learn Gujarati (rather any new language)

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Note :- Right hand side of the blog shows "Blog Archive". Expand it fully to see whole list of posts to Learn Gujarati. Learn Gujarati grammar and many aspects Gujarati language online.
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Tips to Learn Gujarati

Many users of this blog asked me about tips to Learn Gujarati fast. So I would like to share my thoughts about it. These are the things which I followed when I learnt Tamil and Gujarati myself. I learnt basics of these language through book and then developed myself without anybody's personal help.

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

1) 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 back of your mind. As and when you keep reading the blog further or reading Gujarati 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 independent speaker. No matter how many ready-made sentence you read, until you understand the rule behind it you will not be able to form sentence yourself.

Few people do not like to study grammar, but they keep listening / reading the language and sense the grammar. This is the way a baby learns mother tongue without formally knowing grammar rules.

Whatever approach suits you; but learn grammar.

2) Watch Gujarati news channel.
Read or listen news in any language you know, and then watch same news in Gujarati.
As you already know the news, listening it again in Gujarati will be easy to understand it. You can relate the words. Thus learn new words.
In news channels formal Gujarati language is used so it will be easy to understand.

3) Start reading newspaper.
It has same benefit as watching news channel. It has formal language and news being knows you can relate to text faster.

4) Buy dictionaries.
Buy 2 dictionaries English-Gujarati and Gujarati-English. This will be helpful while reading newspaper. Without dictionaries you can not increase your vocabulary.
Dictionaries are available online as well.

5) Then start watching Gujarati TV serials ( daily-soaps :) )
Then start viewing daily Gujarati serials on Gujarati channels. These serials have conversations happening in your day to day life. This is very useful.
Go for serious nature programs.
Do not try Gujarati movies initially. Also Do not go for comedy serials/dramas initially. To understand comedy, one needs to have very good knowledge of 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.

6) Start reading Gujarati magazines

7) Unless you dare to speak you can not be confident.
Wherever possible speak in Gujarati with whatever knowledge you have. Ask other person to rectify you. Understand mistake and try again. Keep trying, and one day you will realize that you are speaking without any mistake.

8) Practice makes man perfect
As applicable in any aspect of life, this rule is valid in 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 sentence, understand it, check new words and thus increase vocabulary.
Watching/Listening Gujarati help you increase your capacity to understand others but while listening others we tend to gloss over the details i.e. new words.
So two things help in two different ways

9) Remember Gujarati and other Indian languages have dialects. So focus on standard Gujarati first.
I think in English only pronunciation differs depending on region or country but basic grammar rules do not change.
But in India, Gujarati and all other Indian languages have dialects. Each dialect can have little different grammar rules for verb formation. Each dialect can have different set of words.
That is why you feel that native Gujarati speaker sounds different than what you have learnt.
Do not get confused. Focus on standard Gujarati. Be confident in it then you will be able to relate the dialect and understand it correctly. Even native speaker of one Gujarati dialect generally is not able to speak other dialect, though he understands it.
So be confident in Standard Gujarati, then try just understanding other dialect and you many continue using your dialect( that is standard Gujarati ) 

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Note :-  Right hand side of the blog shows "Blog Archive". Expand it fully to see whole list of posts to Learn Gujarati. Learn Gujarati grammar and many aspects Gujarati language online.
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