When Victoria became queen in 1837, she was trilingual, speaking English, German and French. During her reign, she also attempted to learn many of the languages her people spoke throughout the Empire - one of them being Hindustani, which she learned from her Indian servant, Abdul Karim.
She began to learn the language after she became Empress of India in 1877 and, with his help, she kept a diary in Hindustani between 1892 and 1900. There was a little cheating - she would write her words in English and he would change the order to the correct grammar. Queen Victoria would then translate words into the correct Urdu script (a sample from the diary can be seen at http:bit.lyJzN3oc).
What else?
Introduce students to the Hindustani language with the help of a pupil’s video tutorial shared by Newbury Park. Or explore some traditional Hindustani music with blondiecoco’s introduction to ragas, rasa and sargam.
