Urdu

This page originally included an Urdu training program with flashcards and audio. Java applet technology is no longer supported by browsers, so the program and associated media have been removed. This page is now for historical purposes only.

Urdu VocabMentor™

Important: You must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater to use VocabMentor. Netscape Navigator does not currently support the technology used by VocabMentor (specifically, Java 1.1 events). Also note that the first time a word is used, its information will be downloaded. Depending on the Internet connection used, this could take a little while, especially in the middle of the day (US time) using the SOAS network.

Urdu VocabMentor is still in the experimental stages. The vocabulary is keyed to Introduction to Urdu volumes 1 and 2, not because of the quality of the text but because that is what is currently (1998/1999) being used in the beginning Urdu course at SOAS. Likewise, the audio for the words (my own voice) certainly does not give the correct pronunciations. I hope to eventually address these deficiencies, but in the meantime this should be better than nothing.

Urdu VocabMentor appears below. See underneath for instructions.

Garret Wilson
February 14, 1999

Instructions

Wait until the program is fully loaded, which may take some time depending on the Internet connection being used. Watch the status bar at the bottom for loading indications. When VocabMentor has started, you will see four buttons:

Settings

Click on Settings before using anything else in VocabMentor. Select which lessons you wish to work with. Click a lesson once to select it, and again to unselect it. You can also select Use All Lessons which will override your settings and use all lessons.

Vocabulary Review

Once you have selected the lesson(s), you can review the vocabulary. The words in the selected lesson(s) will be randomly shuffled, and you can press <<Previous and Next>> to go between words. You can listen to the word or its translation by pressing one of the Listen buttons, and pressing Play will play all the words and definitions until you press Stop. Pressing Reset will reshuffle the word order.

Vocabulary Test

When you are ready to take a test, you will be presented with four possible translations for each word in the selected lesson(s). Choose the correct choice and click Next>>, at which time you will alerted if your answer was incorrect. Note that VocabMentor intelligently presents choices of the same part of speech and, if possible, of the same category. Therefore, if ek is shown as the Urdu word, the choices will all be numbers.

You can select whether you want the Transliteration shown, and whether you want the Audio played for each word. Selecting Hint will bring up another window containing further information on the given word. Selecting Restart will reshuffle the question order and randomly select new choices. Your current score will be shown at the top of the window.

Lookup

The lookup option presents a list of the transliterations of all available words in alphabetical order. You may type the first few letters of the word you are looking for, or simply scroll through the list. Select the word about which you want information and select View.