Rating: 
Summary: Hindi asan nahii hai.....
Review: I picked this book up by accident. I had planned on getting a foreign language book to read in my spare time, I had planned on getting Arabic, but I somehow purchased this one. It caught my attention and kept it though. Despite my preconceptions Hindi is very simple to understand on a basic level, their are no tones, clicks or other oddities. Their is wide use of nasalized sounds, but anyone who has taken French would not have a problem with it. The real problem is how colloquial everything is. Every conversation uses words that a common person would use to speak with their friends. This isn't a problem at first, but when one looks at the sentence structure they began to wish that things would be easier. Their is very little info on things that would help a traveller to India in it, and I assume it was written for Americans or English who have Hindi speaking relatives who want to learn.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Hindi learning book you'll ever find
Review: If you're serious about learning how to read, write, and speak the Hindi language fluently, this is the book to get. I've never seen a Hindi book which is better organised or explains Hindi grammar and usage better than this one. The dialogues and many of the exercises form a soap opera type story about a Delhi family which makes it more enjoyable. There are also up-to-date Hindi-English and English-Hindi vocabulary lists in the back. The book does require that the Devanagari script be learnt so if you're only looking to understand Bollywood films, this isn't the book for you. The Hindi language is much better and easier read in its own Devanagari script so I would highly recommend learning it. I did not have any trouble learning to write Devanagari from this book but if you need extra help the other book "Beginner's Hindi Script" would work.
Rating:
Summary: This book is superb (bahut bara hai).
Review: Make sure you get the tapes as well. My only gripe is that they don't offer CDs, so I can only practice in my car. Other than that the material is presented in an easy to learn manner. And unlike other texts, it forces you to learn the correct grammar instead of teaching you useless short phrases. This book is thorough and concise. Another plus is that they teach the devangari script. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: Overall a good book.
Positive: Good vocabulary and grammar coverage.
Negative: The dialogs on the tapes are a bit too fast.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book!
Review: Personally, I found this book to be excellent. The lucid and thorough coverage of grammar, the fairly-large vocabulary, the pleasant and easy-to-read font, the interspersed notes on colloquial divergencies, and the decent audio tapes make this an all-around respectable introduction to Hindi. The Hindi script, which may take considerable time to master, is given only a chapter of coverage, so I strongly recommend also purchasing a text devoted to teaching it. A bit of caution: The Hindi variant of the Devanagari script, much to my annoyance, departs from the elegant and consistent rules the Sanskrit version mandates. It can take some time and a good deal of effort to master the Hindi script because of its irregularities. Nevertheless, the text itself is very good and well-worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book Out There
Review: Snell's Teach Yourself Hindi is an exceptional beginner's text. It would be stronger though with more emphasis on learning how to write in Devanagari script. Other than this problem (which can be easily overcome with the companion book, another similar book, or the help of a native speaker), the book is exceedingly more useful that most of its type. The grammar explanations and exercises are extremely useful. Snell's text can also be very useful to those who already have some basic grasp of Hindi. It covers many topics in grammar and usage that are absent from other books.
Rating:
Summary: A first class job
Review: This book has nearly everything a beginning student of Hindi would need or want. It offers an ample vocabulary, lots of good exercises, (with a key in the back) and its explanations of Hindi grammar are extremely lucid and well-presented. The section on pronunciation is quite thorough, although (as at least one other reviewer has previously remarked) the section on vowels gives British English rather than American English approximations. The only way out of that difficulty of course, is to get the tapes, which anyone learning a new language by themself should do anyway. The one thing that I thought was lacking when I started using this book was a section that showed how Devanagari is actually written by hand. Two other books on Indian languages in the same series do show handwritten characters (Bengali, by Radice, and Gujarati, by Dwyer). However within the last year, one of the authors of this book (Snell) has published a little book devoted to the Devanagari script that does show how to form the letters. It would make a worthwhile companion volume.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book is excellent for brushing up on Hindi if you already speak the language (I can't judge how easy the book would be for someone who is completely new to Hindi, but Hindi is not a difficult language). It would be a good idea to master the script first with a book dedicated to teaching Devanagari. I've noticed errors here and there in the Roman transliteration that can cause problems for you if you don't notice them.
Rating:
Summary: teach yourself
Review: This is a very good book for someone who already has a knowledge of hindi. I don't recommend it for the beginner.
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