Sublimity…

After one week of Hindi lessons at Landour, I’m really looking forward to this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I love my classes, it’s just that they’re pushing me through the material so fast that I really need a break – and some time to catch up to where I’m supposed to be!

I’m taking three lessons (50 minutes each) per day, but since I signed up on Monday I missed my first two, and my teacher was unable to do my last one today, so I’ve had only 12 lessons this week, and I somehow seem to be on Chapter 12 in my book (there’s only 30 chapters in it!). Even though I never really officially took Hindi when I lived in India 10 years ago, I certainly did absorb some of it, which is part of the reason I’m going so fast (the other main reason is that the first few lessons are short and really basic). I’ve found that the biggest help from my previous experience is not remembering words (though I do remember some), but it’s more that I got used to hearing the language and remember how it generally sounded, and so now when they introduce phrases or grammatical structure, it often sounds somewhat familiar and correct, even though I don’t really remember what it means. This is a huge help as the grammatical structure of Hindi is very different than that of English or any other language I’ve learned (French, Spanish). Technically, it goes Ôsubject + object + verb’ instead of Ôsubject + verb + object’, but that doesn’t accurately convey the differences, more generally you basically take the English phrase/sentence and say it backwards. It takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to be able to do this at all, let alone at a decent speed (hence the teachers strongly recommend that you don’t try to think in English and then translate but instead learn to think in Hindi right away – even if it’s slower at first). So in a sense I feel like a two year old again trying to learn to speak for the first time…

Over the course of the week, I’ve gotten to the point where I can understand most of the sentences that my teachers give me (as long as they go slowly and sometimes I need to have it repeated), but speaking back to them in Hindi is a little more difficult. When I try to do that, I really do feel like a two year old as my vocabulary is very limited and I can only make short sentences – statements and simple questions. However I really do feel like I’m making progress (it’s really fun!), and staying here in the cottage with Teeka Ram and his family has really helped me so far, and will be even more useful as my capability (and need for practice) grows.

Also, as the title eludes, I’ve come to better understand some of the idiosyncrasies of India through my Hindi lessons. There is a strong relationship between a language and the culture of it’s speakers, the way things are phrased, the types of words that the language has and doesn’t have all relate to the culture. Here are some of the insights I’ve had so far:

• Tomorrow and yesterday are expressed with the same word (“cul”), and there is one word for time further in the future or past (“parsonh”)(basically, there is one word for today, one word for recent, and one word that means the rest of time). Verb tenses are used to distinguish between the meanings.
  Hinduism traditionally believes that time is not linear (as we do in the west) but cyclical. People die but are reincarnated, and the calendar is cyclical (past and future are linked in a strange way I don’t really understand). Also, culturally, the only time that matters to Indians is the present, people don’t make plans here (or if they do, the plans change constantly).
• The concept of “having something” is clearly divided into two. Possession of things that can be bought/sold/transferred is easy to say (“kae pas ___”), and very different than the concept of “ownership” (“maera ___”) which is a little more challenging to say properly (at least it is for me now).
  In India, everything is for sale if you go to the right place, and people have very few possessions.
• “I am late” in Hindi is actually expressed via the phrase, “Lateness happened to me”.
  Time is so fluid in India, things happen when they do, not necessarily when they are supposed to or when you want them to. There’s no point in getting mad/frustrated about it, it won’t change anything – which takes some getting used to for most foreigners. Since being on time isn’t as important, it happens often – both to you and to others who were supposed to meet you – so people don’t take responsibility for being late, otherwise everyone would go around feeling bad/guilty all the time.

All right, back to the books! I think next week I get to start learning verb tenses (all I know at the moment is the imperative with its distinct formal and informal constructions, which makes it a little harder to have real conversations – imagine if all you could do is ask or order actions [verbs]…)

(Mujko maerae classanh bauht pasund hai aur abhi sub kutch acha hai.)

Namaste!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 2:31 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.