I will post something longer about the rest of Goa later (I'm back in Mumbai), but I thought in honor of my multi-hour travel extravaganza, I will talk a little bit about my frustrations with Hindi. So, I have been studying this language for a long time, an embarrassingly long time for the way that I talk. Yes, it's a hard language, and yes I understand about 96 percent of what is said, but opening my mouth is sort of a different story, and here's the problem:
- when my well meaning friends tell other people I speak Hindi, they immediately want me to "say something"... when you tell a kid to do that they say "something", what do I say? nothing, I immediately go mute. It's complete radio silence in my brain, no english, no hindi... occasionally one thing will pop into my mind. A whispered "merde" (shit in french)... so no practice ever comes from that.
- when I get flustered, tired, or overheated (read most of the time in India), my brain starts to cram all my thoughts together. It's hard enough to get coherent sentences out of my mouth in English when this happens, but translating into Hindi is like a sword fight between my tongue and my mind.
- my Hindi is too good. It's what they call shud Hindi. So when I finally get my sentences together, and I'm feeling good, people sometimes laugh at me. I'll say, "that's the word for x, isn't it?", and they'll say, "yes if you are in a melodramatic bollywood movie".
- last (for now) but certainly not least, even when my Hindi is working like a well oiled machine, and I am using slang, feeling good. I still largely do not know where I am going. So whether I'm in a cab or in a rickshaw, if they list of a lot of places, I still don't understand. But man, let me tell you, I can say, "I have no idea where the flip you are taking me" in the most shud Hindi ever, Brahmin priests would be proud.
Love,
Violet
- when my well meaning friends tell other people I speak Hindi, they immediately want me to "say something"... when you tell a kid to do that they say "something", what do I say? nothing, I immediately go mute. It's complete radio silence in my brain, no english, no hindi... occasionally one thing will pop into my mind. A whispered "merde" (shit in french)... so no practice ever comes from that.
- when I get flustered, tired, or overheated (read most of the time in India), my brain starts to cram all my thoughts together. It's hard enough to get coherent sentences out of my mouth in English when this happens, but translating into Hindi is like a sword fight between my tongue and my mind.
- my Hindi is too good. It's what they call shud Hindi. So when I finally get my sentences together, and I'm feeling good, people sometimes laugh at me. I'll say, "that's the word for x, isn't it?", and they'll say, "yes if you are in a melodramatic bollywood movie".
- last (for now) but certainly not least, even when my Hindi is working like a well oiled machine, and I am using slang, feeling good. I still largely do not know where I am going. So whether I'm in a cab or in a rickshaw, if they list of a lot of places, I still don't understand. But man, let me tell you, I can say, "I have no idea where the flip you are taking me" in the most shud Hindi ever, Brahmin priests would be proud.
Love,
Violet
You should have a bunch of stock responses to use when people tell you to say something in Hindi, e.g., you could say, "Of course, everybody in America speaks Hindi now" or "Yes, and later I will introduce you to my talking dog." But if they are introducing you to their mother you can have some impeccably polite phrase like "I'm honored to meet you; your son is very intelligent.'
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