Hindi Lesson #3
Today I sat through my third Hindi lesson (self-taught via a tape). I'm still on conversation one, of 10, and am finding it much harder than I thought! It's not that I thought it would be easy to learn, but rather my lack of fore-thought of what areas I may find difficult has caught me off guard. Part of it, I believe, stems from the fact that I'm a very visual learner - I like having a description of something with a picture or some visual cue to go with it. The tape is great to follow the conversations, but my level of recall is much lower without the usual visual link. A couple observations:
1. Shorter words have been much harder to remember. I only have a vocabulary of about 30 words so far, but most of these are two and three letter words. I find the smaller they are, the harder they are to distinguish them from each other, so I always mix up the meaning of simple words like "se," "hu," "aur," "ap," "hai," "bhi," which are essential to tie sentences together.
2. I'm mixing up my French and Hindi! This is something I NEVER anticipated! I figured the languages were so different that this would not be a problems, but often when the tape prompts me to give the Hindi translation for an English word, I automatically think of the French version instead. It happens the other way around as well - if I hear a Hindi word that also sounds like a word in French, I think of the English translation to the French word. For example, when I hear "mai" I automatically think "but" (a translation of the French "mais"), rather than "I" which is what the actual translation from Hindi to English is.
If I continue on learning through this method, even if I get to a level where I can have a basic conversation, when I actually get to India my understanding will drop a few points because 1. They'll talk faster and likely with a different accent, and 2. I won't have a written text in front of me to follow along and interpret. When I broaden my vocabulary a bit more, I should cut off the use of the written text and rather converse as much as possible in small Hindi phrases to practice my verbal comprehension.
1. Shorter words have been much harder to remember. I only have a vocabulary of about 30 words so far, but most of these are two and three letter words. I find the smaller they are, the harder they are to distinguish them from each other, so I always mix up the meaning of simple words like "se," "hu," "aur," "ap," "hai," "bhi," which are essential to tie sentences together.
2. I'm mixing up my French and Hindi! This is something I NEVER anticipated! I figured the languages were so different that this would not be a problems, but often when the tape prompts me to give the Hindi translation for an English word, I automatically think of the French version instead. It happens the other way around as well - if I hear a Hindi word that also sounds like a word in French, I think of the English translation to the French word. For example, when I hear "mai" I automatically think "but" (a translation of the French "mais"), rather than "I" which is what the actual translation from Hindi to English is.
If I continue on learning through this method, even if I get to a level where I can have a basic conversation, when I actually get to India my understanding will drop a few points because 1. They'll talk faster and likely with a different accent, and 2. I won't have a written text in front of me to follow along and interpret. When I broaden my vocabulary a bit more, I should cut off the use of the written text and rather converse as much as possible in small Hindi phrases to practice my verbal comprehension.
posted by Harshitha at 7:13 PM
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