For this week, I wanted to start diving deeper into topics that I did not know so that I could have more questions to ask my tutor about during our next couple of meetings. One suggestion that a student that I received from one of my friends is to leave voice notes for Keshav for situations when I do not know how to pronounce certain words or phrases. That way, he can also use voice notes and pronounce it back so that I do not have to wait until the next meeting for me to progress forward with the reading or work that I am doing at the time.
This week, I have been working on relying less on “Nepanglish” like I mentioned last time and it has been one of the most difficult things to do because of how reliant I have been on it for the past couple years. I think the biggest thing that I am struggling with is the way that I think, which is naturally a continuous switch between the languages that I speak. It is also really difficult because there are just some things that I say often enough that is a mix of both Nepali and English that it has become habitual to just keep using during day to day conversations.
Additionally, we have shifted from reading some of the old texts and materials to using current events since that is easier for Keshav to find new articles and information about. As of right now, we have been discussing more and more about the growing COVID cases rampant in Nepal. Due to this, there has been increasing amount of news and articles coming out of Nepal. I has provided good practice and cultural/information information about Nepal for me to read and discuss with my parents about.
I have also found some good websites that I have been using on my phone to make sure that I am pronouncing the letters and words properly (that is once I figure out how to type them using the Nepali keyboard on the phone). It’s useful to keep track and check.
For next couple of weeks, Keshav and I have been discussing on how to transition some writing into this type of learning as well. I think I will be utilizing digital learning by using an iPad and that way I can just send KEshav screenshots of what I am doing.
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It's interesting to know that there is "Nepanglish" just like there is "Konglish" for Korean-English, and how English seems to permeate our target languages. It is easy to fall back to English, so I applaud you for doing your best to go to "pure" Nepali. I agree it is hard to have a pure target language conversation and there are a lot of holes to fill in our knowledge, but I hope to get to that point as well. I read mostly social media posts to start off and light reads, such as short blog posts and subtitles in videos. So kudos to you for reading newspapers!