Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
Anirudh Viswanathan's Posts (24)
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I learned the vocabulary for a slew of different fruits, vegetable, dishes and things that Indians eat. I knew a lot of these things beforehand because my mom says them but relearning them was important. Also, I learned conjugations of a few verbs that are important to start forming sentences.
I learned the alphabet and the words that go along with it. For example, sort of like how in English we say "A is for Apple".
I Learned the days of the week, how to talk about points of the week. For example, if I wanted to say " Next week" or " 2 weeks from now", I can say that. Also I learned numbers 1-20, 30, 40, 50, 60 , 70, 80, 90, 100 and 1000.
Can Do Statements:
Can count from 1-12
Can say Days of the Week
Can tell time
Can Talk about Food
Can Talk about Family
I can talk about fruits, vegetables, and home stuff
I can talk about sports
I can identify colors
Namaste, mera name Rudy hai. Meh University of Richmond may padatha hoon. Main Chicago se hoon. Mere parivar may meri ma, mere pitha, aur mera chotta bhai hai. Meri Ma ka nam Narayani hai. Mere pitha ka nam Shreekkanth hai. Mera chotta bhai ka nam Aswath hai.
Hello, my name is Rudy. I study at the University of Richmond. I am from Chicago. My family consists of my mom, my dad and my little brother. My mom's name is Narayani. My dad's name is Shreekkanth. My little brother's name is Aswath.
R: Namaste mera naam Rudy hain. Aapka naam kya hain? (Hello my name is Rudy. What is your name?)
S: Namaste Rudy. Mera naam Sanya hain. Rudy abhi kitne baje hain? (Hello Rudy. My name is Sanya. What time is it Rudy?)
R: Sanya abhi gyarah baje hain. Aapko kaun sa rang pasand hain? (Sanya it is 11:00am right now. What colors do you like?)
S: Mujhe laal rang pasand hain. Aur aapko? (I like red. What about you?)
R: Mujhe neela, peela, safed, kaala, naarangi..saare rang pasand hain. Aapko khaane mein kya pasand hain? (I like blue, yellow, white, black, orange...all colors. What do you like to eat?)
S: Mujhe khaane mein dal aur chawal pasand hain. Aur aapko? (I like to eat dal and rice. What about you?)
R: Mujhe khaane mein bhindi, gobhi, tamatar, pyaaz, Baingan,aaloo, paalak, paneer, doodh, roti, rajma...sab pasand hain. (I like to eat bhindi, cauliflower, tomato, onion, eggplant, potato, spinach, paneer, milk, roti, rajma)
S: Aapke ghar mein kitne kamre hain? (How many rooms do you have in your house?)
R: Mere ghar mein paanch kamre hain, saath kursi hain aur teen khidki hain. Accha chalo phir milengay. (In my house there are 5 rooms, 7 chairs and 3 windows. Okay lets go. See you soon.)
S: Theeke shukriya. (Okay thank you)
Reading and writing in Hindi has been very difficult. I do not know how to write that well in the language, so therefore I cannot read or write in Hindi. Those were not my goals going into the class. All I wanted to know how to do was speak. However, when Sanya or I write in my vocabulary journal, we use English letters to make Hindi words. That way, pronunciation comes easier to me. Otherwise, I do not read or write in Hindi.
Being bilingual makes a person smarter in the sense that they can understand new things and process them differently. It does not necessarily mean they are intellectually more gifted. It just adds to the person’s skills in being able to process things in more creative ways. Translating sentences or words from one language to another means you have to think of how one language is structured and then switch it so that it makes sense to you in both languages. People define intelligence in different ways, so I think it is unfair to say bilinguals are "smarter" than monolingual speakers, but it is fair to say they think about the world differently. I like being able to have a cultured background, unlike my friends. I like being able to understand more things about the world around us. Maybe it would make more sense to say that bilinguals have more enhanced language skills than others. This would be a fair thing to say. The second language, just exposes you to a whole new culture than you would know if you were a monolingual.
I have learned a lot of new vocabulary words in Hindi. Most of them relate to my home, family, how to tell time and sports. They are things I came into this Hindi class wanting to learn and therefore memorized a lot of those words. The way I learned them, was basically do like a self- quiz. I would learn a few words at a time, then I would ask myself to do them over and their meaning. All of this was in my head, but it helped me learn the necessary vocab. This was a very realistic goal for my vocabulary skills because they are not too many words, but they are the ones I wanted to learn.
I learned that my best ability in Hindi is being able to pronounce words well. It comes from being able to listen to similar languages in India and listening to the music. Already, being Indian, I had a sort of advantage in pronunciation as I have been listening to Hindi since I was young in Bollywood films. I also definitely would not consider learning languages as something I am very good at. I am not a very good student in that aspect because in order to learn the language, you need to be able to work at it everyday. This was very hard for me to do. In fact, I think I am slower than most language learners in my language development. Memorization does not necessarily come hard for me, but constant relearning of vocabulary and grammar is very difficult. I can definitely say I enjoy the cultural aspect more than learning the language. It is very important for me to know Hindi, but it is much easier to understand and become immersed in a culture as opposed to a language. Being Indian, I obviously know about the culture already, and that is one of the most interesting things for me when learning the language. Sanya explaining to me how India has changed and the different contexts were very interesting. The things I disliked about the idea of learning Hindi was the grammar. The grammar is, in my opinion, so much worse than learning English. All the conjugations are very confusing and really made it difficult for me to start forming sentences.
The readings I enjoyed the most were the readings on the language learning process and how to process things better. I also liked the articles about how languages are going extinct. I enjoy thinking about how languages are affected by other languages and how they are all interconnected. I enjoy picking apart the components of a language to see exactly how it works. Language processes are very interesting to me and how they have evolved. For example, Noelle gave her presentations on Tagalog and I found it very interesting how Spanish language and culture were an integral part in the Philippines.
I would like to learn more about the cultural aspects of other cultures. However, I learned that learning a language at my age is very, very difficult, I can say that I am very mad at myself for not keeping my knowledge of Hindi when I was a child, to the present. My language learning skills have evolved though; I am very good at memorizing vocabulary. However, grammar aspects and sentence structure need a lot of work. I can now comprehend how intertwined Indian culture is with Hindi, and that it is very important for me to focus on learning this language more in the future.
The resources I used for my Hindi learning techniques are two different applications. One is diigo, which allows me to get different Hindi songs and phrases through this website. There is a site posted on diigo, which is a weekly ranking of all the top Bollywood songs from 1 to 20. I have been keeping a habit of going to bed with these songs in my year, to reinforce my vocabulary learning. Another resource I have been using is a Learn Hindi website/blog. The creator of the website has been posting lesson plans for everything from nouns to verbs to conservational phrases. This, along with my language partner, helps me learn vocabulary, grammar and the ability to put together sentences in Hindi. I have also recently bought a Hindi textbook which is also a resource that helps put together words and increase my Hindi vocabulary.
The things I have accomplished in my language learning thus far is my increased vocabulary. I have been able to learn vocabulary through different groups of words. For example, I will learn sports vocabulary one week and then domestic household items the next. This allows me to learn few vocabulary words at a time. My goals are to put together more sentences in Hindi. This my focus from now on. I do not believe I can have a legitimate conversation with a Hindi speaker yet and so I need to understand conjugations and tense changes so that I can make sense when I talk. This is my focus as I learn Hindi in the future.
The extinction of languages is something that is interesting because as the article says, a language is becoming extinct every day. When a language dies, a form of communication that people used in the past dies. It is upsetting because this is similar to learning history. We should know the history of our culture and if languages are becoming extinct, there is no way to uncover the history of the land in those places. Learning the language of a place can give you historical context but also gives you an understanding of how other languages affected this particular language and vice versa.
The history of Hindi is long and interesting. Hindi is one of the original Indo-European languages, so understanding how words in Hindi originated from languages such as German and Spanish is very interesting. Words like narangi, which means Orange in Hindi, is close to the pronunciation in Spanish of anaranjado. These similarities create a very interesting bond between speakers of different languages, and because I know some Spanish, this could make it somewhat easier for me to learn Hindi. The connection between old languages can be found in vocabulary all over the place and this really interests me because these languages have been passed down for generations and there are changes to every language.
My language learning experience thus far has been fun yet challenging. I have a basis in Indian languages because of my background in Tamil; however, I am quickly learning that Hindi is much different and requires lots of practice. It takes a lot of time when one’s environment does not immerse them in that language. It has been difficult to learn Hindi mainly because I am not around it all the time but also because to learn basic vocabulary words takes lots of practice and effort and repetition. Because I do not have a basic vocabulary set down, it has been hard to form sentences and go into more complex grammar issues such as different tenses. I have slowly realized the importance of learning vocabulary because learning the basics will eventually lead to you learning the language better. Only then will I be able to put together words together and can start to understand the sentence structure of Hindi, also very different than the sentence structure of English. I am currently learning different tenses of verbs and slowly starting to put together sentences that I would need if I am ever speaking to a Hindi speaker. I realized it is important to get Hindi speaking help from different sources, so one of the main goals for my Spring Break is to buy some Hindi textbooks from Barnes and Noble to keep learning consistently. This will allow me to come back to the University with an understanding of sentence structure and more vocabulary knowledge in Hindi. In the future, I am going to be using these books to fulfill my language goals and use my language partner to clarify the pronunciation of words and to speak with me to get a grasp on speaking more.
I have some HIndi speaking friends at the University of Richmond and back home in Chicago, so speaking to them will help me better understand the language. However, I already have a very good understanding of communicative competence because I am Indian and I have visited India many times. This allows me to understand body language and to show respect through signals and how I act. However, while speaking Hindi, I am interested in understanding how Hindi speakers show respect to each other with words like “aap” instead of “tum”. Seemingly, there is a hierarchy of authority in how Hindi speakers speak amongst themselves. For example, between two people of similar age and gender who use the lowest form of respect when speaking to each other usually implies the same gender or close familiarity. However, with elders, there seems to be a more sense of authority then is given to elders in English. This relates to Indian culture, where respect is very important because families are really close and its a collectivist culture. I have understood that notion first-hand, as both my parents are from India, and my family seems to be more collectivist than that of my friends. However, proper application of respect and gender is the most important thing while learning communicative competence in Hindi.
The presentations this last week were very interesting. I really liked the presentation on the salwar kameez, because I thought it was well done and it also pertained to my Hindi culture, because Hindi speakers also wear the salwar kameez. I also liked the tagalog presentation. It was interesting to see the Spanish influences of the language and how so many of the words relate to each other. One of the coolest things about languages, in my opinion is understanding the origins of words and where they came from.
This artifact is me saying the Hindi alphabet and a word that starts with that letter, similar to "A for Apple, B for Ball.."
The structure of Hindi is not like that of English. Where English is a subject -verb-object language, Hindi is different. For example, in English, I would say "I am going to D-Hall". In Hindi, I would say, " Main D-hall ja rahe hoon". Essentially, the object, D-hall, comes before the verb in Hindi. I will acquire the knowledge I need to learn the language, because it is already second nature to me, as I already speak another Indian language, Tamil. I do not think I need much effort to acquire the grammar rules of Hindi.
