Over the course of the semester, I have learned that I really enjoy and appreciate structure in a language course. At the beginning of the semester I was lost, sort of floundering around as I tried to decide how I would like to go about learning Hindi. I had looked at the different resources available, but I realized that I could not simply jump into my coursework. When I tried to start with Mango, I was overwhelmed by unfamiliar characters, and realized that I was mimicking sounds that I heard and trying to memorize strands of syllables, rather than actually understanding what I was saying and why I was saying it. I encountered a different sort of problem when I evaluated which resources from the MRC I should use—one was a grammar book, but it was intermediate-level and I still needed to learn the alphabet (same with illustrated dictionaries).

Because of these obstacles and realizations, I began to understand that for me personally to succeed as a language learner, I needed more structure to my coursework. I bought a textbook and workbook, and used them to work through a lesson at a time. Having a set progression also facilitated my learning the alphabet, as the book introduced the different letters gradually, enabling me to better retain what I was learning and apply it to sentences and grammar.

In terms of cultural exploration, I think that watching different forms of media, particularly movies, helped to acclimate me to certain values and norms, as well as get me picking out phrases and grammatical structures I had learned. I think that seeing the places I’ll be travelling to, and seeing how people interact in them (even if the films are not nonfiction) was incredibly useful. Some things that I became more familiar with were formalities and titles, gender roles, foodways, travel etiquette, and stereotypes associated with certain cities. I think the most difficult part about learning from the movies was looking past their frequent use of English. It seems that English is becoming (or already was) a language associated with cultural capital in India—those who wish to sound sophisticated or cultured will use English over Hindi or more regional languages. Thus, Indian movies will sometimes use more English than Hindi in their scripts. Since I’m going to a rural part of India where “Hindi is the purest,” this has made it difficult for me as a language learner, since the films are giving me an automatic crutch to fall back on, rather than immersing me in the language I seek to learn.

Although I have faced setbacks, I have really enjoyed learning Hindi, especially learning to write the alphabet out. It is incredibly convenient that everything is phonetic in the language, and that there are few ambiguous spellings that do not match up with a word’s pronunciation (a sharp contrast to English!). I’ve actually found myself thinking in Hindi at times when I try to spell out words! I plan to continue in my workbook even though the course is over, as well as watching more films and listening to music in the language. One major outcome of my learning is that I have gained a new appreciation for Bollywood movies. This could be dangerous in terms of time management and expecting crowds to burst into song, but I think it will also give me great conversation starters for new acquaintances in India.  

My language experience prior to learning Hindi has been in a classroom-style setting and online, when I was learning French. My high school did not have a very good French department, so I often had to supplement classroom lessons with outside efforts in order to really learn the language. I often got frustrated with the way that high school classes were structured, as they didn’t really seem to facilitate language learning. Because of this, I enrolled in an adult course at a French library one summer to focus on conversational French, which I wasn’t getting from endless verb conjugation in class. This showed me that learning “from the books” can give students a good foundation for conversation and “survival” with a language. I later skipped a level of French, learning it myself over the summer, then took the next level online, later taking a college course in the language.

After looking at the FIRE model, I would say that my learning style is a combination of insightful and rational: I like organization and learning rules, but I also like to dig deeper into issues that interest me. For my Hindi learning, I have bought a textbook and workbook, which provide a structure to lessons and a gradual progression of what is learned. When I started, I had neither, and was simply going to learn phrases through Mango. However, I was overwhelmed by this, and felt like I couldn’t start with nothing, as a tried to listen to the Mango activities which featured all Devanagari text. I realized that in order to best understand Mango conversations, I couldn’t just ape the sounds, I needed to develop a base in the alphabet and word structure. The textbook I bought understands this, and enabled me to gradually learn the alphabet, learning key phrases, questions, vocabulary, and grammatical structures at each group of letters. This structure has made learning the language much easier, and I think that having this base will make Mango learning much more effective.

In terms of understanding culture and language together, I think that watching movies and other media items. Literature is also important: I have an Eyewitness guide to India, a book on religious history in the area I’m visiting, and a novel set in the north Indian mountains on my bookshelf. Each of these pieces of literature gives me a different perspective with which to see the culture. The Eyewitness guide offers more of a Western view, telling the (presumed white, educated, First World) traveler what to do in an unfamiliar culture. Contrastingly, the religious book takes a more in-depth look at Indian history and religious belief. Thus, the first book looks at what to do, what to see, and (occasionally) what to say, while the second book looks more at the people themselves, giving the reader a better understanding of what they may believe/value. Finally, the novel offers what anthropologist Clifford Geertz described as “stories people tell themselves about themselves.” It enables me to see values, aspects of etiquette, and inherent values in the culture, similar to what a Bollywood film might provide me with. To improve my competence, I will need to practice speaking, reading, and writing, but also continue to immerse myself in the culture. 

Immersed in yet another Bollywood movie, this one called "God Made the Couple," and there was one scene that left a particularly strong impression on me. The couple was eating golgappas in a street-side restaurant, and decided to challenge each other and see who could eat the most. The man one, and both were incredibly full afterward. I was particularly intrigued because I had never encountered any Indian food quite like the golgappas. They look almost like a combination between a samosa and a pekora, but with a little opening at the top where I assume the filling is placed. 

I decided to look into the food, embarking on an online culinary adventure. After perusing Google, I found a charming website called Padhu's Kitchen, a blog written by an Indian housewife which has everything from recipes to beauty tips to yoga positions. According to Padhu, this food is only called a golgappa in northern India, and is called a poochka in West Bengal. It is a common street food or chaat (savory item/snack), and Padhu's recipe involved puris (unleavened, deep-fried Indian bread) stuffed with potatoes, sprouts, chickpeas, and spicy masala water. These snacks are also called panipuris--the word being a combination of pani (water) and puri (fried bread). The pani mix involved chutneys, chili powder, masala, cumin, and boondi (flour, butter, and chili), and the puris have chili, potatoes, chaat, cumin, and salt.

These are just one of the many types of Indian snacks out there, but definitely an important addition to my foodie and cultural vocabularies! The attached link leads to recipes and pictures of the treat. 

Padhu's Kitchen

The film around which this post is framed is called "Jab We Met" (When we met). In it, two people meet on a train: a wealthy young man whose life has fallen apart (his mother cheated on his father, and his girlfriend left him for someone else), and a young Punjabi woman planning to elope with a Sikh man. At one of the stops, the two end up missing the train, and take the journey to the woman's home together, as the journey would be dangerous for a woman alone--especially one who left all of her belongings on the train. She faced a great deal of harassment from a group of men when she missed the train, as it was late at night at an empty station. The group of men and others that the woman encountered told her that "a woman alone is like an open treasure box," making her uncomfortable and leading to the companionship of the two main characters. 

While the plot was typical of other Bollywood movies in its far-fetched nature, there was some useful travel vocabulary used in it. One song was about walking and taking different paths, which provided useful words like चलना (to walk), चलने (paths), and चलने का तरीका (walkways). Other useful phrases included कार रोक (stop the car), सामान (luggage), and चोर (thief). Interestingly, when the pair wanted to book a hotel room, they spoke in Hindi but used the word रुम instead of कमरा. This shows that English is gradually finding its way into travel words in addition to technology words. 

Other useful information was that train tickets must be bought ahead of time, and cannot be purchased on the train without a really good excuse. Also, travelling alone as a woman seems to be, sadly, a dangerous and frowned-upon practice. 

To continue my run of Hindi films, I recently watched a movie called Siddharth, which was about a 12-year-old boy from a poor family, who disappeared after being sent off to a factory to work. The film ended up being very tragic, as Siddharth's family was never able to find him, despite their constant searching. Their search was made endlessly more difficult because Siddharth's parents had never taken a picture of him (or any of their children). Every time they went to the authorities for help, officers would ask for a picture, and , having none, the parents would describe their son. Sadly, each of these scenes ended with the officer saying "you've just described every 12-year-old boy." 

I noticed two themes in the film: the difficulties and exploitation of India's poor, and the pressing need for Indians to adapt to changing technologies. The first theme was also prevalent in Water, although that film was set much earlier, and since the philosophies of many of the characters were linked to the rise of Gandhi's movement. In Siddharth, the difficulties of life in lower classes drive the characters to their limits. Siddharth's family sends him away to make ends meet with his added salary, even though they are aware that child labor is illegal. When they first go to the police, a female officer uses an informal address for the father (showing that class relations in this case will trump gender) and tells him that he should have sent his son to school, as the education, room, and board are free. The father seems unaware of this, showing that lower classes must face a lack of information as well as a lack of means to attain certain ends.

While the family's class made it incredibly difficult to look for Siddharth, the parents' lack of technological savviness was what guaranteed that they would not find their son. The father owned a phone, but did not know that he could take pictures with it, and only used it for calls. Every time the parents needed to use the phone, they would consult their daughter, who looked to be between 4 and 6. She and the neighborhood boys always knew what to do with the phone, but the parents' difficulties were a definite disadvantage. It was evident that the father was not as knowledgeable as he needed to be (literally with the phone, and perhaps symbolically with his search for his son), and this led to the failure of his search. 

Little was said of technology's role among members of higher classes, but in the encounters with people from higher rungs of the social ladder, their success seemed to go hand in hand with their ability to use their phones to further their interests. 

I've started watching films in Hindi to get a better sense of the spoken language, and this morning I came across a film called "Water." The film told the story of a nine-year-old widow, who was forced to live with a group of widows in a sort of convent. The group was essentially untouchable to the rest of society, begging on the streets, without hope of leaving (until they discover halfway through the film that a law has just been passed encouraging remarriage) and prohibited from coming in contact with certain others. Juxtaposed with this group is a wealthy young lawyer who falls in love with one of the widows. She has been forced into prostitution (which he doesn't know), and when others come in contact with her, they wash themselves, feeling contaminated by her presence. The two fall in love and grow attached to the nine-year-old, and while things take a dramatic turn for the worse by the end of the film, a great deal is said about relationships between members of different classes and genders. 

The plot is notably dramatic, almost a caricature of a Hindi film, but the relationships seemed nuanced in ways that English subtitles could not accurately capture. For instance, when the nine-year-old widow, Chariya, first meets Naryan, the lawyer, he uses the informal address (tum) when he speaks to her. Chariya's age and class would suggest that she should use the formal means of address (aap), but she uses tum when she responds. This shows both her naivete, and potentially foreshadows the intimate friendship that develops between the two. Further, When Naryan meets Kilyani, the widow he falls in love with, the two use aap to address each other, even though young Chariya is using tum with both. That Naryan should even be speaking to the two widows goes completely against social mores of the time, but as the director was Canadian, and set the film during the rise of Gandhi's movement, the theme seems to be that things are slowly changing, and that Naryan is realizing the absurdity of the class system. 

Even though Naryan holds progressive views during the film, his higher status is evident. Men and members of the upper-class are the only ones who use English phrases (Naryan even quotes Shakespeare)--and Kilyani cannot even read, speaking only Hindi with the other widows. Thus, English was infiltrating upper-class parlance at the time of the film's setting, showing that it was an elite privilege, but suggesting that it may also spread to other groups.