110: Reflection Week 5

[Carly DeFaria]

This week I have been focusing on recording my artifacts so I have been working closely with Bishan to master my pronunciation. We have been practicing short conversations using the vocab that I have picked up. This week specifically we are talking about the weather. I have learned how to say it is hot and cold and that it is nice out. I have also learned how to say it is raining. I still notice that it is difficult for me to differentiate between certain Hindi phonemes that are allophones of the same phoneme in English. ठ tha and ट ta as well as ड da and  ढ dha  are very hard to differentiate. My friend Adil is very interested in the fact that I cannot differentiate these sounds and I'll spend minutes at a time just trying to copy him with little success. I have noticed that native Hindi speakers have difficulty pronouncing the English "th" it comes out more like a "d" sound.