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.
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