Learning journal 1 - 105 Pravaas

[Pravaas Gurung]

While going through the readings two points stood out the most for me. First, the author discusses how the brain does not process each phonetic sound as individual steps, but preemptively causes the formations in the mouth to work towards pronouncing the next sound fluidly after the current sound. While learning Urdu I have found that trying to pronounce each sound individually makes it difficult to actually pronounce the word in the way it is meant to be pronounced. For the Urdu word "rubri" the second "r" is actually a different letter (just romanized the same). I found it very difficult to pronounce the word rubri correctly when attempting to individually pronounce that second "r". However, when I attempted to imitate the flow of the whole word I found it easier to pronounce the second "r".
Second, the readings discussed multiple meanings for a single word. There are many examples of this in Urdu, but one of the most important for my comprehension of Urdu was the meaning of the word "kal". "Kal" both refers to yesterday or tomorrow, and one must pay attention to the conjugation of verbs and context to infer whether kal is referring to something in the past or future.