Hello!
During this past week (technically 9 days), I have been working on a variety of different topics. First, I finished up working on vocabulary related to caste and health with my language partner. We discussed whether she finds the topic still relevant today, and we reviewed some vocabulary related to caste. In working on my Cultural Project, however, I did a lot of research on my own to learn more about the vocabulary words and Hindi expressions that are related to caste and health (please see blog entry about my Cultural Presentation).
On my own, I watched a great Hindi video about the reality of Dalits in India, and it was in Hindi with some subtitles. I paused the video whenever there was a sign so that I could read it (since I memorized the Hindi script at the beginning of the semester). I am really glad that I learned the script! Even though there are some letters that I still have trouble recognizing because they look SO similar to another letter or to a totally distinct Punjabi letter, I love being able to read Hindi signs -- it opens up a whole new level of understanding for me.
(left: sign that says: "Religion can be changed, why not caste? Abandon caste -- unite India." - from Flickr)
During this week's meetings with my language partner, we reviewed vocabulary related to nature and weather. It's really interesting because in English, we have many different words for rain (drizzling, pouring, raining, etc), but in Hindi, it's mainly just "monsoon" and two words for "rain." Some of the words related to weather were a bit tricky to pronounce, so we also studied a segment of "A Door Into Hindi," in which the main characters go to Murree, a town in the mountains. Thus, I was able to learn some more vocab related to natural features of India, like "lake," "mountain," "winds," etc. This also gave me some listening practice related to these weather/nature words!
I met again with with my language partner today and we did some pronunciation/listening practice by listening to a GLOSS segment on matrimonial ads. These words were really hard to understand, even though one of my projects in MLC 105 was about colorism and utilized some of the main words (fair-skinned, colorism, etc). Thus, after doing one activity, I switched to doing something a little more suited toward my level. I wrote out a variety of words related to animals, since I had not studied them yet, and we then watched a Hindi story for kids on youtube about a stray dog who got a bone...and then saw his reflection in a river and dropped the bone because he thought it was another dog. This story utilized some of the nature/weather words (river, water, etc) and then the animal words as well, so that was helpful! I still need to re-write and memorize many of the words I learned in this story, however, because they were a bit tough! This is a link to the Hindi story on YouTube: Hindi Aesop's Fables
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