Reflection #2
Learning Hindi has been fascinating and challenging for me. As I immerse myself further in Hindi, the more I appreciate the language and Indian culture as a whole. So far I have accomplished a lot in Hindi. I have familiarized myself with the alphabet. This will help me read basic signs in Hindi. After the alphabet, I learned numbers and days of the week. This taught me how to tell time in Hindi. After learning the basics, I moved on to learning more about the Indian culture. Food plays a large role in the lives of Indians. It serves as a combining force for all the different cultures that exist in the nation. Therefore, I asked my language partner to teach me the Hindi names for fruits and vegetables. Shopping in a bazaar for fruits and vegetables is a large part of the Indian tradition and its customary cooking fashion. Also, food is something that I am very passionate about. By focusing on learning of what I care for and feel passionate about, I learned Hindi more efficiently.
I am an auditory and a visual learner. So far, I have learned from hearing about the Indian culture from a macro perspective. In my weekly meetings with my language partner, Sanya, I have taken consistent notes. I am hoping that these notes will help me remember Hindi in the long run. I have been getting a lot out of initiating small conversations in Hindi with other people on campus who speak the language. These conversations and the conversations that I have had with my language partner help raise my confidence as far as speaking goes. Another component that helped me get comfortable with Hindi was learning how it originated.
The second presentation for SDLC required us to do some research regarding the history of our target language. This presentation played a crucial part in helping me understand the origin of the language and why it is the way it is. The big question that I have always had is “why do words in different languages such as Urdu, Persian, Arabic and Turkish sound so familiar to me?” In our class, one of my peers is learning Urdu. When she shared her artifact with our class, I understand majority of what she said. This further elevated my curiosity. I did not understand why I understood Urdu? For me it was very important to learn about the origin of Hindi and how it is related to other languages such as Persian, Turkish, Arabic and many others. From doing research, I discovered that in the early history of India, Persian-speaking Turks used to control northern India. The Indians did not know the language of the Turks, Persian, and the Turks did not know the native language of the Indians, Sanskrit. Hindi was created as a colloquial version of Sanskrit. Sanskrit was mixed with words from Persian, Arabic, Turkish and many other languages to create Hindi.
Doing research helped me answer a big question. However, one question is yet to be answered. Will I be able to reach the goals I have set for myself? After being half way through this semester, I think my learning plan is extremely ambitious. I have set high goals for myself. So far, I have learned a lot but I still have much more to learn. According to my original plan, I should know how to read and write at an elementary level by the end of this semester. However, at this point, my vocabulary in Hindi is small and it will not allow me to read and write properly. When I meet with my language partner for this week, I will be talking to her about what she thinks I can accomplish before the end of the semester.
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