This semester I learned Sindhi through the Self Designed Language Acquisition Program. This idea or thought of learning Sindhi has been in my mind for a long time but I always had something more important to do so I was not able to give time to working on learning the language. I am really happy I took this class because I was able to reach my goals through the semester.
These are few things I was able to achieve this semester:
- I learned basic greetings and I can introduce myself to anyone who speaks the language.
- I learned about the history of Sindh and the various types of Sindhis that exist. Sindhis were known according to the little towns or villages they came from.
- Through research I was able to learn about Sindhi cuisine and traditional Sindhi weddings.
- I am able to talk about my family and describe each family member.
- I learned the days of the week, the numbers, colors, fruits and vegetables, hobbies.
- I am able to have a basic conversation about likes and dislikes with someone speaking the target language.
- I can watch a short story in Sindhi and mostly understand the meaning of it.
- I can narrate a short story that I watched or heard from my language partner.
- I can tell and ask the time in Sindhi.
- I was able to do some research on the differences between Sindhis in Pakistan and Sindhis in India. Living in India I have been exposed to only the Sindhi culture within my family that is Hindus.
To achieve these goals during the semester I met with my language partner and we would talk about how our classes were going and what interesting events we were attending on campus, all in Sindhi. I did stumble and make many mistakes but with repeated attempts I was able to pick up common words in different sentences. I used YouTube videos to watch short stories. I used online websites to do research on cultural aspects.
I feel accomplished at the end of the semester. But I think the program would have been more effective if I had more resources to learn Sindhi. I would’ve loved to have books with pictures to learn Sindhi but most books use the Arabic script so I was not able to read the script. But overall I was able to learn a lot.
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