Photo Credit: D Sharon Pruitt

Oh yeah, I dated this international style! So, I’ve decided to start linking some of my favorite reads at the end of the week – there’s a million and one things I run across that seem like they’d be of interest to the readers of this blog, but I never have time to write a whole blog post about each one. Thus, Friday Connections. I’ll try to group links each week into subjects. Let me know what you guys think!

Children and Language

• Native language shapes the melody of a newborn baby’s cry – A recent study has shown that babies – at least German and French monolingual babies – cry differently. Moreover they cry differently from birth, suggesting that they’re already listening and responding to different language cues in the womb. Other studies regarding babies’ brains and languages can be found at the bottom of the page (apparently there are some really neat cognitive effects to raising a kid bilingual).
• The Bilingual Dilemma – This older article from the Indian-American magazine, Little India, discusses the particular difficulties South Asian parents have in raising their children bilingual in the U.S. The biggest thing I drew from the article is how difficult it is to raise children who both understand and respond in the non-English language in the US – even when both parents are perfectly fluent in both languages! I’ll definitely be looking into this further when Aditya and I start thinking about kids.
• Raising Bilingual Children series – While looking for information about learning Hindi, I stumbled across this series at Omniglot about raising children bilingual (or multilingual). It went straight into my bookmarks – the list it has at the end of other resources is great!
• Then there’s the following Dinosaur Comic:

Alt-Text: “Lots of languages have ‘ba’ sounds for dads too. ‘Baba’ in Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and Bangla, Mandarin Chinese, ‘abba’ in Aramaic, and ‘ba’ in !Kung. In other news, !Kung (the language AND the people) is/are too awesome to just be mentioned in the title-text here; their language uses CLICKS, that’s what the ‘!’ is!”

Alt Alt-Text: “the great things about babies is that you can never be racist against babies, because you were totally a baby once. the only difference is, YOU grew out of it.”

South Asian Fashion in the Home

• Using cotton saris as tablecloths – the right sari looks really great in a casual environment!
• Blankets stitched from multiple old saris in Calcutta slums – the price being charged here is a little outrageous, but the blankets are incredibly lovely.  Perhaps a good idea for DIYers…
• Vintage Hindu posters – I’ll admit that the majority of Hindu posters of Indian gods and goddess are a little too bright and colorful for the style of our home – they’d simply look out of place. However, some these vintage Hindu posters (available for purchase in NYC)are really striking, so I’ll be on the lookout this coming trip to India…
• Orange and gray color combos – a few striking rooms from Apartment Therapy. The rooms aren’t South Asian, exactly, but remind me very strongly of a modern look combined with South Asian colorfulness.
• How to: Paisley Wall Decoration – Aditya wasn’t a huge fan of the look, but I really like it (and would probably do it in a bathroom or another small space if Aditya didn’t object).

Cross-Cultural Controversy

• Let’s find the racist! And then let’s shame the racist! – A very considered, thoughtful response to the news regarding the Louisana judge who refused to marry a mixed-race couple because, well, he didn’t think it right. Jen Chau pushes us to think beyond the knee jerk “that’s so racist” response, and look at things a bit deeper.
• The Model Minority Image: Balancing Praise and Caution – Dr. Le digs into the “model minority” label that Asian Americans are often stuck with – it’s typically meant as praise, but does it also serve as a backhanded put-down to other minorities?
• The Painted Man – A blog about the making of a soon-to-be-released graphic novel of “a collection of coming of race memoirs that finds a dad confronted by racially charged questions posed directly by his young son and the people they come into contact with.” I’m really looking forward to reading the final product of the stories of this mixed-race family.

Finally, to lighten it up, I have a really cute video about an animial “odd couple”:

I’ve written briefly in the past about ways to learn a new language, but with my new Hindi Project pushing language learning to the forefront of my free time, I realize that I need to spell out exactly what my language learning goals are, and the timetable I’m setting to achieve them. A large part of the Hindi Project is accountability – and that requires specific details!

My Hindi Goals

Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.

- Bo Jackson

I think it’s important that you learn your partner’s native language, if it’s one that you don’t know. In my case, that means learning both Hindi & Bengali, as those are the two languages (along with English) that Aditya grew up speaking – at the moment I’m focusing on Hindi. Ideally, I think one should strive for a near-native level of fluency, but I strongly suspect that most people (including me!) cannot get to that level without spending a significant amount of time in the country where the language is spoken. Since Aditya and I have no current plans to move to India, my long-term language goal is a little less lofty.

Long-Term Language Learning Goals

In five years or less, I would like to:

• Read at a Stage 3 level. This includes being able to understand a typical news article on the BBC Hindi site without a dictionary on hand (although I may not understand every word) and being able to comfortably read a pop fiction novel in Hindi.
• Write at a Stage 2 level. I suspect I will have little need to communicate in writing with anyone in Hindi, so being able to write extensively is not a high priority for me. I’m not looking to write any books here – I’d just like to be able to communicate at a practical level in writing.
• Listen at a Stage 3 level. This includes being able to easily understand all Hindi conversation I’m likely to hear on the street in India or with my in-laws, being able to easily watch Bollywood films without subtitles, and being able to follow a news report on television if I concentrate.
• Speak at a low Stage 3/high Stage 2 level. Extemporaneous speech has always been a difficulty of mine (even in English some days!), so I’m keeping expectations a little low here, even though getting to a low Stage 3 level will be my largest challenge in learning Hindi. Functionally, I’d like to be able to have basic conversations with people I meet, communicate effectively in things like bartering or ordering meals, and speak to my in-laws and Aditya about my day.

Written out in detail, these long-term goal seems more than a little intimidating to me! However, I have achieved these levels of fluency in German in only a few years, so I think I’ll be able to do so with Hindi (or so I kept reminding myself when I was tempted to downgrade these goals while writing out the list).

When making long-term goals, it’s important to visualize what sort of life and experiences you’d like to be having in the future compared to what you’re experiencing in the present.

Currently, I understand next to nothing of Hindi, and am not able to communicate with Aditya in one of his native languages (which he dislikes). Five years from now, I’d like to be able to hold a regular basic conversation with him (and any future kids) as easily in Hindi as in English. Right now, my inability to speak Hindi makes communication with some in-laws difficult, and makes trips to India a challenge. Five years from now, I’d like to be able to communicate confidently and comfortably with my in-laws, and be able to move to India for good if Aditya’s and my careers and interests lean that way. There’s obviously a lot to be done if I want to move from where I am today to where I’d like to be in five years!

Short-Term Language Learning Goals

Aditya and I leave for India in mid-February 2010, so I’m setting that trip as my short-term goals date. That gives me roughly 13 weeks of serious studying time. (While we aren’t traveling for the holidays, I’m sure they’ll suck up some free time.)

When we leave for India, I would like to be at a Stage 1 level in reading, speaking, and listening. Furthermore, I’d like to be able to:

• Read menus, maps, and basic informational signs without trouble.
• Communicate and understand Hindi well enough to give basic directions to staff (at a hotel, in a restaurant, driver, etc) and barter at shops
• Answer that my in-laws will undoubtedly pepper me with once they learn I’ve been studying Hindi, and ask a few of my own.

If the first list of long-term goals intimidated me, this one has me near petrified. I’m treading on completely new ground here, having never attempted to learn a language this quickly – I sort of eased into German with a typical slow-moving American high school language class. So I’m not completely certain I’ll be able to achieve this – but I can certainly try! (If anyone wants to chime in with their own experiences on learning languages quickly, I’d love to get some feedback.)

My Hindi Learning Plan

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

- Leonard Bernstein

Right now, I’m going to focus on detailing a specific learning plan for the three months I have to study until our India trip. After the short-term Hindi Project is finished, I’ll reassess where I am in learning Hindi, where I’d like to go, and how I’ll get there. After all, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy – you gotta stay flexible!

While thinking about this over the weekend, I reread my copy of Barry Farber’s How To Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own (recommended!). The book is a bit dated – no mentions of the internet or computer software here – but it remains an excellent guide to learning languages. The most important chapter in the book outlines Farber’s “Multiple Track Attack” method of using all of the tools available to you to learn.In my own experience, I learn languages the best when I’m following some version of the “multiple track attack”. I picked up German the quickest when I was living in the country itself, taking a German language class at the local Volkshochschule AND working on vocabulary lists with another person AND reading German children’s book to the six-year-old I was a nanny for AND attempting to communicate to people in German in daily life AND pouring over my old German textbooks every night.

Obviously, I can’t live and breathe Hindi everyday like I did with German when I was in Germany. But I plan to follow a similar multi-pronged approach, and would strongly recommend it to everyone else as well.

Hindi Language Tools

In order to figure out a plan of action, it’s important to figure out what tools you have (or can get) to help you in learning your target language, right? Here’s a list of mine – they aren’t, perhaps, the best possible tools I could get, but they’re good enough for getting started now.

• Teach Yourself Beginner’s Hindi Script by Rupert Snell
  • There are 8 units in Beginner’s Hindi Script, starting with a background on the Hindi script, then covering the constants, the vowels, conjunct constants, and other writing conventions. So far, I’ve worked my way through all of the constants, and am starting on the vowels (Unit 4). This is one of the must-have tools for anyone learning Hindi, in my opinion.
• Teach Yourself Hindi Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) by Rupert Snell
  • This book, by Snell, is another one of the must-haves, covering a full college course or two of material in a straightforward manner over 18 chapters (of which I’ve completed one). I plan on using this book as my primary grammar tool and main textbook.
• Teach Yourself Hindi: And Subjectwise Dictionary by Mohini Rao
  • This is another grammar + vocabulary book – one which I don’t recommend, as the typesetting is not good, and the lessons are a little more “old school”. However, since I have it, I might as well use it as a secondary reference.
• LiveMocha
  • I recently rediscovered this website, and am quite impressed with the improvements made since I last visited it. There are four Hindi courses – 101, 102, 201, 202 – spanning 160 hours of work. I’ll be using LiveMocha as my primary “computer program” tool.
• Rosetta Stone: Hindi Level 1
  • Rosetta Stone, I feel, is at about the same level of quality as LiveMocha. However, LiveMocha is accessible from anywhere, so Rosetta Stone is going to become my secondary software tool.
• Phrasebook
  • Currently, I don’t have a hard-copy phrasebook. I’ll be using the WikiTravel Hindi Phrase page for now. If anyone has any suggestions for good Hindi phrasebooks (perhaps Say It in Hindi (Dover Say It Series) ?), I’d appreciate suggestions.
• Flash Cards
  • Flash cards are KEY for learning vocabulary and phrases. I’m in the “make them yourself” school of thought, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
• Aditya
  • A fluent speaker is also key for learning a language, in my opinion. Aditya’s main roles in helping me learn Hindi will be to correct my pronunciation, check over (and correct) my exercises, and be a conversational partner.

Now, you may be looking at that list of tools, and think I’m insane. While I don’t necessarily deny the charge, I won’t be using all of these tools at the same time.

Hindi Learning Schedule

As I discussed in the Hindi Project post, my first goal is to learn Hindi script. With that in mind, my main focus for the next ten days or so will be completing the Beginner’s Hindi Script book. While I work on that, I will use flashcards to memorize the vocabulary the script book uses, and I’ll also start in on the first Hindi course on LiveMocha.

Once I finish the Hindi Script book, I’ll shift to Snell’s other book, Teach Yourself Hindi, while continuing to use LiveMocha and flashcards. By then it’ll be mid-Novemeber, and I should be ready to start juggling a fourth ball, namely travel-friendly phrases (which will be learnt via flashcards and stilted “conversations” with Aditya). When I start in on the second LiveMocha course in early Decemeber, I’ll throw in a fifth ball – Rosetta Stone. If and when I finish the first Rosetta Stone, I’ll start using the Rao Teach Yourself Hindi book to supplement Snell’s.

Perhaps this would be clearer with a chart, hmmm?

Let it never be said that I’m not ambitious enough, right?

So far, I’ve really enjoyed my evenings studying Hindi, so I’m upping the amount per week to about seven or eight hours. I don’t expect to use every “scheduled” tool every evening, but like a juggler, I’ll won’t ignore any one “ball” for any length of time. So one night may be LiveMocha and creating flashcards to study when I have spare moments, and the next night might be focused on picking up a particularly hard piece of grammar, and then practicing it with Aditya. Hopefully, the Hindi Project will be a success. I’ll keep you all updated!

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As always, if anyone else is interested in doing their own “_____ Language Project”, I’d love to see your exact plans as well – either on your blog (leave a link here), in the language and communication forums section here on Gori Girl (feel free to start your own personal thread), or in the comments on this post. Don’t feel that you need to make it as detailed as I did, altho the more details the better for keeping on track! If you’re wondering where to get started, I recommend reading this short guideline on Managing Your Language Learning Program.

Photo Credit: vm2827

The tickets have been purchased. We’re headed to India for a three week vacation/business trip in February and March of next year.

And man, does my Hindi suck.

Longtime readers may be scratching their head, thinking they’ve heard this song & dance about learning an Indian language from me before. They’d be absolutely, totally correct.  Last year, however, I was trying to learn Bengali. And I have – some. Not much; mainly, I can play cards in Bengali. And curse. (Sometimes I get to do both at once!)

This year it’s all about the Hindi. With a trip to Delhi and North India in sight, Aditya and I have both agreed that I need to focus more on learning Hindi. There’s the functional aspects to knowing enough to get around town and communicate when Aditya isn’t right at my side. Then there’s the social aspect of extended family, friends, and (in my case) Delhi coworkers. At our Indian wedding two years ago I could get away with saying “a little” in the appropriate language when asked if I knew  either Hindi or Bengali. Guests and family loved it then, but I suspect the joke does not age well.

What’s the problem? Well, like most humans, I lack self-control. Specifically, I lack the ability to correctly choose “studying” in the moment, when I’m faced with either doing my Hindi lessons or watching the awesome new Project Runway episode.  Luckily, economists have studied this problem in-depth (see Nobel Laureate Schelling’s amazing lecture, for instance (pdf)) – and have arrived at a pretty useful solution: create a commitment device that really hurts when you deviate from what you should be doing.

The most common commitment devices require you to sign a binding contract to give up a lot of money (often to a cause or person you don’t like) when you fail to do what you ought. However, given our combined income, it seemed a bit unfair to me that Aditya suffer along. If I fail, not only does he lose money, but he also has a non-Hindi-speaking spouse!

So instead, I thought of you guys. Wouldn’t I look like such a hypocritical chump if I publicly announced my exact plans to learn Hindi on my intercultural blog – and then failed to live up to that promise? And had to announce that to all my col blog readers?

Thus, we have…

The Hindi Project

Here’s the deal: I’ve promised Aditya three days per week of at least an hour’s study, and another three days of at least 30 minutes, kicking off next week. To stay accountable to this heavy workload, I’ll be writing in the forums here everyday on my Hindi progress. I’ll also be updating this blog weekly on my progress – most likely with some humorous story about how I accidentally insulted Aditya’s mom on the phone.

Moreover, I’d love to have you participate in this project too! If there’s something you’re working on -  learning your partner’s language, cooking new dishes, or even something not at all interculturally-related – and you’d like to have some public accountability to get your butt in action, then it’d be great to have you join me. Misery-shared and all that, right? (Or, to think positively, let’s share tips on keeping motivated!)

Everyone else: keep me accountable, and have an awesome Diwali weekend! I’ll post pictures of coworkers and myself in the saris we wore to the office soon.

Most of the blame for this “situation”, so to speak, could simply be laid at the feet of circumstance or chance – we happen to live in a very multicultural area, participate in activities that naturally bring a diverse crowd, and my choice of careers was more due to, you know, the job I would be doing than the diversity of people at my office. But I don’t think it’s as simple as chance – the choices Aditya and I have made both individually and as a couple, as well as our prior experiences, have made an outcome like this probable.

So.  This past week I’ve been thinking more about cross-cultural connections outside of my intercultural marriage with Aditya. How do these two spheres of life – home & husband and outside work & community – interact with each other? There’s no doubt that my relationship with Aditya has given me a fair bit of traction with the South Asians I run into – but how has it affected my relationships with people from other cultures? And how has working with an office full of immigrants and different cultures changed my marriage?

Obviously, the answers to these questions will be complex – which is why I’ll be discussing my thoughts on this subject in a series of posts. But the keystone to my ideas lies in the lovely concept of intercultural communicative competence. This term was developed as part of an effort by theorists of foreign language instruction a decade ago, and has slowly been evolving in the intercultural studies academic community. The initial discussions of this topic related to how instructors could teach their language learners how to communicate in a foreign language with real, live foreign people – not just speak a bunch of funny-sounding words. Mostly it involved learning the specifics of the culture associated with the language – things like “Germans are überpunctual – if you’re on time, you’re actually late.” Since then, though, the idea has expanded to incorporate both the specific knowledge and the skill set that all people who interact cross-culturally – i.e. intercultural learners – need to have to be successful, whether they’re speaking a foreign tongue or not.

This skill set is what I believe translates back and forth between my relationship with Aditya and my cross-cultural relationships out in the community – and each one is strengthened by the other. Next I’ll start delving into the specifics of what constitutes competent intercultural learning, but before then I’d love to hear what everyone’s initial thoughts on this matter are. Do you have many cross-cultural connections out in your community or workplace? Do you think it’s affected your closer personal relationship with a friend or significant other from another culture? Anyone else feel like they work for the U.N.?

Yesterday I discussed all the great reasons you ought to be studying the native language of your partner. Today I’m focusing on why I haven’t yet achieved fluency in Aditya’s native language, Bengali, despite all those great reasons – and what I’m doing about it.

The Asian Playground and German Dreams

Growing up, I always wished I could speak another language or three fluently. I wanted it so bad, in fact, that I ran off to Germany when I was 17 to realize this dream. You see, in high school, I was one of exactly three people in my “hang-out group” of about thirty five friends who wasn’t at least bilingual. Not only did they get dumplings, sushi, and Pocky in their lunch bags, but they could slip in and out of another language with ease. I was so jealous. And, yeah, there were a lot of East Asian immigrant where I grew up – Club Fair Day featured a series of martial arts shows and at least three varieties of spring rolls for sale. Even the other white kids didn’t stand by me in solidarity of monolingualism: several were Jewish, and my high school boyfriend, Sasha, had spent his formative years in Russia. (His super-nice mom would always try to stuff me Slavic goodies while talking cheerfully away in Russian. High school me? Utterly intimidated.)

At the time it seemed completely unfair – here I was, struggling to learn what gender a bus was in German (male), and they just got a language scot-free because of their particular parents. So I concocted an elaborate plan where I would graduate a bit early from high school, delay starting college by a semester, and spend nearly a year working in Germany and traveling around Europe. Surprisingly, it all worked out, and I ended up a KLM flight to Hamburg when I was 17 to try my hand working as Au-Pair. That meant I was basically an unexperienced live-in teenage nanny – the family that hired me was either insane, or could sense my charming personality from halfway around the world. Nine months later I was back in the US and dreaming completely in German. Finally fluent in something!

Bengali? That’s Indo-European, right?

By the time I met Aditya I had forgotten all my high school language woes. I didn’t remember how difficult it was to grind through a vocabulary list, to work with grammar that isn’t intuitive, to convince my mouth to make sounds that English never required. And that’s like, five new sounds – German isn’t that different from English. So I was pathetically optimistic about my ability to learn his native language once we started getting serious – after all, Bengali is a part of the Indo-European language family, just like English & German. No tonal sounds to worry about? Piece of cake.

…Right. Let’s just say that I can barely hear the difference in a lot of sounds, let alone reproduce them.

Of course, we’ve only gotten to this point after a year-long debate concerning whether I should focus on learning Hindi or Bengali. The debate isn’t technically over – there’s major pros and cons on both sides – but it’s tabled for now, and I’m focusing on Bengali.

What works, and what doesn’t – at least for me

By now, I’ve figured out some things that help along the language learning process. You’d think that having an at-hand native speaker would make things easier, but you’d be surprised.

First, I will always believe that the best way to learn a language is to go spend some time in a country where it’s spoken – as long as you’re willing to work at the language while you’re there. Sadly, you can’t learn anything by osmosis or I’d be fluent in 8 or 9 Sanskritic languages from sleeping next to Aditya every night. (I was jealous enough of my high school classmates – learning that his 6+ years of studying Sanskrit and army-brat nomadic childhood equipped Aditya with the ability to speak many languages was so irritating.)

Of course, not everyone can just pick up and fly off to another country just to learn a language like a silly teenage girl, so I think the second-best thing to do is take a proper language course at a local university, if offered. Foreign language professors have years of training and experience to draw on when teaching, while your partner likely doesn’t. This really does make a big difference, particularly when you’re studying a language that is quite dissimilar to English. Like galaxie, I’ll be auditing a Hindi course next year, supposing I successfully pass my comprehensive exams. Of course, many languages are uncommon enough to not be taught anywhere – at least not anywhere close to you.

In that case you’ve got to go with the third option: gathering up every resource you can get to help you in your independent study. Rosetta Stone software is amazing, although the only Indian language they offer is Hindi. Get some cds if you’re a aural learner (I’m not), books if you’re a visual learner, or both if you’re a rich learner. Use your partner as another resource, but not as the only resource – too often a native speaker can’t easily explain why the language is the way it is. I fall into this category for learning Bengali, and use a book out of the wonderful Teach Yourself series. Aditya serves mainly to correct my pronunciation (in between his bursts of laughter at it) and correct my handwriting (which is luckily “no worse” than my “horrible English handwriting”). This system works pretty well, especially when I allow myself to taunt him with long German words he has no hope of saying correctly.

What if you’re stuck in the no man’s land of no published language learning resources, either in traditional media or on the internet? Well, your fourth and final choice is to depend on your partner entirely for language instruction. In this case, what I would suggest is that your partner find a book from the “Teach Yourself” series that covers the closest-related language to your target language, and then translate all the lessons into his language for you to learn from. (Note: this won’t work if you’re trying to learn Basque.) It’ll mean more work for both of you, but it’s a lot better than just picking up bits and pieces of a language as you go along.

Whenever I get frustrated learning Bengali, I plan on going back to yesterday’s list to remind myself why it’s worth it. All of the reasons I listed are valid for me, but I particularly want to know Aditya’s native language so that I can talk easily with his mother (whose English is actually quite good, but she’s more comfortable with Bengali). Also, I want any future kids of mine to be the cool kids on the playground: (store-bought) samosas in their lunch bags and awesome language skills.

1. You’ll be able to communicate better with your partner
   If you can speak your partner’s native language, you’ll have two resources to go to when you’re trying to communicate ideas or concepts. Every language has words that don’t translate easily, or phrases that are quite useful, but awkward when stated in another language. A higher level of fluency helps here, but it’s not necessary. For instance, one of the first words I learned in German (the only language other than English that I’m fluent in) was Gemütlichkeit, which is best translated as “coziness” but contains a lot more connotations than the English word does. It’s a great word that I use all the time with other German speakers to get my point across quickly and effectively.
2. You’ll be able to move through your partner’s homeland with more ease
   While a lot of Indians speak English, particularly in cities, having knowledge of the local language, or at least Hindi, helps in pretty much every circumstance imaginable, from bargaining with the shopkeepers to discussing politics with friends. I would not be comfortable living in India if I didn’t know at least Hindi or Bengali. For Aditya’s sake, I’d like keep open the option of moving to India in the future, which means that I need to get crackin’. Plus it’d be nice when visiting India and understand what half the people around me are saying.
3. You’ll be able to talk to your partner’s family
   If your partner is from another country, it’s quite possible that some, most, or even all of the members of his or her family don’t speak much of your language. If this is the case, your best bet at facilitating communication will be to learn their language. Plus it shows you’re making an effort at good relations. A little goes a long way here: when I was asked by Aditya’s relatives at our wedding if I knew any Bengali, responding with “a little” in Bengali (ektu) got huge grins of pleasure.
4. You’ll be able to understand your partner’s culture better
   This one’s related to the first point. You know those words and phrases that are so useful, but difficult to translate? They were developed because the culture where your partner grew up needed them to explain common concepts. Think of the Indian words that have been hijacked into the English language, like karma. Those words came into being because the idea they represent were so important culturally (and in karma’s particular case, religiously). Knowing those words is a big help in figuring out how society works back in your partner’s home.
5. It’s more fair to your partner
   In any intercultural relationship (really, in any relationship at all) there’s going to be a lot of adjusting and compromising. Learning your partner’s language is one way to show her that not all the compromising is going to be done by her. That you’re willing to meet halfway on some issues. Also, if your partner isn’t that adapt at English, it can put her at a real disadvantage when you argue – you’ll be able to win just because you’re literally in better control of the terms of the argument. And we all know that isn’t fair at all. (Or fun – I prefer to win arguments because my position is the obviously superior one.)
6. It can be great for your professional life
   Look, you’re already learning a ton about your partner’s culture and homeland just by being in a relationship with him. If you add on a language, guess who’s going to be the go-to man when anything related to that country comes up at work? Obviously this reason doesn’t work for everyone, but suppose your company has an office in India, as many tech firms today do. Trust me, being able to not only chat about the latest cricket series with the developers in the Indian office, but also make rude comments in Hindi about the Australians’ ability to dish it but not take it will endear you in their hearts forever. (The above comment makes sense if you follow cricket. Really!)
7. Any future children will thank you
   As you probably know, the best time to learn a language is when your brain matter is all fresh and new- aka childhood. And children are much more likely to learn two languages growing up if they’re both spoken freely about the household by everyone. Now, you might say that you’ll have your partner teach your kids her native language even if you don’t speak it – but now your poor kid is going to have to act as a translator for you at every freakin’ family gathering. So do your future offspring a favor and learn the language too.
8. You’ll be able to share your partner’s faith better
   Again, this reason doesn’t work for everyone, but it will for some. If your partner is Israeli, and you’re thinking about converting to Judaism, you should probably consider learning Hebrew. Muslim? Arabic would be a good choice. Heck, even for me, knowing Hindi would help with understand some terminology in Hinduism (although I have absolutely no plans of studying Sanskrit).
9. You’ll be able to understand what the heck that catchy jingle is talking about
   Or what that news anchor is saying when your hotel room only carries Hindi channels and Bhutto was just assassinated. Or what the lyrics are to that sad-sounding song that your partner is always listening to. Or why he’s raving about that new, not-yet-translated book. There’s a lot of media out there that’s not in English, and you’re missing out on it. Perhaps more importantly, you’re missing out on sharing it with your partner.
10. You’ll have an awesome “secret” code you can use
    Sometimes it can be useful to have a way to communicate with your partner without having other people understand. Or sometimes it’s just really, really fun to be able to communicate with your partner without having other people understand. Right now “the code” is used against me – Aditya will have an Indian friend over, and will talk in Bengali or Hindi when he doesn’t want me to know what he’s saying. While I’m sure he’d never say anything sassy about me, I’d prefer to understand what he’s talking about. Also, I don’t have a lot of German-speaking friends to retaliate with. Gotta even the odds somehow!

Can you guys think of other good reasons to learn your partner’s native language? Obviously there’s a whole bunch of good reasons to learn a new language in general, but try to think of one’s related to intercultural relationship in particular.