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.

A new commenter, Lurker frequent, brought up this interesting topic in regards to intercultural marriages in the comments section of my last post.

As an Indian in the USA; the only reason I would not want to marry a local is to not “lose” my own traditions and culture. Minds meeting , and matching interests and hearts are more important, but certainly , coming from an old and rich tradition, one would want to preserve it by having a completely Indian family, no? Thoughts?

It seems to me that there are several issues in play here, some of which Aditya and I discussed in the comments section when Lf first wrote out his comment (do check it out).

1. What is meant by cultural continuity? Is it something we should value, and if so, why? Does intercultural marriage (which often leads to Third Culture Kids) automatically mean that the cultures of the parents is ending?
2. What does it mean to say that India has an “old and rich tradition” (compared, presumably, against America or other Western cultures’ younger and poorer traditions)? Is it something we should value? What exactly do we mean by tradition, anyways?
3. What sort of culture – or cultures – do we want to have in our own lives? For those of us in intercultural relationships, what (if anything) are we losing by not creating a monocultural family? Will our lives be richer for it? Poorer? What about extended families?

Well, that’s a lot of questions! Enough for a book or three, certainly, so I’ll just give a simplified sketch of my own views on this matter, than open it up to the rest of you.

What is cultural continuity?

Let’s get one thing straight: cultures – all cultures – are constantly changing. And by culture here, I mean “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a society” – i.e. culture is the sum of all learned human behaviors in a particular society. What one generation learns from the previous will change as a society adapts to different conditions. The rate of the change that a culture goes through will generally vary based on the internal and external conditions or pressures a society faces, such as technological innovation, changing resources, and contact with other cultures.

For example, most Americans today would not be able to survive for very long in the wild, but the pioneers in the early days of our nation certainly could and did. As “frontier America” transformed into towns and cities knowing how to live off the land became a less important skill than those that allowed you to work in an office or factory in town.

So what is cultural continuity, if all cultures are constantly in a state of flux? Well, while everything in a culture can change, certain societal structures and beliefs – often embedded in religion or religious belief itself – are resistant to change and experience it more slowly. Hinduism in India, and the caste system which has become entwined to some extent with Hinduism, are both good examples of long-standing cultural traditions. But even they have changed over time to stay relevant, as my husband, Aditya, mentioned in his original response to Lurker frequent:

The survival of traditions is in being able to remain relevant with changing times. Even following Hindu traditions & scriptures, you can see clear evidence of the evolution of Hinduism when it responds to new “challengers” like Buddhism (Bhagavad Gita), Islam (Vedanta revival) and Christianity (Vivekananda).

So it’s not that culture continuity requires that a culture stays the same – that’s impossible – just that certain central aspects of a culture, such as particular beliefs or traditions, remain. To return to the example of “living off the land” in the US, while most Americans can’t survive out in the wild, there remains an ethos of individuality in American culture: a belief that a person should be able to stand on his own two feet without help from others or the government, just as pioneers were required to do.

Should we value cultural continuity?

I personally think that a part of the human mind craves traditions, rituals, and continuity, although this need is expressed to a greater or lesser extent in individuals. So, yes – to some degree cultural continuity is a desirable feature to have, both in society at large and in our individual lives. That being said, it isn’t the end all and be all: “tradition for tradition’s sake” is an argument easily overrode by more pressing “goods” such as freedom of choice, happiness, justice, and so forth. By that I mean that traditions cannot justify actions that hurt people or deny them their basic human rights.

As Aditya said in his comment:

I do think that the argument (or preserving traditions) are well intentioned, but the fact of the matter is that traditions must be revisited constantly to remain relevant. If we froze our traditions as they were in the 16th century, we’d still have women locked in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, this argument is also being made all over the world today to deny basic human rights to minorities and oppressed groups… from the denial of political rights to women, to outlawing gay marriage, the mantra of “this is not how it has always been” has become the central “argument” against progress of society.

Leaving aside the moral argument, which I hope all of you understand without my expanding upon it, following some traditions in the modern age is simply irrational. Traditions, after all, were formed to help societies function well – but societies today don’t exactly look like (or require the same things) as they did when these traditions were developed. Consider, for example, the traditionally arranged economy (the Indian caste system is one version of this), where a child follows in the work of his father. This system only functions as a good tradition in societies where

1. The work doesn’t change much from one generation to another.  Otherwise, there’s no point in having the child learn a skill at the knee of his father that will be antiquated by the time child is old enough to enter the workforce, and
2. The work isn’t specialized enough that only some people have the particular skill set, mental abilities, and personality to do it well. Otherwise children will be trained from childhood to do a job that they aren’t well-suited for – there’s no reason to expect my future kids will rock out as product managers just because Aditya does.

In today’s economy, neither of these points holds true, and thus the traditionally-arranged economy should be abandoned purely on utility grounds – a society that practices it won’t do as well as a society that doesn’t.

So for a tradition to be continued today, it should:

1. be rational – actually help the society & people that practice it
2. be moral – not hurt individuals or their free practice of their basic human rights

With the increased pace of technological innovation today, many long-standing traditions have been ending, amid outcries from critics that capitalism or globalization or American cultural imperialism are ruining cultures left and right, leading to a homogenization of the world. This is largely bullshit.

Yes, societies around the world are becoming more similar – there is more of world-wide culture today than ever before. But subcultures and individuals’ choices within cultures are more diverse than ever before as well. People today have (more of) a choice of whether they want to follow a tradition that isn’t actually rational in today’s world – or one that violates people’s human rights, such as the caste system. Moreover, today we are able to witness some amazing creative efforts as people combine two traditions to make a completely new – and wonderful – tradition or art form. See, for example, my post on Michael Jackson and bhangra. (Now, while I’d like to move the focus back to intercultural relationships, if you’d like to read more on this topic I recommend starting off with economist Tyler Cowen’s article Creative Destruction, which can be found here as a word document.)

Intercultural marriage and creative destruction

Intercultural marriage is a perfect example of the creative destruction that, when successful, leads to both great innovation and happy, meaningful lives. Every marriage consists of the creation of a new family culture – but with intercultural marriages each individual is bringing a completely distinct culture and set of traditions to the table to be combined. Yes, there will almost certainly be fewer pieces of a Indian culture or Bengali culture in Aditya’s and my “family culture” than there would be if he had married another Indian – but we can choose to keep the worthwhile traditions while eliminating the rest.

We can keep statues of the gods around the house to remind us of our values, we can play and watch cricket on the weekends, remember that our home is also the home of our family, and have lovely saris and Indian tunics in the closets. We can also keep the best of American traditions and culture. We celebrate a secular family Christmas with an exchange of presents, watch (too much) great tv programming that comes out of Hollywood, train our dogs following Western methods like crating, and have (fasionably) torn jeans in the dressers.

It takes effort to combine two cultures successfully, and a willing attitude to learn from both partners. But I personally feel the effort is more than paid back by the results. Is it worthwhile for everyone? Of course not! Intercultural relationships are hard work. (All relationships require hard work, of course, but there tend to be more difficult variables in an intercultural marriage than a monocultural one.)

If you really want all of the traditions you grew up with to be part of your adult life, then you should probably choose something other than an intercultural match, since that’s unlikely to happen in an intercultural marriage unless your partner is willing to give up all of his or her cultural traditions. Of course, given the speed of cultural and technological change, it’s unlikely that all of the traditions you grew up with will be a part of your adult life anyways. As Aditya said,

In the reality of the globalized world of today, intercultural relationships give us a glimpse of a future where the free flow of information and people have broken down meaningless antiquated boundaries.

(Little do they know that if I am stymied in blogging about their dastardly actions of cleaning our house & cooking delicious meals I have no problem in getting irrationally upset about some other minor issue. For example: the fridge has been reorganized without my express permission, and the dishwasher was inefficiently loaded, resulting in one less cup being washed than if I had loaded it. I’m still reeling!)

Since I haven’t had a chance to sit down and think through a post lately, I thought I’d share with you the transcript I’ve typed up in spare minutes from an NPR segment called Intercultural Relationships: Can They Work?. I’m not a professional transcriber, so there may be errors – but I figured something was better than nothing for those of you who can’t (or don’t like to) listen to podcasts. The segment (and my post title) was developed from an article in East West Magazine. The article, which you can find here, is quite complimentary to the NPR segment, and I encourage you to read it as well as the transcript below. I’ve bolded the parts I find particularly interesting, and will post my thoughts on it tomorrow in the comments section.

[Begin transcript]

NPR: It’s time for a regular visit with one of our cultural coaches. Today: “You’re marrying him?” Wedding season is around the corner; brides and grooms will be blushing their way down aisles across America. So what better time to ask an expert about what you might need to know if you’re heading to commitment with a person with a different racial or ethnic background? We got this idea from our friends at East West Magazine; the April/May issue has a feature called “To hug or not to hug” about how to handle that all-important meeting with the parents.

And joining us now from Phoenix is Anita Malik. She is editor of East West Magazine. And from her office in Poughkeepsie, New York, we’re pleased to be joined by Lubna Somjee, a psychologist; she’s quoted in the article. Thanks for being here ladies!

Anita, why did you commission this article? You must have been hearing about this from readers or perhaps from personal experience?

Anita: A little bit of both. Actually, simply put, interracial marriages and couplings are growing at a very increasing rate and we tend to focus with that a lot with the magazine, but had never done anything where – how do you deal with this within your own family and with your parents? And that was something we were hearing from readers, that, you know, it’s great to know that the statistics are there, and that this is happening, but how do we deal with it in our own lives, with our own unique circumstances?

NPR: And Dr. Somjee, you are offering tips – or you offered some tips in the magazine – but in the years in which you’ve been practicing, and you’ve worked with couples around these issues, are there some classic cultural clashes that you’ve seen?

Dr. Somjee: Yes, I mean, I’ve definitely seen some classic cultural clashes. Although many times, people have been able to sort of work through them. One of the classic issues is when neither parties have sort of prepped themselves for what to expect when they meet the parents. They think they have, but they really haven’t. Although most of the time those meetings have gone fairly well, in spite of.

NPR: Is that really the case? I just wonder whether, over the course of your practice, do most of the couples that come to you, do they eventually stay together, or do you see couples breaking up because of these differences?

Dr. Somjee: Most of the couples I see do stay together, but I would not say that it was very rare that some couples would break up. For example, a young couple I worked with had an interracial union and met each other’s families, and it wasn’t until they met each other’s families that it sort of punctuated for them how different their backgrounds were. And they came home, and for the first time had a much more serious, in-depth discussion of how their culture impacts their every day lives and realized how different their views were on a lot of things. And unfortunately, for that couple, their differences were irreconcilable.

NPR: Anita, you mention in the article, I’m sorry, which I know you didn’t write, but, you know, you edited it, that in every culture meeting the parents can be kind of fraught with anxiety, but in the Asian culture, in couples where there may be an Asian or Asian-American partner, it can be particularly stressful. Why is that?

Anita: Asian immigrant parents typically have a very set view of who their children should marry. It’s a different type of relationship, but every family has their own traditions, and sometimes a lot of that becomes very, very specific to what the parents want. It’s just a very different child-parent relationship. It gets a little bit more tricky, and so it can be difficult.

NPR: What were some of the scenarios that were described in the article? I thought it was hilarious, actually…

Anita: There’s a lot of humor to this too, and I think that’s the important lesson: that you need to be able to actually laugh at yourself when you make – you’re going to make faux pas when you meet the parents. But the title of the piece actually comes from one scenario where both parts of the couple were Asian, from two different countries. And one family was very warm… the parents wanted to hug everybody, and the other family couldn’t really handle the hugs. And so that became an issue between the couple, and they finally came to a point where they said, “Well, this is how my family is going to be, and this is how your family is going to be, and they’re going to have to work it out.”

NPR: So, Dr. Somjee, help us here. In a situation like that, where the parents are meeting for the first time, what advice do you offer to make it go smoothly? Or maybe, maybe making it go smoothly isn’t the whole point of the thing, just to be honest. I don’t know – tell us.

Dr. Somjee: When you’re meeting someone’s family, knowing what their ethnic background is, or their racial background or religion obviously is important, but it’s only a first basic step. And really, the most important thing to understand is, what is that family’s relationship to each of its cultural variables. Otherwise you kinda get on a slippery slope in terms of making assumptions to stereotyping.

NPR: So how would that information best be acquired? Do you try to be very explicit with the partner and say, “Alright, are your parents huggers or not? Will they expect me to bring a present? If so, what kind?”

Dr. Somjee: There’s a couple ways to do that. One is, you know, get a sense of what the expectations of the meeting are from your significant other. Is it going to be a casual or formal get together? But the other piece of it is, your significant other is often steeped in their own culture so things that may be commonplace to them, they may not even think to tell you. And I think one of the best ways to get information from your significant other is through storytelling. Try to have your significant other tell you stories that illustrate different occasions in your family, or different traditions in the family.

NPR: I have an email that I wanted to share with both of you, ladies. And it says:

“This might be a good question for your coach. I just had a second date with a lovely professional woman who was born in and raised in Sapporo, Japan. She now works in the same East Coast city that I do. Our third date is this weekend. I’m a professional African-American man. What should I know about the Asian approach to dating? Is there such a thing? The first date ended in her bowing, when in Rome, I thought, so I bowed too. The second date ended with a hug & a smile, so I hugged her and smiled back. So far, so good I’m thinking. We’re able to talk for hours… but what do I need to keep in mind?”

So, who wants to start, Anita, is this a common scenario among readers?

Anita: Yeah, I think so. Apparently she’s a little more traditional. It sounds like she actually has immigrated from Japan and not necessarily born here and in that case, I think he just really needs to ask her. But I would say, speak to her about how her family would feel… ahead of time.

NPR: Interesting. Dr. Somjee, what do you think?

Dr. Somjee: Part of it depends on, are you dating to date, or are you dating to marry? Because if someone is asked that question & is scared off by it, at least you know where they are in terms of their dating and what they want from it.

NPR: So what I’m hearing you say is, “ask the questions sooner rather than later”.

Dr. Somjee: Absolutely.

NPR: I’m so glad I’m married.

Anita: Hard, isn’t it, this dating thing.

NPR: It is hard! You all have my respect. Dr. Somjee, I understand you are also interculturally married. If it’s not too personal, can you offer any guidelines from your personal experience?

Dr. Somjee: Yes, I’ve been married and in a relationship with my husband for about ten years. He is white and I am South Asian and I actually come from a community where arranged marriages are absolutely still the norm. So when my husband was to meet my parents, I prepped myself… and I prepped my parents.

NPR: What about persons who perhaps weren’t welcomed so warmly into the fold? How would you advise them to move beyond that?

Dr. Somjee: One thing is, you know, you may have an opportunity to meet the family again and again. And if so, take advantage of those opportunities by getting to know them better. You know, unfortunately, there may be some families who ultimately say, “You know what, we cannot do this. No matter how nice you may be, no matter how much we like you in general, this is not something we can accept in our family.” And at this point you as a couple have to decide whether you’re willing to take the risk, and those are hard questions you’ll have to ask yourself before you even start this process.

NPR: But, hard questions that have to be asked.

Dr. Somjee: Yeah.

[End Transcript]

I’d love to hear everyone thoughts on this NPR piece, and the accompying article from East West Magazine. Good advice, bad advice? Is “ask questions sooner rather than later” a good policy to follow? Anyone tried storytelling as a way to learn about family customs?

I tripped, stepping on a few books strewn along the “path” to the couch.

“Hey!” Aditya exclaimed. “Don’t step on the books! You’re never  step on books. It’s disrespectful.”

“Well, if you don’t want them stepped on you shouldn’t leave them on the ground. They’re just books – it’s not like I cracked the spine or anything. Wait… did you just mumble a prayer to the book?”

Cultural and religious differences

When I first started dating Aditya, I knew only a little about either Hinduism or general Indian culture. I certainly didn’t know about any prohibitions about stepping on books – at most, I had a vague notion that feet were considered unclean beyond just, you know, germs and dirt from walking around barefoot.

Learning about my husband’s culture and religious traditions has been a slow, albeit rewarding, experience. I’ve struggled with many of the concepts he considered completely normal – so normal, in fact, that the differences between our two expectations about proper behavior would only surface when one of us committed a faux pas in the other’s eyes.  This struggle goes beyond just memorizing what’s cool and what’s not – at times it has been difficult to understand the reasoning behind the rules, or to take the next step and accept the differences. Some of his cultural concepts I’ve been able to embrace as my own – but others not so much.

Today I’d like to discuss three good ways of dealing with differing cultural and religious traditions – understanding them, accepting them, or embracing them – and why it’s perfectly okay to not embrace – or even accept – any tradition you find difficult or troubling, as long as that works for your particular relationship.

Understanding differences – strive for it

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story”. – John Barth

There are very few people in this world who believe that their actions are without reason or justification. Certainly no culture or religion develops a custom just for the hell of it – there’s always a purpose. When you come across a cultural or religious difference, your first goal should always be to understand the reasoning behind,  the purpose to it.

Understanding the differing custom or behavior or attitude is not the same thing as accepting it as the right thing for you to do, or even the morally correct thing for anyone. I can understand the purpose behind a suicide bomber’s efforts to kill innocents, or the reasoning that leads to the barbaric custom of female infanticide without condoning either evil practice. Understanding a cultural difference isn’t the same as okaying it – it’s just a way to open up a dialogue with a person from a different background by acknowledging the humanness of their  actions and beliefs. If you can’t get beyond a “that’s nonsensical” reaction to a cultural difference that represents a failure on your part to stretch your mind fully. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to understand the actions and traditions of cultures foreign to us. Stretching your mind is hard work!

I was completely baffled by Aditya’s reaction to my accidental stumble over his books. After all, they were just books – things, objects, items. Even after he explained that it was a matter of respect – respect over the knowledge the books contained, the wisdom we gain from the written word – I still didn’t find the whole scenario logical. Sure, respect learning, I got that – but why did he offer what looked like a prayer to an inanimate object? It wasn’t like the book cared it was stepped on! It was only after I  was told by Aditya that it was a pranam (respectful salutation), not a prayer that I realized – duh – it was a salutation to what the book symbolized, not the physical object itself. All right, I thought, I get it. By stepping on the book, you disrespected learning, and then you offer a pranam, and show that you actually do respect learning. Sounded a bit superstitious to me, but I understood the basic reasoning behind Aditya’s actions. And because I understood the basics it was something that I could tolerate, even if I didn’t think it worthwhile or logical.

Accepting differences – try for it

Accepting a cultural or religious difference goes beyond understanding the reasoning at play. Acceptance  means that you recognize that this cultural or religious difference is worthwhile and good  for the people who practice it.

Not all traditions are worthy of acceptance, of course – I’m not suggesting that you accept traditions that are obviously morally wrong, like honor killings, just because some culture  says that it’s a good thing. Even with more mundane cultural differences, though, it’s not always a simple jump from understanding the reasoning behind a cultural custom to accepting the cultural custom as a good thing for others. You could think it’s just a waste of time (my feelings on  most superstitions). Or that it’s a tradition that doesn’t solve the problem that is actually at hand – it just distracts from it (my feelings on most faith-based healing shticks you see on late-night tv).

While I believe that we should all strive to understand the cultural differences we come across in our intercultural relationships, I don’t think it’s necessary – or even possible – to accept all cultural differences. What’s important is that the level of acceptance of each others’ differences works for your relationship. This means that you’re both comfortable with each other’s differences, and neither person feels pressured to accept that which that which they find troubling, morally or otherwise.

Over time I did move from simply understanding Aditya’s tradition of not stepping on books to accepting it as a worthwhile endeavor.  As he explained the tradition more – and as I learned more about Hinduism in a class I was taking – I learned what Aditya got out of the pranams to “offended” books. For him, at least, the short practice wasn’t about superstition or righting some cosmic tally against him. Instead, it was a occasional reminder of why learning was valuable. A moment to pause and reflect.

I don’t think this particular tradition of his was one that I had to understand and accept in order for our relationship to succeed. Perhaps he wouldn’t have appreciated the eye-rolling I inevitably do when I think someone is being silly, but our relationship would survive. It’s a bit hypothetical, though, as I have come to accept this tradition. However, other cultural differences were deal-breakers. For example, it’s very important to Aditya that his parents be able and welcome to visit us for months at a time, or even move in with us, as is common in his culture.If I could not have accepted this value of his, than I doubt we’d be together today – it’s just too important to him. He communicated this to me very early in our relationship, and I learned to accept this foreign tradition.

How does one go about accepting alien customs, traditions, and beliefs as worthwhile and good – and a part of your life now? Well, for me, it’s taken mostly time and thought.  I’ve had to radically retool my understanding of what a good child-parent relationship is to get to the point of being comfortable with the idea & reality of long visits from Maa and Baba.  With the book thing, well, I’ve thought a fair bit on what it means to respect an abstract concept, and how one shows those sorts of values in everyday life.  (Yes, I was raised a heathen child without religion or much spirituality.) I’ve come to realize the value of these small, symbolic gestures of Aditya’s, how it allows for a redirection of one’s mind to the more important things of life, a little reminder of what matters. In fact, not only do I accept the idea of pranam to knowledge in Aditya’s life, I’ve come to desire it in my own. Which brings us to the final section…

Embracing differences, ending differences

The third and final way you can deal with cultural and religious differences is not just understand, not just accept, but embrace the differences and make them part of your own personal culture or religion. I think you see this most often when one half an interfaith partnership converts to his significant other’s religion – thus ending the interfaithiness. In some ways I’ve done that by embracing parts of Aditya’s Hindu practices and faith – I too now avoid stepping on books out of a respect for the knowledge they contain.

However, embracing all – or even most – of your partner’s cultural or religious beliefs should not be your main goal in dealing with differences. I mean, if you both completely embrace the other’s traditions, you just end up flipping sides! Nor should one person try to give up their culture entirely and embrace the other’s – you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling it off, and if you somehow did, I suspect you’d find you’d lost a large part of the core part of yourself in the process.

No, I firmly believe that you should embrace the parts of another culture that strongly call out to you, and just try to understand and accept the other cultural differences. Think of whole-heartedly embracing some of your partner’s traditions as a bonus, but not a goal. Be open-minded enough to understand the purposes of different customs, and try to see and accept the good in these cultural and religious differences. But remember: it’s okay to not love, or even like, all parts of your partner’s culture. After all, it’s the differences between the two of you, in part, that brought you together.

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.