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.
17. October 2009 at 11:08 am
Woohoo! Count me in… Nepali bhasha practice all the way!
20. October 2009 at 4:27 pm
So, how do you want to do this? Any formal resolutions on goals/time spent studying?
17. October 2009 at 5:17 pm
Pichlay June mai, mai nay Urdu parhna shuroor kya….bahut mushkil thi laykin mujhay acha lagta tha
(Last June I started to study Urdu…it was really difficult but I liked it) I was trying to say somethign simple – did you get it?
I did a course that was 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. It was BRUTAL but honestly totally worth it. I’m taking a course now (I attend one of the few Universities in the US that offers 8 full semesters of Urdu), and I’m technically in my third semester of the language. I need to be held accountable too, though, because I am getting married in December, (and also meeting his family for the first time) and no one speaks any English!
20. October 2009 at 4:31 pm
That’s awesome that you could take such an intense course (and currently you’re way beyond me)! Immersion method really is the best way to learn, if you’re willing to work hard – I picked up German extremely quickly while working as an Au Pair for a year in the country.
I take it your current class is more of a regular, an hour three or five times a week sort of deal? (Oh, and are you getting married in India/Pakistan, or somewhere else?)
17. October 2009 at 9:00 pm
Here is what Indian parents do to get their kids to the 3rd grade level with conversational skills
1. Every local temple has a bal-vihar or childrens school, with evening and weekend classes with 1 teacher to 10 students ratio, where a variety of Indian languages are taught, cost $20 a month
2. Every Chinmaya Mission, Ramakrishna Mission, Bharat Sevashram Sangha mission also offer similar language classes . cost $20 a month
All these organisations have branches all over the USA
3. Put a flyer on the bulletin board of Indian grocery stores asking for a language tutor, many idle housewives or visitors do this for $10 an hour
20. October 2009 at 4:51 pm
I really don’t understand why immigrant parents would need a class to teach their kids conversational skills. Literacy, I can understand, and formal literature as well (half my friends in high school had Chinese School on Saturday mornings)… but conversational skills just come from talking to your kid in the language!
Anyways, thanks for the suggestion, Shyamsunder, but I think I’ll be best served at this juncture studying from books, software, and my in-house tutor/conversation partner. Paying for a class serves as a commitment device, but I doubt their schedules suit my needs.
18. October 2009 at 6:40 am
Good luck! I admire your dedication.
I’m going to do this eventually, as well. G and I are going to try to learn together, though, and he’s too busy with school right now. So at least it’s not my fault!
20. October 2009 at 4:55 pm
Does G speak any Indian languages, or did his parents not focus on that?
18. October 2009 at 11:11 am
Hey, awesome to stumble upon your blog! I’m American (but live in London) and have been in a relationship with a Bengali (born in London to parents from Kolkata) for about a year now. It’s not too culturally complicated at the moment but it’s interesting to read about some of the situations I could run into down the line
Anyway, looking forward to exploring your blog some more…
20. October 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hi Steph! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you continue to enjoy the blog.
18. October 2009 at 4:04 pm
I want to learn Hindi, too! Are you using the Rosetta Stone?
20. October 2009 at 5:06 pm
I’m using a variety of resources, Rane, but the main ones are:
Teach Yourself Beginner’s Hindi Script
Teach Yourself Hindi
and Rosetta Stone Version 3: Hindi Level 1, 2 & 3 Set
I’ll write a post soon about the process I’m using to study.
19. October 2009 at 12:46 pm
Hey
If you need any help in learning Hindi, let me know.. anytime you need to practise also is fine, Im fluent in Hindi since Im Indian 
20. October 2009 at 5:16 pm
Thanks for the offer, Doli. Luckily, I have my own built-in tutor in the form of Aditya, my husband.
19. October 2009 at 10:56 pm
Okay, if it’s any consolation (RE accidentally offending your Mother in law) we still laugh about my first dinner out at a restaurant in Brazil when I asked my mother-in-law to “pass the penises.” At least I said “please!”
I found cassettes (now CD’s or Ipod downloads) helpful to learn Portuguese. I listened while riding the train to work, etc. I just did a google search, there are at least Hindi Podcasts!
Shubh Kaamnaayein
20. October 2009 at 5:19 pm
Deanna, that story is certainly a keeper!
20. October 2009 at 12:45 am
Mate.
pretty simple solution really.
you are going about this the wrong way – rather than focusing on hours of process – focus on outcomes ie put a target of what you will learn – say count from 1-50 in hindi in three days.
if you dont do this then promise to cook aditya one meal. get a target and punishment – real punishment not a fake one like being shamed.
I feel sorry for the fellow – he is such a chikna ladhka – ends up with a wife who refuses to cook.
At least you are good in bed – better than the desi girls who are hopeless by and large
you might wonder what credentials i have – i learnt bhojpuri in my twenties
26. October 2009 at 11:53 am
I agree that focusing on specific outcomes is an important process in learning anything – or in habit-forming in general. Trust that I plan to blog about my specific goals in a few days.
As far as the choosing of incentives goes – well, I think that the specific track I have chosen is the best for me, but we’ll see as time goes on. Figuring out the perfect incentive – not too strong, not too weak is something of an art. Consider this article, for instance, where a daycare imposed a fine on parents who were late to pick up their kids – and the number of late parents doubled! By making the whole process a simple monetary transaction the daycare removed the social “shame” factor of being one of those parents. A higher fine would have made lateness more costly – but it’s questionable whether a high enough monetary fine could have been implemented without creating a backlash. Tough to balance, like I said.
Regarding the rest of your comment… *rolls eyes*
21. October 2009 at 11:29 am
I have been working on Tamil since June ’09 (That’s about when I started stalking this blog too).
I used to teach ELD (aka ESL) and one of the things we would have the students do was keep one binder with all of their work, doing things like drawing pictures and labeling them. I started one for myself, and go figure, the words I remember, are ones I did some kind of drawing for as opposed to making vocab lists.
I actually found a bunch of little kid song videos on youtube that have the Tamil lyrics printed on the bottom. My goal is to retype them and translate them slowly over time.
There is a cool free program called Azhagi that lets me type in Tamil. It includes a lot of other languages in the unicode editor that are in “beta.” Hindi/Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya, Nepali. Retyping things has helped me learn the written language pretty well.
26. October 2009 at 1:07 pm
I think this just goes to show how different people are in their learning styles – I can never learn just from aural communication, and any pictures I drew would be blobs with Hindi labels.
For me, it’s all about the word lists (rewriting, extensively) along with day-to-day conversation in the target language. Or, at least, that’s what let me get fluent in German. Let’s hope it translates to Hindi!
21. October 2009 at 3:25 pm
I would say that I am on the level of a 3 year old right now with Urdu. I can say basic “kitchen urdu” things. I bought kids books for Little D and use those to learn, and I recently started using byki.com, which is a flash cards type program that I enjoy, and its free. M and I speak predominantly in Urdu at home for all the basic stuff and I try to speak to Little D too as much as I can. My real inspiration for learning now is him, because I want him to be bilingual and I want to speak with him too. We are trying as best we can to implement an Urdu only at home policy for everyone to learn as a family (well obviously M doesn’t need to learn, but the rest of us do). I really think that immersion is the way to go, and speaking as much as I can, getting it wrong, being corrected by M is how I have learned pretty much everything so far.
26. October 2009 at 4:23 am
Good luck with the project! My brother is in the process of getting married with a Bengali (the french part is done, Indian wedding will be in january) and both my parents live in Delhi… All 3 of them are trying to learn Hindi. So I know how difficult it can be!
I stumbled across your blog through a tweet you made about one of my blog posts (“If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali…”) and am SO glad I did. You have so many great posts and resources on here, relevant to both my own family’s experience and my thirst for all things intercultural, that I’ve only had time to glimpse at it for the moment, but I’ll be back!
26. October 2009 at 1:09 pm
Hi Chimera – glad you could stumble over here! I love reading your blog, which I always keep up with through RSS. I’ll try to go to the main site and comment more often, though.
27. October 2009 at 4:30 pm
You have my utmost admiration; that’s a lot of study added to what I’m sure is an already busy life.
In my case, my husband’s family speaks a mishmash of Tamil and Telugu, so I’ve put off learning either on the grounds that I’d have to learn both to be conversant with them. And since their English is fantastic, I don’t really have to — but I’ll probably take a stab at Tamil at some point since that’s the predominant language where my in-laws live.
Can’t wait to read about your progress!
1. November 2009 at 1:50 pm
Yeah, I’ve been doing that a lot – switching back & forth from Hindi to Bengali (Aditya’s family’s native tongue). At first we thought it best to learn Bengali – but there’s so many more resources available for Hindi, so now I’m back to Hindi.
1. November 2009 at 1:32 am
try Pimsler’s Hindi..30 min a day and you can have a conversation by the end of first week
)
I am going through my own “Hindi project” at the moment
4. November 2009 at 3:55 pm
if this is not mentiones earlier..
1) Along with language also learn how to converse…
e.g. Indian people tend to get close while speaking ( by now u may have known). Same gender people may even touch ur hand or back while talking not the opposite gender ones.
-they listen rather than looking at ur face.
-they are loud and fast sometimes or many times or most times..
– tell them to slow down if u want to understand.
2)Watch hindi movies. play– pause…may sound stupid but will be helpfull.
3) And practice with coworkers..speak only in hindi with ur husband..
(btw I am at the receving end of all this at my place)
30. June 2010 at 9:47 pm
I now that this post of yours is rather old, but I’m sure that you’re still working on your Hindi, and I wanted to offer you some advice and encouragement.
If you talk to people who are polyglots, most of them will tell you that the key to learning a language isn’t a program like Rosette Stone or hours of studying. Rather, it’s mostly about simply speaking the language–even if you know very little–and getting used to the feel of the language on your tongue. You can spend your entire life ‘studying’ a language, but never be able to use it well if you simply don’t start speaking it, as awkward and silly as you might sometimes feel. And trust me, I have felt truly silly many times, but if you look over the grammar rules and start verbally applying them in simple sentences, your skill level will increase really fast. I talk to myself a lot, which works really well, and of course, an understanding husband can be really gentle but helpful if offering corrections.
So my general advice is to add a few new words a day (As a linguist enthusiast, I’ve read that trying to do more than 20 a day is generally counter-productive), and also learn a new grammar structure/rule a day. Then talk to yourself, and try a few sentences with your husband in the new grammar structure, so that you become familiar with it. Spend a few minutes reviewing the next day, and then start the next chunk. It doesn’t even require an hour a day to this, and I think that this approach might work for you. If you learn a single grammar rule and some new words almost every day, that’s a lot of progress in a year!
I wish you the best of luck with everything.
(Oh, and as far as learning Devangari goes, I’ve successfully used an approach that I learned from my Japanese classes. Namely, when you learn new words, write them out several times (maybe on an index card), and see if you can read it tomorrow. If you force yourself to write in the new alphabet, even when it’s only copying things, the repetition of constantly seeing the letters, and then pronouncing them over the next few days until you can rapid read the word, will drill itself into your head. Plus, you’ll be learning the script as you add words to your vocab.)