Be a wordless child to learn a new language
If you think about it, we all (thanks to this multicultural age) speak more than one language. Some of us are lucky enough to be bilingual, others struggle with second or third languages, always translating in their head from the first. In fact, as I was telling a friend the other day, I officially speak four languages — Indian English, British English, American English and Hindi. Sadly, despite my parents being from the South, I speak hardly any Telugu and no Malayalam whatsoever. It is their fault, I tell them, for raising me in the North in the first place.
Actually, who am I kidding? Hindi is hardly a primary language for me. It used to be. In Delhi, the Hindi part of my brain got used a lot, and not just on public transport either. It’s normal in Delhi to slip into Hindi in the midst of a conversation. In Mumbai? I don’t even know what form of the language they speak, it is so far removed from the courtly phrases of my youth. Also, I get very limited chances to practice it. So when I picked up Katherine Russell Rich’s Dreaming In Hindi: Coming Awake in a Second Language, I so knew what she meant.
The book is a memoir, telling of Rich’s time spent in Udaipur where she and some other students were doing an “immersion” year, something common with language studies, where you are sent to the country of origin of the language you’re learning and everyone is under instruction to speak to you only in that tongue. Sounds difficult? Well, if this book was anything to go by, it seemed the journey of a lifetime.
What was also interesting about this book, besides Rich’s growth and development in Hindi, is that she’s interspersed her journey with theories about learning a new language. The studies she has quoted from are all very interesting and they certainly made me think about the way I process words. You don’t have to be smart to learn a new language, her book says, in fact, the very opposite, you need to sort of subdue your own ego and give in to being wordless, a child, again. Gloatingly, I admit, I have somewhat of an “ear” for languages, if you speak slowly and often enough around me in a language I’ve never met before, I’ll be able to pick it up. (That’s how, being in the media in Delhi, I have managed to amass passable Bangla).
For anyone interested in languages, words or why we think the way we do, Rich’s book is essential reading. She even goes into her time at the deaf school in Udaipur, so it’s not always about verbal communication. This is going to be an important book for future Hindi learners, just remember, you heard it here first.
The columnist is an author
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