Psychotomy

(lak is hindi for 1000) (actually, it probably transliterates as laak or laak or something with an h maybe)

So, we started our 8-week beginning conversational hindi course last week at the community college. my parents love it , b/c they get to babysit des by themselves for two hours :o

I ran into some old friends. “D as in ‘the’” … “th thh th and thh” … “th dh” … “sha and sha” (actually, after a few roundabouts, he told us to just use the same sound for both, which makes it hard to distinguish)

these are some of the problems that have plagued me for 30yrs. americans (english in general i think) isn’t structured around that many sounds. (th thh are palate and th thh is gum ridge … i think; th and dh are actually repeated palate and ridge, and it’s just hard for me to distinguish b/c there’s a lot of implied letters)

In fact, during the cleaning (see other post), I found Teach Yourself Hindi, Hindi for Beginners, the three Kindergarten Hindi Primers we got from relatives in India, and some ‘First 100 Words in Hindi’ that looks like it has wordfinds and crosswords in hindi alphabet. I think the shelf may have my mom’s Teach Yourself Hindi tape. I found two Hindi software programs, and somewhere we have Rosetta Stone (supposed to be par excellante, but it didn’t seem to be helping me). I have 30 years of failure at hearing the differences in letters . 30 years of A is for Pomegranate (Anar). 30 years of primers and self teaching materials that have failed to teach me Hindi.

Maybe 31 years will be better?

Posted in: hindi by attriel /