Experiments with Hindi

After a few weeks of adjusting to the mid-tropical Pune environment, I revved up my energies to begin learning Hindi. This time, however, I experimented with two theories from well-known polyglots – I joined Tim Ferriss’ article How to Learn But Not Master Any Language In 1 Hour and Benny Lewis’ Fluent in 3 Months. However, I did have one handicap: I intended to continue working on my German. That meant I couldn't spend as much time on Hindi as other languages learners might on this sort of challenge.

I started with Tim Ferriss’ deconstruction method, so that I could get a general grasp of grammar. My thinking was that when I start learning phrases and vocabulary, I’ll be able to produce new phrases more quickly if I knew the basic structure. This was partially true.

Knowing about postpositions (prepositions but after the phrase) and knowing that verbs come at the end helped – somewhat. I became familiar with the alphabet, but I didn't memorize it, and this proved to be a problem later on.

When I began my 3 months challenge, I created a list of topics I wanted to learn: Greetings, food, numbers, basic questions about people and hobbies. I mostly succeeded, but I learned very little vocabulary total, and was still set to certain phrases.

This is most likely, again, due to my focus on German. However, I am able to speak more in Hindi within 3 months than I was able to in Russian. In this way, I do think that Benny’s method really can help you become comfortable with speaking.

In the past three months I've used memrise and a Lonely Planet guide book. Although I usually love Lonely Planet, the Hindi, Urdu and Bengali language guide is lacking. The transliteration, for the most part, is useless. I’d spend thirty minutes practising a few new phrases, and then when I’d go to a native to practice speaking, they wouldn't understand a word. I believe that it’s more useful to learn the Devanagari alphabet, primarily because there are certain sounds that don’t exist in English, and knowing the script helps to sort them out.

The other minor issue with the guide book is that I simply needed different content. I may be picked up twenty or thirty phrases max, and I can use the food for reference, but since I'm not in a normal tourist situation, I haven’t found the need to use most of the vocab. Of course, the fact that I'm mostly a homebody doesn't help. ^^

What's Next?

Since I'm a bit shy, having anxiety speaking, and need different phrases, I've opted to return to the textbook. The primary reason for this is that I have more confidence the more I understand of the grammar. Doing some practical drills makes it easier for me to go out and talk a little bit, especially if I can find audio.

Most polyglots suggest speaking immediately, but there’s many ways to skin a cat. For me, I found it was best to combine personal and external methods. This not only makes language learning more comfortable, but makes it easier to focus on the task at hand.

So for now on I’ll be backtracking a bit, if only to create a little more confidence so can progress a bit further. The good news is that I've come to some arrangement, which still includes Benny's speaking-immediately method.

I've set a general time with Ma (tea time), where she will speak with me in Hindi. In the morning, I'll be studying a bit on my own. As I feel more comfortable speaking at home, while at the same time studying and becoming more familiar with reading and writing and the flow of the language, I'll be able speak more outside, too.

That is, unless the locals expect to hear Marathi...