Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Main Pratap nahin hoon

I might not have flashcards or a special bag, but what I do have among my Hindi-learning equipment is a very pretty business card (with butterflies!) from Ganesha that I'm using as a bookmark, and also a number of glitter pens.

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It also turns out that I have a slightly different grammar textbook than Beth, and unfortunately mine doesn't feature Pratap. The main characters in my book are Raju, a teacher, his wife Gita, who is a doctor, and their three children Manoj, Meena and Ram. They also have a dog ("Moti (male, age unknown)") and they all live in Agra. I've skimmed through the book a bit and it turns out in one of the dialogues that Gita has a bit of a thing for Shahrukh Khan, so even though I don't know much about her, other than that वह हिन्दुस्तानी है (she is Indian) and वह डाक्टर है (she is a doctor), I like her already!

I got these books back in February this year. What I've done so far is learn the script, although I tend to forget most of the conjuncts and I still have to learn how to write numbers. After learning the script, I started with the grammar book and I'm in the middle of chapter 1 at the moment. Here are the very first exercise and the one I did last:

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This is a conversation between Manoj and his inquisitive neighbour Javed:
Javed: What is this?
Manoj: This is my radio.
Javed: Who is that boy?
Manoj: He is my brother.
Javed: What is his name?
Manoj: His name is Ram.
Javed: Who is that girl?
Manoj: Her name is Meena.
Javed: Is she ill?
Manoj: No, she is not ill. She is OK.

4 comments:

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

Oooh, gliter pens! Nice idea! At some point we will have to invent dialogues between your characters and mine.

Filmi Geek said...

मुझे बिलकुल विश्वास है कि आप दोनों अच्छी तरह हिन्दी बोलना सीख सकती हैं! ज़रा पढ़ती रहना और अभ्यास करती रहना - तो हिन्दी आपको आएगी !
I have complete faith that you both can learn to speak Hindi well. Just keep on studying and keep on practicing - the Hindi will come to you.

Maja said...

Definitely, Beth! Maybe we can come up with some kind of filmi scenario, although I don't see much room for romance, sadly - the daughter in my book is only 10 ... There's a mysterious nurse called Sita though, maybe something could happen there ;)

Eep! Carla, that was wonderful, please keep doing it! It took me a long time to get through the 3 lines, but what a great feeling it is to recognise a word here and there :D

Katrin said...

@carla: Right. Thanks for showing me that I have forgotten EVERYTHING I learned in my Hindi class. I guess I really have to start practicing again.

There should be some filmi stuff ahead in one of the two books (apart from the hilarious SRK-text in Maja's). There's a dialogue in one of the final chapters which is mostly made up from song lyrics if I remember correctly. And there's some romance in at least one of the books.

(Now don't ask me why I bought both. My lips are sealed.)