Thursday, May 10, 2007

Eat my dust, Unit 1!

Yesss! I just finished the last exercise in Unit 1 - answering questions like वह हिन्दुस्तानी है? वह शादी-शुदा है? वह सुखी है? वह अमरीकन है? * about the three people introduced at the beginning of the exercise. Nothing particularly fascinating to report there, except that two of the people were called Suresh Khanna and Vinod Kumar, which I kept unintentionally combining into Vinod Khanna ...
There were so many new words in Unit 1 that I decided to keep my own glossary (but really I just wanted an excuse to use my glitter pens).





Next up: Unit 2 with numbers, genders and levels of formality! Then I might finally be able to come up with my own sentences, rather than just translating the ones in the book. I see some exciting times ahead!


* Is (s)he Indian? Is (s)he married? Is (s)he happy? Is (s)he American?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keeping your own glossary is a top-notch idea.

Starting from day 1, I have kept two different kinds of notebooks. One is a little book of index cards that I use rather like flash cards, except that I put 10 words on each card instead of just 1, to save space. I carry one or two of these index card books with me wherever I go; I can review vocabulary whenever I have a spare moment, such as waiting for the train, &c. I add words to these cards wherever I find them - in stories I read, in songs, in movies, &c. I have filled four of these books and have started a fifth. I love them.

The second type of notebook is an ordinary small notebook; when I was working through "Teach Yourself" or the exercises in another grammar (like MacGregor) I wrote out the answers in here; now I use them to work out song translations or other translations, or writing my own compositions (often using vocabulary from the flash cards). I also reserved the back pages of this notebook for notes on grammatical concepts or sample sentences illustrating various constructions; these I can also study when I have a spare moment.

Those are some of the study tactics I've used over the past two years.

Stella_1 said...

Why did you write sukhi for happy? isn't it khush of a word like that?