(D)evanagari U(nder the) I(nfluence)

I'd been craving a beer at my favorite bar for days, so when a friend said she'd be up for some french fries and a shirley temple before studying at the coffee shop, I couldn't resist. News flash: total lightweights should not have a drink before trying new vocabulary and writing in a not-entirely-learned script. The effects were even more wobbly than usual. After writing out all the masculine nouns, I browsed the chapter and realized cases were coming. And closed the book. Cases did me in in Latin back in my sophomore year of college, and while I am not going to let them win this time, today was definitely not the day to prove it.

Hic.

Oh, those pesky pronouns

Namaste, slackers! Normally I would hang my head in shame and join your ranks (I am very much of the "What do we want? Procrastination! When do we want it? Later!" school of thought), but believe it or not, this summer I took my Hindi learning kit with me on my vacation and actually did some work. No one was more surprised than me, I can tell you that much. My enthusiasm waned somewhat when I got to oblique and direct cases, but still, I'm about halfway through Unit 3 now and able to tell you that मेरी किताबें मेज़ पर हैं and that मैं घर में हूँ and surely that is all that matters.

I do have a question, though. I understand about aap-tum-tu and the differences between them, but while my book tells me that main is I and hum is we, I've also seen hum used to mean I (eg. in Hum Tum), so ... what's up with that? Is hum-main kind of like aap-tum? Can anyone explain? बहुत शुक्रिया!

Slackers!

My Hindi progress and I have completely lost touch. To get back in the spirit of things, shabdkosh tells me बेपरवाह is a word for "negligent." V g (or is that b a?).

Did you forget to feed the cat again?

So the book's been teaching me about invariable adjectives and adjectives with masculine/feminine endings, and ... Well, check out this sentence demonstrating an invariable adjective:

क्या बिल्ली जिन्दा है?

Yes, that means "Is the cat alive?" I'm not sure whether I should be amused or worried ... In any case, it's brought back memories of my high school German teacher, who taught us prepositions by using examples like, "The fork is on the roof. Is your sister under the chair? Who put the dog in the attic? My shoes are not in the bathtub."

Also, I can now count up to 20! I learnt to count up to 5 from the movies, then up to 13 from KBC, so I'm good with those, but I do need to practice 14 to 20 some more.
Next up: tu vs. tum vs. aap, and then Unit 3!

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?

वह खूबसूरत आदमी कौन था?*

This is not only a very good question to know (very practical when you are out stalking Bollywood's खूबसूरत आदमी ** in the dark) but also the title of chapter 4, which is the last chapter I remember from the Hindi class I took a while ago. For a while now I haven't been a good girl and wasn't studying Hindi very diligently but now seems like a good time to start again.

So, in the time honoured tradition, I present my high-tech equipment:

A few books ...

A stack of index cards with lots of grammar most of which I don't actually remember ...

And a fabulous pad with coloured paper, some of my writing - and lots of grammar that I actually sort of remember ...

And of course I need my trusty iPod to listen to the Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies Podcast which has taught me lots of useful phrases to use when the खूबसूरत आदमी I'm stalking turns out to be Johnny Lever ...

By the way -the ़खूबसूरत आदमी in chapter 4 is called Suhas and Sangeeta would like you to know one thing: vah sirf mera dost hai!

*Vah khubsurat aadmi kaun tha? - Who is this handsome man?
**Is that the proper plural? खूबसूरत is an invariable adjective, isn't it?

A big thank you to Carla for the spelling advice!

sign, sign everywhere a sign

I've started going through some of my photos from my trip to India last summer, trying to work through the Devanagari, and Trivial Matters helped me with this one. That was a real labor of love on his part, too; it took me at least half an hour, with TM saying "Now what do you think could come after LA?". It's amazing to me how thrown I am by fonts that are different from those in my book. If you want to reenact the painful process, click on the photo to go to the flickr page, where I put the answers and some notes on the bits I found hardest.