things that make me happy right now: language study.

A week of my favorite things . . . 

We’ve begun week four and are closing in on our first month-long class.  John and Alison and I will go on to start month two with Neetu, but it looks like David needs to find a different time slot (and therefore possibly a different teacher) due to his work schedule.

We have class for an hour a day, five days a week, and I concentrate so hard for that hour that my brain hurts.  Just when you think you’ve mastered reading/writing the alphabet and a couple basic phrases, there are endless lists of vocab and pronouns and declensions to make your head spin.

And I walk the streets and hear people all around me switch effortlessly among three, four, sometimes five languages, and feel that with all our advantages, America is linguistically disadvantaged, allowing too many of us to grow up with this part of our brains unused and atrophying.

But, with the struggle and the information overload, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that it’s been just over three weeks, and we are learning something!  Enough to (slowly, slowly) read signs and exchange greetings with people on the street and introduce our family.

I’m trying to, more and more, learn to speak whenever I’m out and about, with the auto wallahs and the cashiers and pharmacist.  It can be difficult to practice, here in our city, which has a different state language, and, obviously, a large concentration of English speakers.  But almost everyone understands the national language to some extent, and it will serve us well when we travel.

I’m making out my flash cards each day and practicing pronunciation with Priya and trying to teach the kids the little bits I’m learning.  Amie loves it and makes Bullseye say, “Namaste, Mr. Conductor!”

I love being a student again.

I love having something other than housework and gluten-free cooking and playing with my kids to think about during the day.  Even for just a couple hours a day, this break, this other, infuses the rest of the hours with a new brightness.

I love, finally, feeling like I’m making inroads into this culture.  You learn to cook and meet your neighbors and ask a million questions, but there’s something unique about language study that gives you a solidarity with the place you’re living in and the people you’re living among.

And not only can you begin to communicate in one of their languages, but it helps you understand South Asian-English (which is quite different from American English) so much better, to say, “Oh, so that’s why they say it like that!”

It makes you feel a little less like an outsider.

And that, my friends, is a good feeling.