This is India: Language

India is a complicated mix of languages. Not only are there 18 distinct languages spoken, but there are several hundred dialects floating around as well. Being bilingual is not a special trait at all, especially in a city like Kolkata, where your typical taxi driver can at least converse in Bengali and Hindi, and if you’re in the normal tourist areas, they probably have a passable understanding of English as well.

The Indian Middle class is exemplified by their grasp of the English language, but also by there mixing of it with Hindi – finding Hinglish as a comfortable form of expression. I often wonder if this is a subtle way of saying, “Look, I’m educated, but I’m also in touch with my roots.” Understanding that English and being “educated” go hand in hand here. This Hinglish mixture is reflected en masse in Bollywood and Indian Televison. Where an actor may speak 2 or 3 lines of complete English before dropping in a “Kya, hai, or acha.” For a person learning Hindi this is a double edged sword. The sprinkling of English along with my minimal Hindi vocabulary, often allows me to follow a conversation or a movie plot, but when speaking leaves me in the uncomfortable position of trying to figure out when an English word thrown in is appropriate and when it will leave the person I’m speaking to completely confused. So far it has only ensured that I am greeted with blank stares and the person telling you they don’t understand.

If I had known 20 years ago that I would some day be living in India I would have begun studying then, unfortunately I frittered my time away taking Spanish, then Chinese, and finally Italian. Only really using the last one during a summer traveling in Italy. The fact that Hindi classes would have been difficult to locate in Grand Forks, North Dakota should not be used as an excuse. I’m sure my high school friend Rahul Jerath could have assisted my learning or at least his parents would have. Though it would have been a bit awkward to tell them that the reason that I wanted to learn was that I would eventually be marrying an Indian and moving there. I’m pretty sure his parents already didn’t trust me and this would have only made things worse. I’m not sure my wife would have been very interested in me if I had known Hindi when we met. I’m sure this would have been a negative in her eyes.

In the last few weeks I have once again become motivated to speed up my Hindi learning. Not only am I having troubles on construction sites conveying issues that need to be solved, but I’m afraid that my newborn son will soon speak the language better than I can and that his mother and him will suddenly have this secret language that I only recognize every 10th word of. Though my wife will  surely be excited by this possibility, I dread it with every inch of my being. I can accept my father in law speaking for an hour and only vaguely understanding the point of his story, but I feel my son and I need to understand each other completely. Now, if he goes and learns Bengali… well, then I might have to just let him drift away, cause that’s a language I don’t grasp at all.