A Barrel of Monkeys Isn’t So Fun Anymore

Learning Hindi is hard. I know it always seems that way when you start a new language, but this one really is hard. So far, there don’t appear to be any new sounds that don’t exist in English. That was a problem when I learned Hungarian, because Hungarians do use an extra consonant that doesn’t appear at all in English, making its pronunciation very difficult for a non-native speaker. It was like trying to play a guitar that has a missing string. Also, every Hindi verb conjugates the same way for each tense. This contrasts with Spanish, where you have -ar, -er, and -ir verbs that all conjugate differently.

The real problem is the distinction they make in between sounds. First point of confusion with me is the difference between hard and soft consonants. For example, one conjugation of the verb “to eat” is khata, pronounced with a hard /k/. The word for citrus is kata with a soft /k/. They sound exactly the same to me. Secondly, some words are pronounced nasally, which is very hard for me to get. The word hai is the third-person singular conjugation of “to be,” and hain is the first- and third-person plural conjugation, said exactly the same way except the silent /n/ at the end signifies a nasal pronunciation. Simply put, Indians talk through their nose some of the time.

Funny story today. I was talking to Professor Ramdev when a girl who was trying to enter the hostel, Rashmi, motioned me to come and look at something. I went over and there were three monkeys perched over the entrance to the hostel. Normally that is nothing to worry about, but Rashmi was carrying snacks that she bought in the market. If she walked under the monkeys, they would attacker her, not to hurt her, but to steal her food.

It might be just the little kid in me speaking out, but that’s cool. How often do you have to hide your groceries when you walk into your house so that monkeys don’t steal them? Welcome to India; watch out for klepto wildlife.