I have been fascinated with languages ever since I was a child, I remember being adamant about learning the “other” language script because the holy texts were written in them, and my parents were proficient in reading it the OG language, I wanted to learn it so that I can read and gain greater wisdom that might lie in reading through the texts through the script.
Then there were hints of other languages, in the Hindi dubbing of Dora The Explorer, some of her friends could only speak English, and on one odd day they accidentally aired it in English, and later I kept wondering how will they showcase the episode where the friend only speaks English coz now Dora was also speaking English, years later I will go on to find out that in the English airing, the friend spoke Spanish : )
As one can imagine, I went on to fall in love with English, picking it up piece by piece, word-meaning by word-meaning, reading and reading, slowly, very slowly. I was also grateful to co-read Shakespeare with my brother, god bless ICSE schools. And then our school gave us the choice to choose between French and Sanskrit, as the third language. I went on to choose French coz of Madeline, an animated show set in Paris, France, always feeling little sad about not choosing Sanskrit and missing out on having a chance to read the Vedas in the OG script.
I picked it up well enough for a school level kid but just left it at that, other than helping out couple of folks to study it for their exams as I was well-versed.
Towards the end of high school, I visited my cousins in our village and asked them to help me by taking dictation test for the third script, I have been trying hard to pick it up by myself, I think that two day bootcamp solidified my self-learning over the years, and my reading pace increased slightly. That’s how I picked up the Gurumukhi script.
Fast forward couple of years, I am in college and me and my friend decide to learn Italian, I am able to solve and answer all the questions on Duolingo coz of my proficiency in French and knowing the root words for most common words: to eat, drink etc. So I never truly pick up Italian, I didn’t know, knowing existing Euro-language would put me to a disadvantage, maybe Russian was a better choice after all, in hindsight.
And then we are in 2020, and COVID hits, I was being mentored by someone from Germany for a project I was working on, and as heartbreaks tend to go, it was painful, and I decided to focus all my energy on learning the language after the project ended. I think that’s one of the self-taught languages I learnt religiously, I was part of Discord servers, learning groups, was sending my voice recordings saying the sentences and getting corrected by people online, talking to a lot of people from everywhere, was fun.
My first German book was Der kleine Prinz and then I read Frankenstein and couple of short stories, and first big book would be C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew and later on half of JRR Tolkien’s Der Hobbit.
Within this time, I moved to another state for work and although I could go by my first two languages, my inter-continental facial features would get me mistaken for being a native or looking like I’d be well versed in the language of the state. And to rise to the illusion, I decided to pick up the language many times, getting pretty good at and then forgetting and then learning the script in tuition classes with small kids and then leaving coz work got heavier. And then picking it up a little every 6 months and then letting go after one month. So, yes we have been doing it on and off. The language being Kannada.
During my stay in the state, I visited neighboring states and picked up Tamil from a podcast, only to later know that after making an attempt to converse with my friends, that that form of Tamil is Shakespearean.
Also picking up Telugu for having various close and closer friends who spoke it as their first language. Hanging out with close friends’ friend group speaking the same tongue and sititng on those mess tables, restaurants and flats had always been a deeply isolated experience, not understanding words, the inhouse jokes and their banter other than a few English words being thrown around, and asking them to change at my behest felt like too big a thing to ask. I have only held back tears for I felt incompetent and excluded, am pretty sure that was not intended. And as often happen in these times, I have gone existential- “what am i even doing here?”
On the side, I also picked up ISL (Indian Sign Language) – just the letters, and sheet music, I think those counts as well!
And that’s how you become a language whore’der 😉
Bis dann!
Calra
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