What I Said I Would Do
What I Did
I studied Hindi, which is the common language of north India. As well as Gujarati, which is the local language in the state of Gujarat. My family was Gujarati, which means that the language I was most surrounded by was Gujarati. Hindi was what was spoken by the other students in my school. Everyone has a mother tongue or the language spoken in their household, and Hindi is a language that everyone in the north can connect through. English was also commonly spoken by educated people. The majority of the time I could rely on my English. Due to this I definitely didn’t do as much language as I had hoped. By the end of the year in a Gujarati conversation, I could understand the topic and a small to a large amount of details depending on the topic. In Hindi, I could understand the topic of a conversation and some small details. When it came to speaking I could communicate about my needs, and daily topics more so than have complex conversations. Again, because I was surrounded by Gujarati at home I could speak more Gujarati than Hindi. My documentation for this is primarily in the form of notes.
Hindi
Gujarati
*Not all of my notes are shown here just some to give an idea. This blog post has all of my notes, and is a combination of all of my blog posts about language.*
I would take notes in classes, books I found around the house, youtube videos, and anything else that I could find. I would also often just make a list of things I wanted to know how to say and then ask my family members how. In addition to speaking to family members and people out in the city I had hindi and gujarati classes. Each of these happened anywhere from 1-7 times a week. Usually they ended up being closer to once a week. In India, a lot of the time teachers will just decide to not come to class. This can be for any reason, but usually it's because they don't want to teach the class. This is a video of my dad and I having a conversation in the car.
I would take notes in classes, books I found around the house, youtube videos, and anything else that I could find. I would also often just make a list of things I wanted to know how to say and then ask my family members how. In addition to speaking to family members and people out in the city I had hindi and gujarati classes. Each of these happened anywhere from 1-7 times a week. Usually they ended up being closer to once a week. In India, a lot of the time teachers will just decide to not come to class. This can be for any reason, but usually it's because they don't want to teach the class. This is a video of my dad and I having a conversation in the car.
I also did some hindi on Duolingo. Learning Gujarati from anywhere other than directly from its speakers. It is a local language so there aren't a lot of online resources, and there are different dialects which is an issue.
Another Pilot student, Dane, was in India with me. We worked on a script and a recording. Weebly would not allow me to upload the recording so here is the link to it in a google file.
I also translated the script to Gujarati.
The link to the recording of this is here. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone to record it with me so I am the only one talking in it.