#malayalam:reflections

So February is finally at an end, and actually it was a really good month for language study! (Plus this is actually the most posts I’ve made in a month on this blog for the first time in a long while, possibly ever.) I think there are quite a lot of things to reflect on though, so this might be a somewhat rambly post.

I’ve been keeping track of how much time I spend on languages this year because I set goals back in January based on the amount of estimated hours I’d need to move up a CEFR level. That has been really interesting, because I don’t actually have any sense of how much time things take, and tl;dr the time goals are a lot more intense/unachievable than I previously thought. That being said, I think it’s been a really good demonstration to me of how committed and hardworking I really need to be able to make progress. For Romani, I did about 15 hours of work, and for Malayalam about 8. Which was quite a good amount in terms of how I felt about them for having done it, but it really puts the fact that you need several hundred hours to go up a level into perspective.

I did basically finish the challenges, although with Romani I didn’t post them all on here. I think that the Malayalam one was very productive and really got my brain going – my pronunciation improved a bit and also it was just really cool to talk to my dad about it, I could tell that it got his Malayalam brain going again as well. I’m excited to keep working on it, which I feel like is rare for me and Malayalam given my complicated past relationship to learning it. On the other hand, I wasn’t super happy with the Romani challenge. I wasn’t exactly unhappy with it, but I think that the nature of the daily challenges wasn’t enough to make me do the kind of learning I needed. I really liked listening to Radio Romano so I think that’s going to be more of a thing in the future. I also think I’ll try to focus on reading my book, which has a translation to English that on the one hand is helpful but on the other hand is probably sort of keeping me from really pushing my language skills...idk we’ll see. I also feel like I needed to work on rebuilding my vocabulary again, so I’ll work on that more in the future.

So the month of May is basically over, which means it’s time to look over how well I did on my language goals! Despite the vagueness of both goals, I actually managed to get a decent amount of stuff done. To begin with, I finally caught up with currylangs and have now done all of the Malayalam lessons they have. I’d been wanting to do that since last October, so I’m glad I got through it. That being said, I still have lots of stuff that I’m unable to say, and my grammar and vocab knowledge is very basic, so hopefully I’ll be able to advance a bit more when I’m home and have my dad to ask things to. The goal is to be acceptable at Malayalam by the beginning of July for my cousin’s wedding.

Tamahaq went really well! I wasn’t sure I was actually getting things from taking notes, but yesterday I was looking at a bunch of songs and I could pick out words and structures that I couldn’t before, so I’ve definitely learned something. Of course, I’m far from fluent, or even from A1 for that matter, but I’m feeling really good about how far I’ve gotten. Maybe at some point I’ll have time to learn more, but for now I’m going to have to take a break. That being said, I definitely want to come back to learning it sometime soon. 

Overall, I’m feeling more content than ever with my languages, the only thing that matters now is that I keep up the level that I’ve been going at the past few months and I’ll actually be making significant progress.

Below is a short end-of-month summary in the languages themselves. Note that the translation sounds ridiculous mostly because I really can’t write in Malayalam or Tamahaq and some of the things I said were kind of strange sounding, to say the least.

രണ്ട് മാസംക്ക് മലയാളം പഠിച്ചു. ഇപോൾ വീടുക്ക് ഞാൻ പോവുന്നു. അവിടെ അച്ഛനുടെകൂടെ സംസാരിക്കുകയായിരിക്കും. അവന്രെകൂടെ പഠിക്കുകയായിരിക്കും.   മലയാളത്തിൽ വാക്കുകൾ അറിയുവല്ല. എളുപ്പമല്ല. പഠിക്കുകയായിരിക്കം. 

I studied Malayalam for two months. Now I am going home. I will talk with my father there. I will learn with him. I do not know words in Malayalam. It is not easy. I will learn it.

Ģer-i d-tinăttawt n-əlmud ən-tămahăq əyyăt tallit. Dimar, ăddôbeɣ əktəbăɣ hărăt-ənnet. Rêɣ tămahăq. Rêɣ ed-əddubuɣ eģărri-nnet innin ed-ăkkăɣ e tazzăɣăn Imuhăɣ. Wi yăģģên hărăt rêɣ ed-əlmədăɣ. Išwar rêɣ ed-əlmədăɣ tămahăq animer. Dimar, wăr-ăddôbeɣ almud-ənnet. 

I’m not going to write anything here in Malayalam because I don’t actually know how to write it but yeah...

For language months, this one definitely ranks fairly high. I think I learned a large amount of vocabulary, at very least, since grammar was somewhat iffy. Learning from a native speaker who has no idea what grammar is can be a boon but it can also make grammar nerds like me want to die. I think I picked up some things, and I began forming simple phrases and sentences by the end of the month, which felt kind of cool. I just got a new book which I think will explain grammar better, so I’m looking forward to that.

I tried to focus better this month by cutting down on computer time and working on investing actual solid time on language learning, and I think I definitely saw the concrete benefits of doing that. It was helped, of course, by the fact that I could just go downstairs and demand my father to teach me Malayalam, but it was still a rewarding experience, so hopefully I can keep it up next month!

I’ve been doing my language challenges for 2 months now, and everything seems to be going pretty well. I’ve managed to get my Welsh comprehension up to a more reasonable level, my Turkish actually exists, and well, you know how I am about Catalan.

This new challenge, however, is something entirely different. I’m going to be studying Malayalam, a language from the southwest-Indian state of Kerala. Seems appropriately weird for me. Except it’s not. Because this time I actually have a legitimate reason to learn it.

People tend to get really confused when they ask me why I learned Catalan and I say, “Barça,” as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. I mean, yes, there’s lots of Barça fans in the world who don’t speak Catalan, but I’m not a normal Barça fan. I mean, that’s a good reason, for me at least.

See, when people ask me why I’m learning Welsh and I tell them that I read a book set in Wales in fourth grade (Dark is Rising sequence – check it out, it’s amazing), they usually look at me pretty strangely. 

Then there’s Turkish. Luckily no one’s asked me about that one yet, because I literally have no reason to justify it  besides “I saw it in the Incubator and it looked pretty.”

There’s basically about 2-3 reasons why people learn a language. One, they have family from there or some sort of sentimental connection to it. Two, they need it for business or travel, but want to learn as little as possible, just enough to get by. Or three, they like its food (WHY DOES EVERYONE LIKE FOOD SO MUCH?!!!!!!!! I DON’T GET IT!!!!!!!). 

For the first time in my life, I actually fit into one of these categories, and it’s kind of weirding me out. You see, Malayalam is the language my dad and his family speak. I need to learn it – if I speak Welsh then why can’t I speak my own language? – but at the same time, IT’S JUST SO WEIRD. It’s no longer going to be, “Wow look at the weird American who can speak Catalan.” It’s going to be, “Wow look at the weird Indian loser who can’t even speak their own language.”