Hindi

When I was first learning French, there was a point where I was really falling behind. My whole academic philosophy was "I don't really care" at that point, so it didn't really phase me. I figured I'd figure it out eventually. After a long bout of lackluster quizzes and tests, Mr. Lisi sent a note home to my parents. This was maybe a semester and a half or so into my freshman year of high school. I sat down with Dad for a little while in the kitchen nook and we started going over things. As the "review" progressed, Dad got more and more annoyed with me. Eventually he said "Read this sentence." I forget what it was, but it started with "J'ai." I read the sentence and Dad said "What does that mean?" I said, "I don't know." "What about that, right there." "J?ai" "Yea, start there." "What does 'j'ai' mean?" Dad was, shall we say, unhappy. "What does 'j'ai' mean? The most common expression in the entirety of the French language? That phrase? Is that the one you mean? You don't know what 'j'ai' means? There are infants in France that would laugh at you. Jesus Christ, how can you take a semester of French and not know what that means? What the hell have you been doing?" Now, I was young, very young, maybe 14 or so, and rather an ass. You may say the situation hasn't changed a whole lot, but then you'd be working on an absolute scale and not one of degrees, wouldn't you. So I probably yelled at Dad and swore and ran away upstairs. But he was right. You hear that, Dad? You were right. Note the date and time. What an idiot I was. Such an unbelievable half-assed job. Really, sincerely sorry about that. In many ways it was a more extreme version of what I did throughout high school and, arguably, the first year and a half of college: didn't work hard, didn't prepare, did just enough to be able to successfully b.s. the rest. Idiot. I've done stupid things in my life to date, but few as painfully regrettable. The French thing got worse before it got better, but it eventually worked itself out. Near the end of that semester, still smarting from Dad caning my pride, I started to work harder and try to understand how the language fit together. I still dropped down to a lower level French class after that year because Mr. Lisi was unimpressed, which was a major blow to my pride, but also a major inspiration. This whole thing just drove me nuts. I honestly cannot remember an instance in high school where I was more annoyed and angry on a daily basis. The surface part was indignation at being in anything but the top classes at LaSalle. The ship-sinking part of the iceberg, though, was anger at myself for letting it happen. Anger can be an effective inspiration, sometimes. I really went after the French language. It was a vendetta of sorts. Irish Alzheimer's in full effect. I did extremely well in that lower French class. I studied way more than I ever had the prior year, even though the class was undeniably easier. After one semester, all the powers that be agreed that I should move back up. It worked out. I ended up doing pretty well in French overall, certainly well enough to not be clueless when I ended up in Nice the March after my senior year. Well enough to test into Brown's highest non-literature French class. I relate this story because I had a moment today, during a Hindi quiz, that felt a lot like that night in the kitchen nook with Dad. No one yelled at me, and I didn?t get all immature like I did when I was 14. There's no one to yell at these days. It's all on me. But I did get really angry. I hate that clueless feeling, where you can grasp at strands of somehow connected meanings and symbols. It's like there's fog in the Sistine Chapel and all you can see is a couple of feet up the walls. You know they connect to this beautiful ceiling that is, in many ways, a pinnacle of human achievement. But this damn fog is there. Well, fog no more. I'm angry now. I have a Hindi vendetta. C'est dangereux. Time to nip this one in the bud. It shouldn't be tremendously difficult. The teachers at Landour are at their best if you ask them lots of pointed questions, so that's just what I'll have to do. They're all also very nice and very willing to go over things again and again, so that'll have to be on the list as well. Hindi is more difficult than French or some other Romance language because even if you understand the structure, how the words are supposed to be arranged, you still have to transpose those words into this alien and unbelievably, phonetically precise script. It's maddening sometimes to have to say "da" "dha" "deha" "dnha", all of which are scripted letters in Hindi and, when native speakers are speaking, exactly the same sound to my ears. But I have a CD with precise speakers on it, we've been watching some Hindi movies, so there's hope in that area. This might, like French, get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.