Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Tamil 101: Week 6

Last week I arrived at the halfway point in my crazy endeavor to learn a little bit of Tamil. For the first few weeks of class I shared a classroom with 4 other students all Foreign Service officers posted to Chennai, India in the near future. While their mandatory language training consists of approximately six months of intensive language classes, I have 12 weeks to learn as many Tamil words and grammatical concepts as humanly possible. Since a significant divergence between the times allotted for me and my classmates to learn Tamil exists, my awesome instructors separated me from the rest of the class to give me a more intense and quicker introduction to the language. As a result, in addition to one hour of language lab every day I am locked in three hours of intense awkward Tamil conversation with three different instructors.
 
I am pretty sure the conversation is more awkward on my end, since I am the one that does not speak Tamil. Thus far studying Tamil has been quite a challenge. I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I miss studying Arabic! Fortunately my instructors bring different sets of skills into the classroom teaching me the language in different ways. I am enjoying language class. Well, minus the Tamil sized meltdown I had a few weeks ago, where my brain literally froze and I could not respond to anything. I admit that was a pretty crappy day and I do not think I’ve made it a great teaching experience for my instructors. 

I want to give great big thanks to all of my Tamil instructors as they are incredibly committed to seeing each and every student succeed. I am so grateful for them making space in their schedules for me. Although I have no idea of my progress, since now I can’t manically plot my language learning progress as it compares to my former classmates; I did in the past and I don’t think that was too productive - I think I am making a bit of headway. Last Friday using language skills of a three year old, I had my first economics conversation. I compared taste quality of American fruits and vegetables to those grown in India. We talked about how weather and infrastructure has either a positive or negative effect on supplying food to local markets. Do I know the words for supply, demand, market (had to ask that one), and infrastructure? Not yet, but then a three year old would not know how to use those words anyway.

What I was able to say and am pretty smug about it, was that fruit and veggies in the USA are picked before they are ripe and are delivered to the stores before they are ready to be eaten - that is why fruit and vegetables in the US are not very flavorful. I asked my instructor about the taste of fruits and vegetables in India. I am afraid I do not know the word for produce, excuse my repetition of “fruits and vegetables.” My instructor responded that fruits and vegetables in India are very flavorful. We debated the merits of constant sunlight and picking produce when it is ripe. However, I said India has a different problem, 75% of its produce spoils before it gets to markets, because of lack of refrigeration during transportation and bad roads. 

In other news, I am not sure if it was the effect of Sudafed or my tired brain on instant replay, but last night I dreamed that I was doing my Tamil homework over and over again. I would wake up every once in a while realizing that it’s the middle of the night and I am in bed, but fell asleep only to dream about doing Tamil homework.

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