Learning Nepali

I now have had 2 weeks of learning Nepali. I feel pleased when I think of how far I've come from only being able to state my name and count to 10 when I arrived. But then I think about the fact I'm half through my classes, and how little I still can actually communicate, and I feel a bit overwhelmed. But such is learning a new language, and it will come, in time. I have the usual problem of throwing in French and Spanish words without meaning to (I even said 'yes' in Japanese the other day, I didn't know I even remembered how to!) – the brain does funny things when groping for words in a new language.

I'm learning both spoken Nepali, and the script. Roz commented last night that it's almost like learning two languages at the same time. To write something, you have to translate from English to Nepali words, then from Roman letters to Nepali letters (and vice-versa when reading). Now that I know most of the letters in the Nepali alphabet, I am able to write sentences in Nepali, but invariably all the translating makes my head hurt. We frequently feel like our heads want to explode after our lessons.

Family is very important in Nepal, and we learned early on how to describe our families. The fact that mine is scattered around the world has made it more complicated for me! Every position in family life has a name, and I've had to explain several times times that since my sisters are twins, that I don't have an 'older-younger sister' and a 'younger-younger sister'. The question that followed surprised me even more – are your brothers-in-law twins as well? Apparently in some Nepali traditions, twin girls have marriages arranged with twin boys - everyone is used to being a twin, so apparently things work out better. I think that means that if both sets of twins were identical, it would make the cousins genetically siblings...an interesting twist, but not one that is an issue in my family.

My mother's name (Alma) confused my language teacher for awhile. Mother in Nepali is aamaa, and it sounded to him that I was saying 'My mother's name is mother.' (technically true, I supposed, since Alma is mother in Latin). He thought I didn't get the question, and I finally had to write it out to clarify.

Another challenge is sorting out who you have to speak respectfully of. For anyone older, or not well known to you, you use the formal verb forms. Younger siblings and children get more familiar verb forms (however, I do have to be respectful of my younger sisters' husbands). All in all, I would prefer not to respect anyone, since for the verb 'is' the familiar form is 'ho', while the formal form is 'hunahunchha'. However, that's not an option, and I'm starting to get my head around the longer, more formal verb usage.

Nepali is like German, in that the verbs come at the end of the sentence, which I'm having some trouble getting used to. I have a tendency to get tangled up in the details of what I'm trying to say, and trail off and forget to add the verb to the end of the sentence. Sometimes it's clear what I mean, other times not so much, and people look at my expectantly to finish what I'm saying. It's also sometimes complicated to decide which part of the preceding sentence the verb is supposed to agree with, and I certainly get that wrong lots of the time.

A few blunders I have made in class: I like to eat bananas (keraa), not insects (kiraa). I have someone who cooks dinner for me, not someone who cooks me for dinner. It's important to keep that straight!

All in all though, Nepalis are very forgiving of my rudimentary speaking abilities, and very friendly. In addition, many people speak some English, so together we can communicate most things. I so look forward to being able to say more, but that will only come with time and practice, and I will have to have lots of these hand waving, halting conversations to get to that point.