hindilingo - i persevere and so forth

Just passed checkpoint 2, which means I am half-done. This legit surprises me; for the last roughly ten days, I've been sick and literally only did the minimum daily on old lessons to keep it fresh. That apparently worked; I started today halfway Level 3 Adjectives and by mid Level 4, I had most of it down. Well, not all the fruit names, that's going to take repetition, but process of elimination helped, which is cheering since that means I know enough words to eliminate any.

The following lessons have been completed:

Letters 1, Letters 2, Letters 3, Letters 4, Basics 1, Checkpoint 1
Basics 2, Plurals, Intro, Family, Animals, Activity, Adjectives, Food, Checkpoint 2

I have also--finally--gotten my brain to identify Devangari script as letters.

A representation of the process, current:

New Word
Letter: आ
Brain: Letter!
Shape: आ
Brain: I know the sound for this letter!
Brain: *thinks sound*
Brain: *repeat for each letter through end of word*

Known Word
Word: आदमी
Brain: That is 'man'!
Me: Good. And....
Brain: Next word!
Brain: *repeat for each word for sentence*

Mentally, I can see the letters in each word so phonics is kicking in nicely. The bigger problem is one that didn't come up in Spanish because I hear it and have used it: I'm not making the mental connection between 'phonics' and 'verbal sound'.

This entry I talked about how in English, I have two vocabulary lists: written and spoken (or read/write and listen/speak), depending on phonics and if I read the word and phonics gave me the pronunciation before I heard the actual one, and those two things are different (in English, this happens a lot). Right now, my read/write is progressing fine; my listen is sketchy as hell; my spoken (when not reading it) is shit.

I have one confirmed sentence I can do on the fly: राज पानी पीता है।

Translation: Raj drinks water.
Phonetical: Raj panee piitah heh

The only reason is that it's super lyrical and got stuck in my head like a Taylor Swift chorus.

So Hindi seems to be following the English pattern, with a read/write and listen/speak as separate lists that aren't yet synched (and the latter badly underpopulated). But I have two more sections and some time, so surely it'll happen.

Work Friends

A few of my Indian coworkers are following my progress, likely from sheer morbid curiosity how I butcher their language spoken and written (my handwriting in any language is atrocious). Most in my area speak Telegu mother tongue, Hindi second, one woman in a different group that I work with on the mobile app, speaks Marathi mother tongue, Hindi second, and there are I think three other languages spoken, but for obvious reasons, unless I have a personal relationship with someone (or they tell me themselves), I don't quiz them on their first language, though God, I wish I could. From my unofficial count (people who have told me), Telegu speakers may be the most numerous, but I also only work regularly with maybe five percent of the total number of contractors, though I've met or worked with most.

Anyway, two of them, Tester From My Group and App Tester (they were among those who helped me with the Devangari alphabet and got me references) are now both taking Spanish on Duolingo (Spanish for English Speakers, there is no Spanish for Telegu or Marathi). Which made me think (and also realize they'd probably be fluent in Spanish before I am at this rate).

I'm curious: both of them are at minimum trilingual and completely fluent in English (I have heard them use y'all, even). When learning a language via your second or third language, is it harder, or--in this specific case--easier because Spanish is closer to English (relatively speaking) and in Texas, they're way more likely to hear English and Spanish fusions around them?

Comments

[malkingrey]

I have heard them use y'all, even

If their first language has a plural you, they probably just did a straight one-for-one translation.

[ratcreature]

When I used Duolingo for Russian it was via English (because that course had many more lessons than via German), and that was a bit annoying, because frequently German would have had the exact same sentence construction as Russian but in English the sentence would be an entirely different idiom thing, so in the translation that lead to me making mistakes.

For example the English sentence given could be "He goes to the girl's house." but the Russian they wanted to get at didn't have any possessive or even a house as such in it but was "Он идёт к девушке домой." (literally: "He goes to the girl home(direction).") which in German is also said like that ("Er geht zum Mädchen nach hause.") with the cases matching even, like the girl in dative and everything. And that happened frequently because Russian has several constructions that are just like in German, but English uses a different kind of sentence. So that made it harder.

[goss]

they'd probably be fluent in Spanish before I am at this rate

Ha! You are probably right. :b

A story - One of my little cousins was raised in India from a baby, so Hindi was her first language and English was her second (English being her mom's first language). Anyway, when she was 12 years old, they migrated to (English-speaking) Trinidad, and she started school here.

It was the middle of the academic year. At this level, the kids are all required to do basic French and Spanish. By the end of the term, she'd placed first in her class in both of these languages! *boggles*

[cathyw]

Right now, my read/write is progressing fine; my listen is sketchy as hell; my spoken (when not reading it) is shit.

...this is the story of my life, both with Duolingo and with traditional classroom instruction (although after four years of Spanish classroom instruction I was able to manage a trip to Mexico at the speaking/listening level with a little help from 'más despacio, por favor" and I don't think I'll ever get that good at any other language I'll ever study. I'm not even still that good at Spanish.) I'm not sure whether it's because the instruction is mostly read/write based or because read/write is just easier (which also makes sense, there's fewer steps in the mental processing and you get to take your time with it.)

This made for an interesting trip to Montreal. I could read all the road signs, restaurant menus, and museum exhibit signage (especially if there was an English equivalent nearby to double-check with). I eventually figured out what the recorded voices on the hotel elevator and the metro were saying. But I'd say "bonjour" to waitpeople and cashiers and they'd start speaking English to me right away, isn't that funny? X)