On language

There are something like 6,800 known languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. I speak two. And I happen to live in a country that barely speaks one of them. Not pretty. Yes, the colonialist bastards (also known as the British, with the exception of Dave and Andrew because I love them) were in India for like 200 years. However, that does not mean that every one of the 1.1 billion people in this country speak English. Hell, they don't all even speak the same language!

The Indian constitution recognizes, for now, 18 official Indian languages. But, almost each of these 18 languages, include different dialect or variation of that language. Besides these 18 languages, there are other languages which are recognized by the central government, but not as official languages. And to make it even more fun there are other languages which aren’t recognized by the central government. Yippee!

So what is a boy to do?

Eight months in Kolkata yielded a few defensive phrases in Bengali and the ability to know when people were talking about me, but in no way it allowed me to actually communicate. Now I am in Mumbai, a city which has no use whatsoever for Bengali (money well spent on that Bengali tutor, eh?). Now I am back to the same sense of loss as the beginning. I am not imperialist enough to believe that everyone in the world should speak English; my mother tongue is Spanish after all. But I just wish that language learning wasn’t so difficult. Ugh!

I readily admit that I am lazy and require instant gratification. Hence, my little book-on-tape of “Teach Yourself Hindi” lays gathering dust on the side of my bed. I know that one-year in a country does not yield proficiency, but for god’s sake I just don’t want to be ripped off at the market.

Luckily I have a knack for pretending that I know what people are saying and looking convincing while I do it. It’s amazing how far into a conversation you can go with some smiling, nodding, and throwing in the occasional perfectly pronounce word of agreement. If that fails just giving a disinterested aloof look helps also. And if pushed into a corner just shrug your shoulders and put on your iPod (thank god for, and Chris for gifting it to me, isolationist technology). I guess it could be worse I could be in Japan and China, where you can get flogged for attempting to learn English.

But I do give it to Indians, significant numbers of people speak a minimum of two languages. A lot even speak three or more. Granted these are languages spoken only in India. But shit Americans can barely speak English properly, let alone a second language.