h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Apologies to the mods in advance: this does have a fair amount of a foreign language in it but it's all uncontroversial and I've translated straight away.)

So by popular demand (i.e.Ivan and Sho), a journal about studying Urdu. Choosing that course is certainly one of the best decisions I've made in a long time and the classes have established themselves as the highlight of my week.

For a start, it's a really nice gang of people with a range of abilities: before I signed up for the course I was worried people would be too mature and frankly dull, and that I'd be uniquely young. I'm not the youngest in the class and we're certainly not too mature. I find myself having more of a laugh week on week as there are a couple of people who are there for pretty much exactly the same reasons as me: it'd help professionally but mostly we just want something fun and reasonably challenging. There is a guy who probably shouldn't be in the class because he's so much more advanced than the rest of us and he can be a touch rude with us absolute beginners, but he doesn't bother most of us.

I've got a great little arrangement with the teacher where she teaches me a new phrase or two I can use with the lads every week: that's always a laugh because the lads just don't know what to make of it and they're at their most vulnerable to teaching when they're off-balance. They're mightily confused as to why I'd bother learning Urdu but they seem to really appreciate the effort I'm making. I've noticed they're stopping speaking Urdu and Punjabi in front of, lest I know what they're trying to say secretly. I'll have to learn Slovak next to stop those kids

Technically Urdu is a far trickier language than one of the Romance languages I was considering learning instead: it's spoken extremely quickly and there's a lot of issues with near-homophones, often with one innocent meaning and the other with an offensive meaning - for example 'bhoray' means brown, 'buRhay' means old and 'buray' means shit - and a lot of the sounds are extremely subtle or debatable. I'm starting to really enjoy, or at least be excited by the challenge of, transliterating the script (I still hate writing it) but there's a lot of guesswork involved, particularly around vowels: the main vowel is the aleph which is normally an a, but can be an i, a u (as it is in the first letter of Urdu) or a single e or o - ee and oh/oo are quite important sounds in Urdu so they have their own letters.

Urdu is a bit like English in that it's a very mongrel language and while the main root is Sanskrit/Hindi, it borrows heavily from Arabic, Persian/Farsi and English to name just a few. I really enjoy this because I'm a giant nerd and I like to try and spot where different words come from and why. For example there seems to be an interesting divide with naming rooms whereby if a room is named for what you do there, it's a Sanskrit word so bedroom is sonay-ka-kamra and literally means room of sleeping, whilst if a room is named for who does what there, it comes from Persian/Farsi and so kitchen is bawerchee-khana and means 'room of the cook'

I also enjoyed spotting the breaks in the numbers: aik (1), do (2), teen (3) are Sanskrit, char (4), panch (5) and chhay (6) are Persian and then it's back to Sanskrit for saat (7), aat (8), nau (9) and das (10). What's really interesting (to me if no-one else) is the Sanskrit numbers are fairly comprehensible to anyone who knows a couple of European languages as they're really quite similar to their European counterparts. Having basic German and French has really helped me as I'm able to get to grips with sounds English doesn't really have but those two do and I can sometimes spot similarities that come from Urdu and French/German coming from the same language family.

I'm also finding my nerdy nature handy in other ways too: I'm quite well-versed in Islamic culture and have picked up some vocab through that and I've got a decent grounding in Indian and Pakistani history and that can come in handy in understanding where words come from and what they might mean.

Where would it need modding?

Apart from 'shit' which we are allowed to say, everything is perfectly translated - even my limited brain cells could follow it all.

Glad you are enjoying your new-found language.

Well I have read this and liked it and can see no reason for it to be moderated. That is my only complaint.

I just wasn't sure how much of a foreign language we are allowed to use. I know there have been issues recently.

I have no idea either, but I think it is in context, bearing in mind your piece announces itself as being about learning Urdu, and Even DDD and myself understood it so it's educational really.

I'm fascinated by linguistics too. Thanks, HI. I enjoyed that.

TRiG.

Ah, I should have mentioned. While you are studying Urdu, the English phrase:

<>

should be written as "and I like to try *to* spot>>

Just a minor irk that I've seen a few times today.

As you were...

When Tolikien's editors corrected /try and/ to /try to/, he corrected it back.

TRiG.

So would I if I had spelt my name Tolikien.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading that, HI

lil x

Thanks Iago. I'm a linguistics nerd so I liked this a lot.

(In fact, I bonded with my ex over north European linguistics and Goon Show scripts.)

Thanks, HI, that's really interesting. I love the way it unseats some of the students - especially the part where they aren't sure how much you know. It's the same with me and the Korean. Every now and again I surprise them with a phrase, and suddenly they stop talking to each other in their native language for an hour or two until they forget.

I've "learned" a few languages over the years, Latin, French, German and Russian - and although they are not remotely similar to Korean languages, in terms of grammar (ie. Verb, subject, object etc etc) the more you know of one, the more you - eventually - understand the other)

Write more!!

What Sho said.

I enjoyed reading that too. Although I don't speak languages well I do find them interesting.

I agree, I enjoyed reading this too. I'm another one who likes looking for links in word derivations among related languages. Learning languages is a kind of complicated word game and they're always fun.

MC

Try Korean - such a laugh when you (if you're like me and can read it fairly well, but slowly like a 4 year old running their finger slowly along a line of Dr Seuss text) finally get to the end of the word and realise it's a Korean approximation of English pronunciation.

Well there you are. When they start handing out cub scout badges for The Polyglot Plaza, you've got a job.