Quickest way to picking up a new language ?

On weekdays, Aman has to wake up atleast by 6AM so as to be able to catch the school-bus that arrives at our gate around 7:35AM.   Like me, he also loves sleep, especially early in the morning and when I see how tough it is for him to get up in the morning, I would wish his school started a little later in the day. To make up for the early rising on weekdays, we usually let him sleep a little late on weekends / holidays.

So, last Sunday, he is in bed even at 8AM and Sheena comes over to wake him (and me) so that we can get to church in time for the Sunday mass. The hot tea she brings along lures me to wake up, but Aman is still reluctant to get up. When Sheena insists he get up, he replies in chaste/fluent Hindi, "Mujhe aur thoda sone do, Ma", which would translate to "Please let me sleep a little more, Mom".

And when she reminds him (in Malayalam) that if he wakes up, he can go play in the mound of river-sand that we have in the yard for some construction work, he replies again in fluent Hindi, "Woh to mein bhool hi gaya" (Oh, I completely forgot about that) and jumps out of bed.

He has not started learning Hindi at school. And while me and my parents are fluent in the language, we never use it at home. So, when he started speaking fluent Hindi of late, it initially came as a surprise to us. And the strange thing is that there is no trace of accent in his Hindi, though he normally speaks Malayalam at home and thus I would expect his Hindi to have a Mallu-influence.

We traced the source of his learning to some kiddie serials he is glued in on TV. These are Japanese serials dubbed in Hindi and me/Sheena mostly find it useless content-wise. The characters have names like Kitretsu, Butta Gorilla, Kurasoke etc and this airs on HungamaTV channel I believe. We would see Aman glued to the TV, occasionally laughing at the jokes and would wonder what he understood, since he knew no Hindi. But looks like he not only understands the content, but in the process has picked up a new language too.

I have always believed that the best way to learn a language was to speak it. That was how I picked up Tamil, when I was thrown into a group of Tamil-speaking guys at Engineering college. I never imagined that one could pick up a language by watching TV content in that language. Funny thing is that he also watches quite some kiddie serials in English, but does not speak English that well. Go figure !!!

WYSIWYG - not really

Last Thursday was a classic case of What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) being proven wrong.

I had left for work early around 8AM. The cyclone Nilam had passed by Chennai the previous night, but thankfully had spared Chennai any major destruction. While some trees got uprooted all around the city, thanks to the cops and Chennai Corporation officials, the roads have been cleared and the drive was smooth.

As I enter Haddows Road, a bike overtakes my car and perched behind the guy driving the bike is a young woman in saree. Very petite, prim with saree draped properly - in short, the perfect Indian woman image for most guys. As I get onto Nungambakkam High Road, the couple are still in front of me. Since he is riding like a typical Chennai biker (weaving in and out of lanes), I lose them briefly, only to see them at the next signal.

As we approach the traffic light at Landmark, I think I saw a whiff of smoke come out from between them. My first thought is that the guy is smoking while riding and more importantly when he has a woman seated behind. But he is wearing a helmet, a full-face helmet at that with vizor, so would be tough to smoke through that. And then I see our fair lady bring the ciggie to her mouth, take a deep drag and puff out smoke like a seasoned smoker.

She takes a few more drags and flicks the butt away. I am caught by surprise, to say the least. It is not that I have not seen women smoking. Have seen lots of them smoking in EU / US - infact in EU, there used to be more women smoking in the office smoking-zone than men. Heck, even in conservative Chennai, this is not a rare sight. Since our office building also houses a call-centre, it is a pretty common sight to see the women employees of the call-centre come down to the basement for a cig-break with the guys.

But it always is kinda odd, if not disconcerting, to see a woman draped in a saree smoke.