Navigating Language in the U.S.
When we first arrived in Nepal last summer, I think it took me about two months to readjust to hearing and speaking Nepali again. Although I had spent almost five months there before and spoke Nepali on a pretty regular basis with Tri while we were in the US, it was still a shock to hear so much Nepali at once.
Once I eased into the Nepali environment, I was able to start practicing and improving. The first time I was in Nepal, I was so overwhelmed. I was adjusting not only to a new language but also a new culture, living with a host family, and being away from Tri. Although I learned a lot of Nepali at that time, I didn’t pick up on many of the little things: the slang, the abbreviations, little words ( like “na” and “ni”) that are often added in for emphasis. Before, my Nepali probably sounded very stilted, but during these last months in Nepal, I had more time and energy to focus on picking up the bits and pieces that made my language sound more natural.
However, I’m in kind of a weird place with my Nepali. I understand most things being said and can respond to a lot of things, but people tend to think that I can speak more than I actually can. I’ve gotten really good at having some conversations. For instance, when I meet someone new, I can speak to them fluently about where they’re from, what they’re family is like, where I’m from, how I learned to speak Nepali, etc. I’ve mastered this basic conversational material, but problems start to arise when they think I can fluently talk about everything. If they start veering into a subject I don’t know much about or haven’t learned the Nepali vocab for, I may generally know what they’re saying, but I may not be able to respond in the right way. And when it comes to higher-order conversations or discussions about theoretical things, I get very lost. A lot of it is because I don’t recognize the words, but it’s also because I have trouble expressing myself and my thoughts in Nepali.
I’d love to get better, to learn more, to become more comfortable with the language. What I want to get better at is discussing politics or literature. Honestly, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen easily without taking a class or at least finding a teacher willing to spend time working on Nepali with me.
At this point, I don’t think I’ll get a chance to take a class and expand my Nepali in that way, but I have started trying to speak more Nepali with Tri. While we were in Nepal, Tri and I mostly spoke English to each other. I would usually need a break from a long day of hearing Nepali, so I always wanted to gab in English with him when I got home. But now that Nepali isn’t the majority language, I want to switch back to speaking with him in Nepali as much as I can.
What methods do you use to keep your language skills up? Do you feel anxiety about speaking it in front of others? What do you do about it?
When I was a senior in high school, I had a pretty jarring car accident. I was driving two friends home from school one day. While I was crossing a busy street, another car came zooming over a hill and hit my car. My car spun out and hit the curb. No one was seriously hurt, although I did bang my head pretty hard and have to go to the emergency room. Although everyone was okay, the car was totaled, and I developed a horrible fear of driving.
I should have started driving again shortly after the accident so that I could regain my confidence and squelch the fear of driving that I was developing. But I didn’t. Except for maybe once or twice, I don’t think I really drove for a year and half after that, and I haven’t really ever gotten used to driving in the five years since my accident. I guess I didn’t really need to. I was in college, didn’t have a car, and didn’t need one. When Tri got a car after graduating, he pushed me to drive, but I was still hesitant.
After we got to Kathmandu, we needed to buy a car to get to work in the mornings, so we got a Santro, a small Indian car. We talked about me learning to drive it, but no one ever pushed me to, and I wasn’t really interested.
It was easy and socially acceptable for Tri to be the sole driver. Many women in Nepal ride scooters and some ride motorbikes too, but it’s still unusual to see a woman driving a car. I really wish it weren’t so, and I think that if I had stayed in Nepal longer, or if we were planning to settle there more permanently, I would definitely have wanted to learn to drive. It’s important in emergencies and just convenient. However, it was very easy for me to slip into the passenger seat while Tri took the wheel. And because our car was a manual, and I don’t know how to drive a manual, I had even more of an excuse not to drive. BUT now that we’re back in the US, both Tri and I want me to start driving again.
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need a car. As you can see, I’m not too fond of them. But we’re realistic and know that life will be a lot harder without one. Unfortunately we couldn’t bring our car with us to the US…or maybe it wasn’t such an unfortunate thing. It didn’t even have airbags, and the only reason it got such good gas mileage was because, as Tri likes to say, “it was a metal box on wheels.” So with no Santro by our side, we bought a new car last week. Although it’s a better car in better condition than the one we bought in Nepal, it was still cheaper than the Santro (Nepali taxes make car super expensive over there).
I really like it so far. The only catch is…it’s a manual! which is one of the reasons why it was such a good deal. I’ve always had this idea in my head that I should learn to drive a manual, so I guess this is my big chance. No escaping the stick shift for me.