*れっしゃ・でんしゃ／रेल्वे／गाड़ी: SL Hitoyoshi running between Kumamoto and Hitoyoshi, Kyushu
Living in Pune for the past 13 years, I should say it is a shame to me for not being able to speak Marathi and Hindi fluently. While I found that it is relatively easy to read (but I don’t say “write”) Devnagri scripts even for beginners because of their firm rules, I have poor vocabularies in both the languages and that makes me feel difficult to proceed to the self-study.
On the other hand, I have an Indian husband who wants to conquer his difficulties of Japanese conversations. So, I decided to exchange language with him. How does it work?
My belief says that for any language, the first motive could come by knowing words, just like a toddler start speaking “papa,” “mama,” “car,” etc. in its mother tongue. Now that I want to increase my vocabularies in Marathi / Hindi, at the same time, help Siddharth building his vocabularies in Japanese, I decided to exchange words from both sides wherever we can. This is the first step.
The next step to be fluent in the language is to construct the sentence; however, I am very optimistic about this part, as I think it should be relatively smoother considering that the sentence structures in Hindi / Marathi and Japanese are in the similar order. For example, “Do you eat eggs?” in Japanese is “あなたは卵を食べますか？ (Anata wa tamago wo tabemasu ka?)” and in Marathi is “तुम्ही अंडी खाणे का? (Tumhi andii khane ka?)” and by now Siddharth and I both know it very well.
Originally, I have a passion for learning any new language, so I am excited to do this attempt! Let us try this method taking help of Google Translate and connecting with pleasant visual memories, and see how far we can go in 3 months! Please feel free to point me out when I am making any mistake!
Today’s words (Japanese in Hiragana for Siddharth):
English: Building
Japanese: たてもの、ビル (Tate-mono, Biru)
Marathi: इमारत (Imaarata)
Hindi: इमारत (Imaarat)
English: Eggs
Japanese: たまご (Tamago)
Marathi: अंडी (Andii)
Hindi: अंडे (Ande)
English: Train
Japanese: れっしゃ・でんしゃ (Ressha, Densha)
Marathi: रेल्वे (Relwe; I think it comes from the English word "Railway")
Hindi: गाड़ी (Gaadee)
たまご (one)／अंडी／अंडा: A hotel breakfast in Sapporo, Hokkaido; December 2015
たてもの・ビル／इमारत／इमारत: Fukuoka Tower's Christmas illumination in 2015
