You probably know the television show \u201cReady, Steady, Cook!\u201d Competing against the clock and each other, contestents have to produce a delicious meal using random ingredients.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Practising my Hindi was like that, too. After 1.5 years of lessons I had a few seemingly useful items in my linguistic shopping bag: some vocabulary, a selection of tenses, the odd auxiliary verb\u2026 But how to combine them to make a nutritious conversation?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Waiting for the school bus one day, I bumped into Neha, our babysitter. She was very sweet and a sympathetic listener to my efforts (assuming she was laughing *with* and not *at* me).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
As she approached, I said hi in Hindi and asked how she was doing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
That\u2019s the onions \u2013 always a good starting point, right? But then I reached into my bag again. And pulled out\u2026 \u201cThis is the pen with which I was writing yesterday\u201d.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Hmmm. Not by any stretch of the imagination is that going to come across as intelligent, sane conversation. Even if I were holding a pen.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I scrambled for a different ingredient: \u201cBefore I go I will read my book\u201d. No. What about a question: \u201cCan you tell me the price of a ticket to Delhi?\u201d Aaarrgh! Desperate now, I reached for the tin of tomatoes and resigned myself to having spag. bol. again: \u201cNice weather isn\u2019t it? Bus is late though\u201d.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You probably know the television show \u201cReady, Steady, Cook!\u201d Competing against the clock and each other, contestents have to produce a delicious meal using random ingredients. Practising my Hindi was like that, too. After 1.5 years of lessons I had a few seemingly useful items in my linguistic shopping bag: some vocabulary, a selection of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n