Day 62: Languages

Languages, the gate to communication and understanding culture. I have been in France now for about a year and I have realized through out that the French are very connected and close to their language. Most of them do not speak English, well I am not talking about entire France/South of France but a general statement (which is quite true).  So, I made a small effort and spent hundreds of hours learning French. I am very happy I can convey my message though I am still hotch potch in tenses and prepositions. Well, they will surely come with more and more listening and speaking. But this has already been so easy now to talk to people, go shopping, travel with public transport, make calls to crèche and schools and speak in French….it is so convenient if one knows the native language.

I had always a dream to see myself speaking some other language with the same ease as I speak Hindi and English. But, I never thought it would be a foreign language. I had a lot of Marathi friends, so thought would learn it some day. Some days I thought I would learn Gujrati, other days I thought Bengali….! Well, as you can see, I was always fascinated by languages but never got any chance or tried to learn any dedicatedly. Thanks to the French people, who are hard with English, I know some French now and I am proud to able to manage here.  

Yesterday, I was watching the movie ‘Dus Kahaniya (ten stories)’ and in one of the movies, it was Amruta Singh & Minisha Lamba as mother and daughter (ofcourse, respectively). This particular story had a tragic end and it ends with a beautiful song in Punjabi.  Well, I didn’t understand it word to word, but it was soulful and the lyrics sounded so sweet that I fell in love with this language. I think, every language’s folk songs or thoughts are very sweet and has the power (not even ability) to touch any one’s soul. Now, I would like to learn Punjabi so that I can understand soulful songs like this.

One of my favourite poets is Rabindra Nath Tagore….and to read his work and other Bangla literature, I would like to try my hands on Bengali too. Wow……beautiful dreams……I am happy! :-)

कुछ भाषाए बहुत मिठास भरी होती है, और मै उनकी मिठास से अनजानी नहीं रहना चाहती, इसीलिए यह सपना भर रही हू अपनी आँखों मै, की एक दिन काफी सारी language बोल पाऊ. This is not for others but just for my own sake. I see it as a big achievement to see myself speaking different languages.

Well, for now French is only the beginning…..