Malayalam is a palindrome. One of those rare words that reads the same backward or forward. This fact alone made me feel even more interested about the language. I approached it with the curiosity of Alice in Wonderland. Language is that golden key to someone's culture. I want to speak it and understand it with all my might but it is a challenge. The language is derived from Sanskrit and the sounds are very different from the sounds produced by the languages I speak (English and Spanish). Grasping words is like trying to grab water and put it into a basket. I need to add some type of linguistic "gel". For example, I know the name of one of the breakfast dishes very well because when I approached the dining room to serve my plate, I heard the word "puta" which in Spanish means whore. "Not very friendly of this gentleman that doesn't know me to call me whore!" I thought. He repeated: "Puta", this time he was signaling my dish and smiling. So, I thought, he can't be insulting me with such a smile! (pfew!,what I relief). He was telling me that the name of the dish was "Puta and tarala". How can I forget that dish :-)
Pretty quickly I learned how to ask "how much". There is this big fear from foreigners about being ripped off. I am slightly afraid of being ripped off so I thought, perhaps I should learn how to say "How much", so I did. I went flaunting my phrase everywhere and, magically, I was getting responses!!! I felt like a pro... except for the fact that I did not understand the responses. Thankfully, people know the numbers in English pretty well.
I wish I had a TV and that I lived with a family that only spoke to me in Malayalam. It really is the only and best way to learn. You get used to the sounds if you are paying attention. I have a small vocabulary though and I use it every time I can. My accent must be awful because Malayalam has more vowels than Spanish. It actually has twice as many sounds.
I learned that India has 22 official languages. Each one of them has a different alphabet. It is expected that most people know Hindi and some English too. Many people speak and understand English, but the local language of Kerala is Malayalam and sometimes it is very hard to communicate. This impediment is compounded by the head movement which is ambiguous. In India, an affirmative signal is not very different from a negative signal. In the western world, we nod when we mean yes and we shake our head from side to side when we mean no. Here is different, an affirmative movement is the same as a negative movement. I can't imagine a marriage proposal with such ambiguity!
Pretty quickly I learned how to ask "how much". There is this big fear from foreigners about being ripped off. I am slightly afraid of being ripped off so I thought, perhaps I should learn how to say "How much", so I did. I went flaunting my phrase everywhere and, magically, I was getting responses!!! I felt like a pro... except for the fact that I did not understand the responses. Thankfully, people know the numbers in English pretty well.
I wish I had a TV and that I lived with a family that only spoke to me in Malayalam. It really is the only and best way to learn. You get used to the sounds if you are paying attention. I have a small vocabulary though and I use it every time I can. My accent must be awful because Malayalam has more vowels than Spanish. It actually has twice as many sounds.
I learned that India has 22 official languages. Each one of them has a different alphabet. It is expected that most people know Hindi and some English too. Many people speak and understand English, but the local language of Kerala is Malayalam and sometimes it is very hard to communicate. This impediment is compounded by the head movement which is ambiguous. In India, an affirmative signal is not very different from a negative signal. In the western world, we nod when we mean yes and we shake our head from side to side when we mean no. Here is different, an affirmative movement is the same as a negative movement. I can't imagine a marriage proposal with such ambiguity!
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