electronicmonk's Nepali language log

[electronicmonk]

It has taken me awhile to decide I actually wanted to learn Nepali. There have been several barriers keeping me from learning it (mostly mental) and I have used those as excuses to avoid studying or learning as much of the language as I could. As I am currently living in Nepal and working in a mostly Nepali-speaking setting, one would think I would have plenty of motivation to learn Nepali, but a lot of people do still speak English and well, my work doesn’t really require Nepali or at least, I would need a much better grasp of Nepali before it would benefit my work directly. All that being said I also knew deep down, and not so deep down, that learning even a little bit of the language conveys respect, interest, and a whole host of other things that are important to me. So a few weeks ago I started learning Nepali.

Several barriers that kept me from starting:
1) Should I learn Devanagari?
2) What program/resource should I use?
3) I am scared of messing up in front of people.

My answers to the above barriers:
1) Yes. I went back and forth on this for awhile, but in the end the pros of learning Devanagari outweighted the cons of learning it. I thought it would take forever to learn (it didn’t unless 2-3 hours is forever) and that it would not help me all that much (it has helped). The benefits of learning the script are numerous, however, for me, the main benefits have been being able to read new words and have a basic understanding of their pronunciation, being able to have a consistent written record of the words I am learning, and not having to rely solely on language learning materials that are transliterated into English (this last one is super useful). I still have difficulties with some special ligatures and still use transliterations at times to help parse out pronunciation, but being able to read the script has opened up a lot more language learning opportunities.

2) There is never a perfect resource despite my desire for a perfect resource. I settled on the free course put out by Cornell called “Nepali: A Beginner’s Primer Conversation and Grammar. It was previously hosted for free on the Cornell language website, however, it appears they have taken it down. It can still be accessed by the Internet Archive though. It has full audio for all the dialogues which is its main selling point. The fact that it is free is also useful, though I would be willing to pay for a high quality full audio Nepali course (there just aren’t many resources available). I also have one version of the Teach Yourself Nepali course. I do not have any audio for the book which is the main thing that keeps me from using it and right now one main course is plenty for me. I have been supplementing the course with information and vocabulary from Nepalgo which is a Nepali language tumblr site written by a Nepali desiring to help English speakers learn Nepali.

3) For this I mainly just forced language exposure and have tried to be gentle with myself about mistakes that I make. I know I will make mistakes. I know that for everything that I do get correct there will be plenty that I don’t get correct. Many of the Nepali people I have interacted with appreciate my attempts, however, which is useful. In addition, even knowing just a few words here and there can help clarify my meaning in English as I can use a Nepali word and re-orient the conversation to what I am trying to convey. All this is to say it has been useful and less anxiety-provoking than I thought it would be. I think just getting started was the hardest part, now that I am making some progress (that early beginner feeling where you learn lots of useful stuff quickly) it has been a lot of fun.

My current method:
I am using Memrise (Decks) to learn the dialogues in the Cornell course and vocabulary from Nepalgo. It is not a perfect system, but it is my preferred method at this time. The spaced-repetition and the ability to type in responses in Devanagari is helpful.

I try to go through at least one dialogue a day and possibly some vocabulary from Nepalgo. I prefer using the dialogues as they have audio.

Currently I just finished lesson 4 D from the Cornell course and the vocabulary section for “People” on Nepalgo.

I will continue to update as I progress through the course.

[electronicmonk]

So over the last week I switched my reviews from using Memrise to using Anki. I am doing both on my laptop as typing Devanagari on my iphone is tedious and not worth the effort at this point.

The main reasons for my switch were to reduce redundancy in learning and to avoid having to be online to do reviews (there are lots of other good reasons to use Anki that are written about elsewhere, these are just my personal reasons). Memrise requires me to go through like six repetitions of every new flashcard which is fine if I don’t really know the material, but I find it better if I actually spend time with the material before creating the flashcards rather than creating the flashcard and then using the program to learn it. With Anki I get a minimum of two reviews which is much better time-wise. It is also nice that small typos are not counted as incorrect anymore.

Other side benefits I didn’t realize I’d get with Anki:
-multiple card formats: all my cards are now three fold – a sound prompt card, a Nepali language prompt card, and an English language prompt card. These were incredibly easy to create after reading a little bit of the manual as well
-easy editing of cards during review: with Memrise I would have to wait until the end of the study session to edit a card I had misspelled whereas with Anki I can do it as soon as I see it (to be fair this may be possible with Memrise, not really sure, didn’t look into it further)

There will probably be others, but those are my two main surprises so far and I have only been using it for a few days.

I am still reviewing the material I have on Memrise as I am not inclined to import it into Anki (not sure of an easy way to do it to be honest).

I have gotten through lesson 5 of the Nepali primer, I will be reviewing further exercises this evening before moving on to lesson 6. I find with the primer it will dump a lot of new material on you all at once and then oftentimes slowly unpack it through the rest of the dialogues (so the first 1-2 dialogues of a lesson may be packed, but the next few go through the new material a little slower). Other times new information will be introduced that will not be explained until a further lesson so that is always fun. Typically it isn’t anything that would impede my understanding, but it can throw me a little bit in the process.

I like that I am getting to reading comprehension exercises and that I am actually able to understand them. It is super basic information, but reading even a short paragraph in Devanagari seemed like an impossibility a month or two ago so my ability to do it now astounds me. If it were written in a Romanized alphabet I would probably be less impressed with myself, but I also have much better sight recognition with Romanized letters so it feels like less of an accomplishment. It still takes me a while to read anything in Devanagari, but I am getting better at it.

I have been listening to a few children’s songs in Nepali on Youtube. Most of these are still beyond me, but I can understand पानी पर्‍यो which is a cute little song about rain.

Other than that I am reading a small book of Nepali folk tales (in English), but it provides backstories to a lot of the temples in Kathmandu Valley, especially Patan, which I find fascinating.

I still don't understand much of the Nepali I am constantly exposed to, but I am picking up a few words here and there. My few attempts to try out some of my new language skills are met mostly with smiles and "don't worry about it ma'am." Oh well, will keep learning and trying again.

[electronicmonk]

So I have now taken my most important course from Memrise and added it to Anki… a day after I said I wasn’t going to. To make things easier on myself I kept it as a separate deck from the rest of my Nepali cards so that I can age the Memrise deck faster and get it to about where it would be on Memrise. The internet issue is really the main problem, although there were other things I didn’t love about Memrise (nothing’s perfect and there is plenty to like there as well).

I have been continuing with the Nepali primer and I am at lesson 6 part E. Unfortunately, with all the cards I have added to my Anki Nepali deck (not including the Memrise deck) I am still a few days behind the new material I am adding. I think I should catch up in a few more days of consistent practice though. I am liking using SRS mostly to just continue to remind me of phrases. I am getting better at understanding what parts of Nepali are necessary for a sentence or phrase to be correct and which parts are not. What I don’t want to do is end up like one of my work superiors who tried to apply his limited knowledge of Spanish incorrectly (He was saying he introduced himself as “llamo (his name)”. I was like, no, it needs to be “me llamo (his name).” He thought he could just drop “me” like one would drop “yo” or another personal pronoun in Spanish.) So I don’t want to inadvertently drop necessary words when speaking Nepali, but I think based on the conversations in the primer I am getting a better understanding of which words could be dropped and the speaker would still understand you.

As for native materials, I have a copy of The Little Prince in Nepali. I have been working my way through the first chapter. It is difficult and I don’t really want to mark up my copy so I have mostly just been trying to look up words, register their meaning and move on. I have no desire to add any of the words I have learned from there to Anki.

Something cool thing I found while searching for Nepali recipes is Youtube videos in Nepali teaching you how to cook Nepali dishes. This is awesome. While I would love a transcript so I could look up the words and ingredients that I don’t fully understand (some are better and include written instructions on screen, sometimes in English), I just appreciate being able to find recipes to basic dishes I eat here. I am a vegetarian and I love that a lot of Nepali food is vegetarian at baseline. There are so many legume-based dishes that add a lot of variety to what I would normally cook for myself. I found this treasure trove while searching for how to make gundruk (गुन्द्रुक), аs it is delicious, and then ran into other recipes. Awesome. Something I will watch just for the information alone and may learn some new words along the way. Don’t know I never searched for recipe videos before in other languages I have tried learning.

My skills are obviously still very basic. I have been trying to work up the courage to ask native speakers to check/correct my understanding. It has been a mostly positive experience.

Edit: changed "soy" to "yo" as you can't really drop the verb.

[electronicmonk]

Still slogging my way through the Nepali Beginner’s Primer. (It doesn’t actually feel like a slog most days, I think I am just especially tired right now.) I am on lesson 7. I have actually been able to use a few phrases in my day-to-day life which is nice (and I understand the response, double win). As I listen to conversations I hear more frequently when people are using linking words/phrases that previously were just part of the unknown jumble of words. I still don’t know what people are talking about most of the time, but I can make sense of some of the words which is more than I could before.

I like that the primer has reading comprehension exercises throughout the text. They are usually just slightly above the skill level of the learner (using words that haven’t been introduced yet in the text), but they are still comprehensible. There are no translations given for the comprehension exercises so you are left with that slightly confused feeling of “well I think I just understood that,” but can never be 100% sure which is an ok place to be.

I also started listening to the FSI Nepali course. I got through the first 4 tapes I think. There is no coursebook available and the audio requires quite a bit of work to make usable, but it is helpful to go through the drills. I don’t understand all of what they are saying (partly because of the poor audio quality and partly because I don’t have a written text to explain the words I don’t know), but overall I can usually understand most of it and use it to practice.

Other than that I have been traveling a fair bit this past week so I haven’t been maintaining my reviews quite as well as I would like, but overall I am still adding around 5 dialogues/week. I have a lot more things due for work that also keeps me from studying as much. But I am continuing slow forward movement.

[Lawyer&Mom]

What’s the name of the book of Nepali Folktales in English? I’ve been looking for something like that as a gift for an American friend expecting her first child with her Nepali husband.

[electronicmonk]

What’s the name of the book of Nepali Folktales in English? I’ve been looking for something like that as a gift for an American friend expecting her first child with her Nepali husband.

So the first book I read was called "Folk Tales from Nepal: Myths and Legends" by Kesar Lall and it was about Kathmandu Valley temples mainly. The second book I am working my way through is called "A Collection of Nepalese Folk Tales" by Karunakar Vaidya and has more traditional style folk tales though they are pretty dark (like original Grimm's Fairy Tales dark) and probably not child appropriate. Looking through this second book there appears to be a series of Nepali Folk Tale books called the "Ratna Folklore Series". All of them are published through Ratna Pustak Bhandar and they have a website that has both of the books available. They also have children's books available in English and Nepali.

I did pick up a few books for my young nephews in Kathmandu though that were pretty cute. One was called "Yak and Nak Go on a Trek" by Hermione Roff and was adorable. The other is called "Namaste!" by Diana Cohn that was also quite good.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Thank you!!! I’ll check these out.

[electronicmonk]

My rate of study definitely slowed down this past week. I had a lot going on at work that affected my ability to get things done after work (was just too tired). I think I am getting back to a regular schedule now though so this should improve. I am still in lesson 7. I have one dialogue left and then some comprehension and grammar/writing exercises.

I do wish there were answers to some of the exercises, but just practicing it is helpful and I suppose if I wanted real world feedback I could just ask any of my friends here. (I’m not that brave though.)

I have found that I am getting to a bit of a slump when it comes to reading Nepali. At first I was ok with just being able to read whatever I could, but without challenging this further I am finding myself stuck at only being able to read things that are easy for me. I think my limited vocabulary contributes to this and as I study and learn more this should improve, however, just learning Devanagari alone has not necessarily helped me read any sign I want to read. This is probably because I am still just not that comfortable with it. Simple words and phrases don’t stump me, but unfamiliar combinations are definitely harder for me.

I am at a stage where I can sort of craft responses in Nepali to things I want to express, but I am missing the correct verb or phrasing. So I could probably respond in half-Nepali and half-English, but I think for my friends mostly English is still probably easier than my limited Nepali. That being said I can respond a little bit in Nepali and be understood (most of the time) which feels good.

I feel like I am in the same place I was last week, which is likely true as I didn’t do a lot of studying (mostly just looked at my Anki cards, added a few dialogues). This shouldn’t be disappointing to me, but having week to week gains does feel better. I suppose this is why people measure progress with objective measures rather than subjective feelings. But it feels good to feel like I am making progress.

Anyway, not discouraged, just feel a little behind where I wanted to be, but given my circumstances it is understandable. Will try to prioritize studying this week and keep at it.

[malach]

It has taken me awhile to decide I actually wanted to learn Nepali.

Good luck! I've been (very slowly) learning Bengali.

1) Yes. I went back and forth on this for awhile, but in the end the pros of learning Devanagari outweighted the cons of learning it.

Learning the script I think is a must. I hate all those courses on Memrise etc with transliterations. Everyone uses a different system. Only conjuncts can take some getting used to - in Bengali there are around 400 - and I have tried to tackle those by going through the list at the back of my TY book. I even made a Memrise course at one time to learn them. They've become more familiar with mastering particular words over time.

Typing is a great benefit. I forced myself to learn to type in Bengali, and it didn't take too long to get used to the keyboard, and not having to think about how conjuncts look, just how they are composed, is a big timesaver over handwriting (although I love writing by hand too). I try to type something most days, in a kind of diary format, to practise things I've come across, or just to use the language.

2) ... I also have one version of the Teach Yourself Nepali course. I do not have any audio for the book which is the main thing that keeps me from using it

Did you see that the Teach Yourself people have put audio files up for free? If the following link is not the right one, try searching their list of books for the closest to yours. https://library.teachyourself.com/id004325083/Complete-Nepali

(My old Bengali book has a tape! It was simply called "TY Bengali" where the new edition is "TY Complete Bengali", but the audio is virtually the same.)

[electronicmonk]

Learning the script I think is a must. I hate all those courses on Memrise etc with transliterations. Everyone uses a different system. Only conjuncts can take some getting used to - in Bengali there are around 400 - and I have tried to tackle those by going through the list at the back of my TY book. I even made a Memrise course at one time to learn them. They've become more familiar with mastering particular words over time.

I tried adding some of the Nepali conjuncts to Memrise, but it still seems to trip me up whenever I encounter them in written text. If I have audio to accompany it I learn the sounds better, but this has definitely been one of the harder parts of learning to read Nepali and I don't think Nepali has nearly as many conjuncts as it seems Bengali has. I do think just learning more vocabulary in general is helping with my ability to read, but eventually to grow my vocabulary I will have to be able to read unknown words so I suppose that is only going to help up to a point.

Did you see that the Teach Yourself people have put audio files up for free? If the following link is not the right one, try searching their list of books for the closest to yours. https://library.teachyourself.com/id004325083/Complete-Nepali

I did not know this existed and it does appear to follow the book I have. That is awesome and opens up another resource when I get a chance. Thank you for the suggestion!