I’m primarily a Japanese learner. I love Japanese! All of my Japanese learning chronicles are documented in my study log over on the wanikani forums. The community support and accountability is the main reason I’ve been able to progress at all. Now that I feel pretty solid in my Japanese studies, I feel ready to add another language.
why Hindi?
Real reason: My partner speaks Hindi.
Joke reason: I wanted to be special and different from all the other Japanese learners that choose Mandarin Chinese or Korean as their next language.
goals:
Hmmm, really just casual conversation with my partner. This is kind of a ‘see where things go’ language experiment. I probably won’t be as intense about it as I am about Japanese, partly because I literally don’t have time for that. Just going to do a little bit at a time and see what happens! It’s actually kind of refreshing to think that I don’t need to push myself with this language to get to x level in y amount of time. Maybe I go too hard with Japanese sometimes.
indian movie corner
My partner and I watch a lot of Indian movies together so of course I can share my hottest takes here. Hot take number one:
Watch out!!
DDLJ sucks
Hope this log is fun to read for some! I’m probably not going to update on a set schedule, just whenever I feel like it.
I feel judged (does me starting Italian before I caved and started Japanese and more recently Mandarin Chinese make it better? ㅋㅋㅋ)
I definitely look forward to seeing which resources you manage to find. I do think I will get into Hindi at some point, so this will be a little preview!
That’s just because I have absolutely zero self control to stop me from learning yet another language . And I spend lots of time reading anyways, so it doesn’t change much for me to do it in other languages. I do want to start Ukrainian first though, it would certainly save me a lot of trouble when trying to read old genealogical records.
This (joke reason) is half the reason I went with Egyptian Arabic as my next language. There’s obviously the thing about eclipses that I’ve mentioned before, but it’s one of those languages with fewer resources but more speakers than you’d expect. Not nearly as disproportionately popular as Japanese. Something about Japanese media and anime makes it very popular as something people get convinced they can teach themselves. It’s not a bad thing but it’s interesting that Japanese gets this interest bonus compared to other languages. Egyptian is popular for its movies, but mostly within the part of the world where Arabic (even if it’s other dialects) is already spoken.
Did you know Arabic pronunciation has what’s referred to as sun and moon letters for how the pronunciation changes with definite articles. It’s a little like in Spanish whether a word takes de la or del, with the masculine nouns it combines de and el while the feminine nouns separate de and la. But it’s called sun and moon letters because it’s cool.
Anyway good luck with Hindi but I do not get the early bird :black_large_square: special because I’m far more active on wk forums than here.
Yeah, same with Hindi. Crazy amounts of people speak it but then you go looking for resources and it’s like… you can have two textbooks. as a treat. And all the reddit posts from people learning hindi are like six years old and all the links are broken I’m trying my best out here.
I actually peeked in my textbook today and it’s… a little dry Definitely going to have to come up with my own study routines and be very self motivated, which is its own kind of fun challenge, right?
I was so surprised to see that movie here and to find someone who’s learning Hindi. I’m just gonna shed some tears jshkshsj this feels so nice lol, especially because WK (and to some extent Natively as well?) has a majority of eng speaking natives from the US/UK/AUS, I guess?? And it’s usually a bit lonely, although people are very very nice!
I hope you have fun learning hindi and watching cringefests and good movies!! So excited to read your study updates hehe
Swedish likewise doesn’t have nearly as many resources as Japanese, but isn’t as lacking in them as say, Hindi. That said I’ve been doing pretty alright because yomitan works with Swedish so I can make my own flash cards, I have the A1 graded readers (with explanations in German which I can’t read but oh well ), and a handful of beginner focused speaking channels and I’m like…this is enough. Somehow not having the surplus of choice like with Japanese makes it easier to focus and just do whereas I often see what looks like choice paralysis in beginner Japanese learners
FWIW it looks like yomitan supports Arabic and French but no Hindi yet But iirc @soggyboy is looking for aural/oral fluency rather than literacy so less of an issue I suppose
i think k3g is the superior srk/kajol romcom without all the glorifying the patriarchy stuff. (and also the plot actually makes sense unlike ddlj) my favorite hindi romcom that i’ve watched so far is jab we met though!
we watch movies from other languages too, although i think the only Tamil movie we’ve watched is Vikram Vedha
This is so sweet I feel so energized reading this! Let’s bring some love to other languages!!
I’ve already had this thought for sure. The lack of resources means I can’t waste a bunch of time spinning my wheels and trying a bunch of random stuff out, searching for ~the best~ method, reading endless posts online, etc. I kind of just have to open up the textbooks I can find and go from the beginning to the end
I’ve also found that at least one beginner podcast exists, so with my one textbook and my one podcast, I’m all good to go
And yeah, not sure how much reading type stuff I’ll do… It would be nice to do a bit of reading but I don’t want to get too sucked into it and forget that the conversation part is really more important for my purposes at the moment. We’ll see how it develops though!
omg yes 100% true. K3g is so so good for some reason? Every time my family watches this movie for the funsies, I end up getting fully immersed (although it’s embarrassing to admit that because it’s not theeee best movie out there and most mainstream Indian movies glorify patriarchy ugh)
no way mine too!! I also can’t get this song out of my head: Aao Milo Chalo. It’s just so dreamy and such a nice movie to watch when you want to romanticise life.
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is also a top fav though - I’ve watched it twice! and I never re-watch anything!! You should totally see this one if you haven’t already. the shayari’s (poems) in the movie are just so so so so good. Plus everyone is hot
he’s such a good actor :')
have you watched Ponniyin Selvan? If you like historical stuff, you’ll love it! It’s very good and was quite popular even among Hindi speakers!
I haven’t seen a ton of Bollywood movies, but I had a lot of fun watching Khoobsurat and Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na! I also liked Hi Nanna and Om Shanti Om, although they both had ridiculous (but entertaining) storylines. If you have any similar recs please share
It’s actually kind of refreshing to think that I don’t need to push myself with this language to get to x level in y amount of time. Maybe I go too hard with Japanese sometimes. 
You’re getting the early bird bonus for seeing this before I link it on my wk study log this weekend. 
… 
and moon 
letters for how the pronunciation changes with definite articles. It’s a little like in Spanish whether a word takes de la or del, with the masculine nouns it combines de and el while the feminine nouns separate de and la. But it’s called sun and moon letters because it’s cool.
But iirc 
I feel so energized reading this! Let’s bring some love to other languages!!
I wanna learn more! 
