Hindi scares me

What was your first word?

Of course, you don't remember, but maybe your mom does. Or your dad, especially if it was "Da Da."

My oldest child's first word was "Ah-ee." Luckily, I knew that this two-syllable utterance actually had a meaning. Otherwise, I might have missed this watershed baby book moment. She was referring to Octi, her favorite cuddly toy, a crocheted octopus hand made by a clever aunt.

Once she started talking, we quickly changed her name to Miss Verbose. Today, twenty-five years later, she is fluent in two foreign languages and another regional dialect. She can even pick out words and phrases in two additional languages. You can tell that I am proud of her linguistic achievements.

Then there is my son. The one who took college Latin as a junior in high school and now takes Russian as a senior. Russian, for heaven's sake, with its Cyrillic alphabet and cold, guttural sounds.

I'd like to think I can take some credit for their proclivity for language acquisition. But I'm afraid it isn't so.

This week I listened to Chapter One of my new How to Learn Hindi CD. I'm afraid it's going to be hopeless.

First of all, I was told to pronounce the vowels. That was okay, even a little fun to try to make unusual sounds. I succeeded in giving a fairly decent imitation, so pleased with myself, I advanced to the vowels with nasal intonation. This required careful listening and a couple of tries each to pronounce, but they were still manageable, even at 40 miles per hour as I drove home from school.

It was the consonants that came next that put me over the edge. All fifty of them, or so it seemed.

A pretty good mimic, I have managed to learn several mostly useless travel phrases in Japanese and German in the past few years. I can parrot the Pimsler sounds and string together a decent "Where is Shinjuku Avenue" with the best of them. But Hindi is not Japanese. The consonants in Hindi all sound the same to me.

And this is only part one of Chapter One.

The whole point of getting the CD was so my students could learn some phrases to use in their video narration to send to their Indian pen pals. If I cannot even get past the preview of Chapter One, how can I inspire them to learn Hindi? And how will I ever handle the written language? Have you ever seen Hindi? To me, it looks like the intricate scrollwork on a piece of Mexican silver jewelry. Of course, it isn't. Those beautiful squiggles are letters and words. Words to be deciphered. Words that have meaning... like where is the restroom- a phrase I definitely will need to know.

Having a Brazilian exchange student to talk with every night is probably not helping my self-confidence in the Hindi department. Tulio is so fluent: His diction and syntax makes it clear that he has tremendous motivation and natural ability. My thirty-year-old, present-tense-only college Spanish- a long way from Portuguese, I am realizing- is nothing compared to his command of my native language.

He reminds me every day of how inept my foreign language acquisition skills are.

The Hindi project is definitely a work in progress.