Thursday, September 8, 2011

Namaste! - Nepali language class (Part 1)

Tapaai:ko naam ke ho?
Mero naam Hari ho. (For the duration of this trip to Nepal my name has changed from Hardy to Hari.)
Mero deshko naam Germany ho.

Our intensive (6 day per week) Nepali language class has commenced on Monday this week. Comfortably seated in the garden of our guesthouse the learnings of the first two days can be summarized as follows:

  • Words: ~150
  • Major concepts: pronunciation, pronouns, sentence structure, numbers 1-10, possessive pronouns and commands
Through homework we got to know most family members and friends of most of the guesthouse staff members (Subash, Ganesh, Sunsa and Bhupen) and our fellow students have been sent around in the garden practicing 'commands'. 

Most practically in many cases it is possible to slip in the English word if one does not know (yet) the Nepali vocable. The grammar seems to be quite regular although 'to be' (hunu) is highly irregular with two forms (ho/chha) depending on the context and a positive (e.g. I am) and negative (I am not) form. 

Let's see the coming lessons...

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