Mango Languages

Travel Tuesday: Driving Across India in a Beat-Up Rickshaw

Today’s blog comes from Scott Brills, a world traveler and a close friend of Mango’s for years. In September, Scott and his friend Mike traversed 2,000 miles across India in a rickshaw to raise money that would provide clean water and polio vaccinations for children in India. Learn more about his journey here.

“What in the world have I gotten myself into?”

That was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in my cheap hotel room around 6:00AM. I had spent the last few days in Shillong, India—a medium-size city in the northeastern state of Maghalaya. I was there because I had signed up to drive a three-wheeled rickshaw 2,000 miles across the country for charity. Today was September the 11^th—launch day.

This wasn’t even close to my first time abroad—it wasn’t even my first time doing a crazy charity rally—but this time things were a bit different. First off, this was India, home to some of the craziest drivers and worst roads in the world. Second, neither I nor my rally buddy, Mike, had test-driven our rickshaw yet. Seems as though our vehicle was still in the shop—hopefully it would be ready in time to start the event in a few hours. It was going to be a steep learning curve.

Mike and I joined the rest of the participants at the start line. It had started to sprinkle out, and the clouds weren’t looking good. Thirty minutes later, right as we all headed out onto the unforgiving highway, a torrent of water opened up from the sky, washing away the dirt road and drenching us in the process. We caught up to some other rickshaws just as the rain subsided, just in time for the one in front of us to lose a wheel. It flew off as the team was driving, and the rickshaw leaned over to the left, sending a shower of sparks our way as the rear brakes made contact with the pavement. They just barely made it to the side of the road without tipping, and we, along with some other teams, helped them get the wheel back on, making sure it was tightened properly this time around.

The next five hours of driving down the mountain towards the city of Guwahati would be some of the most stressful of our lives. Needless to say, I learned how to pilot that rickshaw pretty quickly, and by the end of that tumultuous first day I considered myself a pro.

* * *

The next two and a half weeks would be filled with crazy experiences of all times: breaking down over a dozen times in one day, getting lost (every day), trying all manner of new foods (lamb brain anyone?), dodging cows sleeping in the middle of city streets, avoiding rickshaw-sized potholes, losing our registration and insurance documents, forging said documents to attempt re-entry into India, and driving the last leg of the journey in 2^nd gear the entire way.

The first few days were the toughest, but every day provided us with a new set of challenges that we had to take on if we were ever going to get to the finish line in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. After rebuilding our engine from scratch on day three, we were good to go as far as propulsion goes, but just about every day a new problem cropped up (the rickshaws weren’t in the best condition, to put it lightly). We pretty much totally relied on the kindness of strangers along the way, neither of us being rickshaw mechanics. Within minutes of breaking down we could count on someone to stop and offer assistance. Some could speak better English than others, but seeing as our Hindi (or whichever of India’s 22 major recognized languages was prevalent in the area) wasn’t quite up to par, it had to suffice. Regardless, through body language and bits of English alone we were always able to get by. We met a whole load of interesting characters along the way—some more helpful than others, some more wanting of a “tip” than others—but we were thankful to each and every one of them. We traveled quite a way, and saw many amazing things, but the people we met along the way were definitely the highlight of our journey.

Seventeen days later we completed the trip—two thousand miles or so from where we had started off. It had been one of the most difficult, strenuous adventures of ou

r lives, and we were both kind of glad that it was finished (and definitely ready for the post-trip to Thailand to unwind for a bit). One can only do so many twelve hour days in a ramshackle rickshaw in a row!

I’d love to return to India again someday, but next time I’m going as a tourist—not a rickshaw driver.

For a full recount of Scott’s rally across India check out his blog at www.rickshawrunguys.com

Have you ever had an extreme adventure like Scott’s in another country? What was the most challenging part? What was the most rewarding?

Mango’s Feature Presentation

Numustay Everyone! Happy Tuesday!

I have been going through the Hindi Complete course and have been really enjoying learning a new language.

Did you know that to say “How are you?” in Hindi, you would say “ahp kaisay haeN?’

At first when I saw this, I got a little nervous. I wasn’t sure if I could pronounce the words correctly, but after practicing a few times I felt very comfortable and had an urge to learn more and more.

The cool features that Mango offers in each of the courses have been making this experience really interactive and fun. The semantic color coding, which shows the word order in Hindi in comparison to English, really helps the learner remember how the words are combined in the foreign language.

The pronunciation feature, which allows you to hear the word/phrase in either a fluent speed or the articulate speed, allowed me to take my time and really learn the correct pronunciation. The two speeds are recorded separately so that you can hear each and every syllable of the new word/phrase.

Once you learn what each word sounds like, you have an opportunity to practice pronouncing it all on your own using the Voice Comparison feature. This feature allows you to play the narrator’s voice and your own voice at the same time. So cool!

What is your favorite Mango feature?

Lunch Time Linguistic Gymnastics

Having worked in Information Technology for many years now, I’ve had the great privilege of getting to know and be good friends with many people from India who have been gracious enough to share their thoughts with me on culture and language.  In particular, something that piqued my interest very quickly was learning about the linguistic versatility which is such a prominent feature in Indian life.  Allow me to explain.

When I was new to the company in which I began my IT career, I was sort of “adopted” by a group of friends who all happened to be from India.  This group of us would have lunch together just about every day at precisely 12 PM, and, in addition to being an opportunity for a meal, it was also a great opportunity for being social.  Being the only person at the table whose sole language was English, I often found myself staring at my lunch, at the ceiling, or into space as several different, exotic (at least to my ears) sounding languages flew back and forth across the table.   It was never awkward at all. Rather, they were sub-conversations within the context of a larger conversational experience which included us all.  Having married into a family which came to America from the Ukraine and speaks Russian at home, I was sort of used to politely grinning at mealtime while similar sub-conversations took place that I could not understand.  But this was a little bit more dynamic because there were clearly several languages at play here, and the use of each seemed to change depending on the situation, context, and speakers.   What gives?   Curiosity forced me to find out as much as I could. First, a little background:

Without making too broad a generalization, it seems that most everybody from India knows two languages: English and their “mother-tongue.”  Held over from British colonial rule, English is still in active use in primary education, government institutions, and everyday life.  On the other hand, the “mother-tongue” can best be understood as the local language that is spoken at home while growing up and there are a great variety of these languages across the Indian subcontinent. Assuming it is common among family members, the applicable mother-tongue continues to be the language spoken at home by most Indians while living in America.   Additionally, many Indians know three languages: English, their mother-tongue, and Hindi.  Hindi, along with English, is the other national language of India and tends to serve as the native lingua franca across certain parts of the country.  Lastly, some Indians know four or more languages with the addition of a second or third mother-tongue due to having parents from different regions of the country, or from having themselves grown up in multiple regions of the country.

Getting back to the story, it didn’t, as I said, take me too long to realize there were many layers of complexity and nuance making up the conversations of our group.  After a while I felt comfortable enough to ask about why there were so many different languages being used and what determined their use.  It was explained to me that, for conversational purposes, the language of choice was determined mainly by regionality (possessing a shared mother-tongue) and that another language common to both would be used if there was no common mother-tongue.  This seemed very practical and made sense to me.  Instinctively, I would certainly rather communicate with the language I most comfortably spoke given the choice.

Within our particular group, here is how the linguistic dynamics would play out: there were four in our group who were all from around the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) on India’s southeast coast.  Chennai is the primary city in the province of Tamil Nadu, and the mother-tongue of this particular region is a Dravidian language called Tamil.  When speaking conversationally to one another, these four would always use Tamil.  The other two from our group (besides me) were from a province to the north of Tamil Nadu called Andhra Pradesh.  In this region and around the city of Hyderabad, the predominant mother-tongue is another Dravidian language known as Telugu and this is the language they would converse in with one another.  After a while I became quite familiar with this pattern but noticed something which stood out to me.   Of the two whose mother-tongue was Telugu, one would generally switch and speak in Tamil when conversing with the other Tamil speakers.   However, in the same situation the other would always switch to English. This made me awfully curious, particularly because he and one of the Tamil speakers were best friends and always hung out together.  After I thought about this for a minute it dawned on me that I’d only ever heard them speak to each other in English. Just when I thought I had the rules of the game all figured out I was stumped.

Seeking clarification, I asked about this one day.  As it turns out, the first of my Telugu speaking friends actually spent part of his youth in an area where Tamil is widely spoken.  Thus, he had a command of both Tamil and Telugu in addition to the relatively ubiquitous English and Hindi.   Truly a polyglot!  As for why our other Telugu speaking friend didn’t do the same, I learned that due to the region he was from he did not have command of Hindi or Tamil as neither language was widely spoken.  Only English and Telugu were widely spoken.  That meant that his only common language with the others was English.  Simply put, it had never occurred to me before that moment that English could ever be the lone mutually understood language among those from a country so far away from where the English language originated.  Astonished as I was at this, it simply goes to show how complex the linguistic gymnastic act can become in a part of the world highlighted by such a high degree of linguistic diversity.  When it comes to language, those of us who have only ever needed to know how to speak English seem to have it easy indeed.

Have you had a similar experience? Please comment and share!