Learning Gujarati

let me begin by stating for the record that i have quickly developed a consuming hatred of gujarati. it's not so much that the language strikes me as dumb, for native speakers of english shouldn't be allowed under international treaty to label any other language as "dumb" or "illogical." and it's not so much that the sounds are difficult to form and the sentences translate literally into english as a form of remedial pidgin english, though they are and they do. it's not even that nearly every fucking verb includes the word "chhe," which means "is," even though they do and nobody can explain why without shrugging their shoulders and looking at me like i'm a moron for wondering aloud about this.

seriously, if another indian looks at me with that pedantic look and tells me with a nonchalant shrug that "it just is," i'm gonna go join the pakistani army and get some revenge, rambo style.

though i doubt that urdu's any easier.

i've cycled through two different language tutors, the first of whom was my wife and the second of whom later admitted that he couldn't speak gujarati, but was fluent in hindi, as though being close to the language was enough of an accomplishment. that's kind of like going to a spanish language tutor and having them speak french to you and blow their cigarette smoke in your face when you point out this problem.

my wife, bless her soul, is not a native speaker of gujarati, as she was born in new jersey, several miles west of india. thus, she never learned the language from books and has no idea whatsoever as to extravagances like grammar and verb conjugation.

my gujarati, nee hindi, tutor, on the other hand, presented himself, as most indian men do, as so overqualified for the position as to be insulted that i responded to his ad on craigslist.com. having had the mixed blessing of spending several weekends with my father-in-law and my wife's sordid collection of uncles and grandfathers (every male that an indian knows around her father's age becomes an uncle, regardless of irrelevancies like bloodlines and genetics, and the same is done with men the age of a grandfather), i had grown accustomed to looking past the complimentary and generally unmerited light in which indian men look at themselves, so this personality quirk didn't register an alarm inside of me.

when, however, he began teaching me the gujarati alphabet, i noticed that something was amiss. the letters that i was learning were obviously hindi and not gujarati. (to tell the difference, simply look for a line resting snugly on the top of the letters, like a giant blimp nestling in for a long night on top of a dali-esque skyline of unimaginably curvy and precise buildings. if there is a line, the language is hindi. if not, it's gujarati. of course, i'm ignoring the many other indian languages, but this is my blog. if you want to consider all south asian languages, get your own fucking blog.)

when i pointed out this obvious discrepancy to him, he looked at me with the confidence that only an indian man who has just been proven wrong can muster and calmly and condescendingly remarked, "yes, but hindi is so much more useful, no?"

"yes," i thought to myself. "and chinese is even more useful, if that's what you're going after."

"hindi may be more useful in delhi and even in many other parts of the world," i replied, "but my wife and i are moving to gujarat, where they speak gujarati."

"yes," he replied, obviously losing patience with his cheeky white student. "but now you can impress everybody with your perfect hindi." and with that he smiled gently and with such self-satisfaction that i was momentarily convinced of the righteousness of his position.

luckily, i recovered my sanity quickly and reminded myself that gujarati, despite being a rather obscure and, outside of gujarat, useless language, was what i needed to learn if i had any hope of penetrating the thick force field that can surround the inner workings of indian society.

so i left.

in an attempt to console me, my wife purchased several cd-rom courses in gujarati from the internet, and i've been playing around with those, to some limited success, for the past couple of months. i'm beginning to think that the better approach is to just leave the language-learning for when i arrive. my father-in-law has a tutor all lined up and waiting for me in gujarat, so that's a bonus.

assuming that the tutor really does speak gujarati.