This weekend I watched my first Hindi film. I know I could have watched one without taking a Hindi course first, but this was the whole reason I wanted to watch it.

I searched the local Blockbuster for films in Hindi, but it’s a small town and they don’t really have any. So, I ordered a few from LoveFilm and finally had one delivered last week.

I watched Chak De, a film about the a national India Woman’s hockey team. I really enjoyed the movie. I found out from friends at work that it’s a very popular international film. I guess I shouldn’t feel too multi-cultural for having watched it, then.

The movie was really good, but I was surprised at how long it was. It was almost two and a half hours. Just when I thought it was over, it had an “Intermission” card go across the screen.

In terms of Hindi practice, despite being a Novice, I understood a lot that I could identify. My favourite sentences were the really short ones like “Con?” and “Kew?” and I was surprised how much English was thrown in.

My favourite scene was the fight in a McDonald’s. I’m a simple man.

When I watch Chinese movies to practice language, they always seem very different than a Hollywood movie. It could be that my sampling is too small, I suppose– but they always seem to be very artsy. This movie could have been a Hollywood movie easy.

I have a few more films selected on LoveFilm, but they seem to be very slow in sending them.

Tonight is the last night of my Hindi class.

10 weeks of learning to read and speak Hindi. I’ve learned a lot, but I’ve definitely reached the dropping off point in terms of complexity.

Learning a language always starts off easy. Everything you learn is something you frequently use. You learn Hello, thank you, counting, and how to have a brief conversation. It exciting and rewarding to start learning a language this way.

But, then you start to see how difficult the language actually is. There are loads of words you need to learn. It’s easy to learn a word like “weather” that you will use from time to time, but how much time to you want to invest on learning a word like “fountain pen” or “lettuce”? It’s difficult to work these into daily conversation.

It was the same with Chinese and Vietnamese too. You get immediate gains on language learning, then you hit a plateau and have to consider how much you want to push forward. For those languages, it was my job to press forward. This, being a hobby, makes it much more difficult.

I’m having a great time learning the language. I can’t see myself every speaking like a native, though.