Today I learned that in Telugu, the way to write a 'k' sound is an upper-case S. I don't know how I'm going to be speaking this well enough to pass my qualification exam in eight months, because that broke my brain.
telugu is so kooky that in 2.5 months in hyderabad, I learned NO TELUGU. I tried to learn a few words like, hello, thank you, etc. and it was just not happening. Nothing stuck in my head. I learned literally not a single word of Telugu. I learned several words of Hindi, though, okay.
How good do you have to be for your qualification exam? in Peace Corps* we had to pass an exam (it was entirely oral) and be at "novice high" after three months. (Most people, including myself, scored one level higher than that, at intermediate low.) After eight months I was pretty much fluent. Of course I was in an immersive environment.
*This is an internal Peace Corps Bulgaria rule. I know that at PC Romania, they had to test in at intermediate low after training, but Romanian is easier for a native English speaker than Bulgarian so that seems fair.
They use the government language rating scale and I have to be at a 2/2 (so, a 2 in reading and a 2 in speaking) before I go. I have no idea how that compares to the Peace Corps rating system at all, and not even really a good idea of how much Telugu that is, since they gave me a 1/1 in Russian -- which is stupid generous, given how crappy my Russian is -- and a 0+ in spoken Spanish, which I can communicate quite well in.
I don't know. I have faith I'll make it because almost everyone does. Also, all I do right now is study language so while it isn't immersion, it is pretty intensive. But man, sometimes it feels like it's gonna take an act of God.
Also, YES. Telugu is a seriously weird-ass language. I am totally unsuprized that you didn't pick it up in Hyderabad, because it's strange and unapproachable. If I didn't have a friend who learned Estonian, I'd be seriously thinking of myself as a linguistic badass right now. (Estonian, strangely, is EPIC HARD to learn and intimidates me more than Chinese.)
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How good do you have to be for your qualification exam? in Peace Corps* we had to pass an exam (it was entirely oral) and be at "novice high" after three months. (Most people, including myself, scored one level higher than that, at intermediate low.) After eight months I was pretty much fluent. Of course I was in an immersive environment.
*This is an internal Peace Corps Bulgaria rule. I know that at PC Romania, they had to test in at intermediate low after training, but Romanian is easier for a native English speaker than Bulgarian so that seems fair.
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I don't know. I have faith I'll make it because almost everyone does. Also, all I do right now is study language so while it isn't immersion, it is pretty intensive. But man, sometimes it feels like it's gonna take an act of God.
Also, YES. Telugu is a seriously weird-ass language. I am totally unsuprized that you didn't pick it up in Hyderabad, because it's strange and unapproachable. If I didn't have a friend who learned Estonian, I'd be seriously thinking of myself as a linguistic badass right now. (Estonian, strangely, is EPIC HARD to learn and intimidates me more than Chinese.)
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