வனக்கம் (vanakkam = hello)From January, when I arrived in Sri Lanka, to October this year, I did a lot of passive learning. I learnt, for example, that 'How many Sri Lankans does it take to change a lightbulb?' is not a workable joke (the facetious answer is 'Sorry madam, lightbulbs are finished'; the truth is between four and ten); that there will always be a bit of kindling in the dhal; and that there's no problem that a sunset at the Galle Face or Unawatuna beach won't fix.
And then the active learning started.
First, twice-weekly Tamil classes. I'm a nightmare in a sesame seed bun. Not having been a student in a language classroom since I started teaching, the first half of every activity is lost to me as I either silently test its pedagogical soundness or steal it for the following day, and the lack of concentration on something really quite tricky renders me unable to be a smartarse, which I hate. Everyone else seems to be merrily conjugating the future tense and I'm all, கொஞ்சம் இருந்து (konjam irungu = wait a minute).
Still, the satisfaction of being able to sound out a word at the speed of a three year-old is immense, and Tamil sounds excellent. Lots of words are formed by apparently swallowing the back third of your tongue in order to produce one of about seven Ns, and additional intrigue is provided by the boîte diabolique of letters such as aytam (ஃ), neither a consonant nor a vowel, largely unrecognised by native Tamil speakers and presumably the brainchild of some 7th century ne'er-do-well.
At the same time, more by osmosis than design, I've been learning 'tuk-tuk Sinhala' - Sinhala being the majority language of the island, tuk-tuk Sinhala being the level of language needed to do everyday tasks like getting a three-wheeler and shooing away men and crows. I can't read the script and forget all but the most useful expressions (to a crow: 'Do you have a problem/question?') as soon as I've heard them, but the -eka suffix invariably saves the day, attaching to any English noun to make an instantly viable word: film-eka, bank-eka, double decker-eka. What's not to ♥?
Above: standard issue vexatious crow (left); the greatest crow that ever lived (right)
I also recently decided to confront my fear of doing anything that involves hand-eye co-ordination, and have been learning to juggle. G insisted that he could teach me in an hour. A fortnight and several not inconsequential hissy fits later the balls have been dropped so often they're starting to seep black lentils, but I can keep three of the wayward little blighters in the air. This is apparently good for your right brain, which smartarses like me are wont to underuse, so it actually feels pretty satisfying. By 2012 I might even be ready for a new pattern.
