The storyline is as follows: a journalists who has experienced having cancer decides to ditch the high pressure life of Manhattan magazine publishing in exchange for a free-lance assignment which takes her to India. There, she lives with a local family and enrolls in Hindi language school.
In Dreaming in Hindi, She records her experiences living in India, and her experiences of learning a new language. Her amazing discoveries include realizations that in the learning a new language and new words, in order to fully understand the “meanings” of things in the newly acquired language, one must also grasp the culture.
Rich describes the difficulty of getting the tongue placement just so in her mouth so that she can pronounce the words correctly. This was most interesting to me since I also speak Dutch, my first language. And because I don’t speak Dutch to anyone anymore, I always go through and adjustment problem every time I go back to Holland. It takes a day or two before my mouth adjusts and I can speak clearly and fluidly.
Intertwined throughout her memoir of living in India and learning Hindi, Rich also weaves her interviews with linguistic experts whom she asked about how learning a new language affects, or changes, the brain. These segments of the book are scholarly and informative, but may not appeal to the average reader.
I will finish reading this book because parts of it speak to me, but note that this is not a travel book, nor does the book have a compelling storyline that engages readers. However, for second language learners or those interested in linguistics and second language learning experiences, this book does provide some validation about what it is like to learn another language so completely. Katherine Rich gives words to the confusing experience of being inculturated into another language.
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