Ayesha

I have read so much about and around Rilke, different authors speaking about this man and his works, I cannot help but feel some undefinable awe for him. I feel particularly drawn to the underlying, almost infectious sense of hope that colors his writing. I'm in awe of his take on death. Wherein he says that death is the biggest "yea-sayer".. I haven't read much besides some of his poems yet, but I have grand plans about getting down to some serious readings of his works. The book that you just mentioned, I will surely have a look at that

Some years back I tried juggling French and German together but due to lack of motivation and enthusiasm lost interest in both. I don't think it's difficult for those whose eagerness to learn stays alive, they would enjoy having the choice of more than one language at their disposal when sitting down to practice. That said, taking on too many at a time might prove futile and exhausting. Personally, now I would rather take up one language and get a decent hold over it, enough to be able to make small conversations and write basic sentences, before moving on to another one. Right now I'm eyeing Urdu, but only after I get some information on the difference between that and Farsi or Arabic.

I have inhibitions speaking in Hindi only for fear of mixing up the gender! I have studied it for four years in school and now I live in a city where one cannot survive without decent command over the language. And yet I still fumble at times when it comes to cataloging nouns into their correct gender. As @Ayesha said, it takes practice and a lot of memorizing to internalize this particular aspect of the language. Besides the -i ending marking feminine and -a ending marking masculine rule, there's one more that I've heard though I cannot testify to its validity. I'm told that things that are in motion are considered feminine while stationary objects are masculine. COnsequently, it is: Bus ruka hai. (when it is still) and Bus chal rahi hai. (when it is moving) If someone could confirm this, however, that would really help!

I'm a literature student and my coursework has led me to discover Urdu, Arabic and Farsi poetry. Being a complete stranger to these languages, except what little words have been adopted by Hindi, I cannot fully distinguish between the three languages. Are these three languages entirely different? Or do they come from a common mother/root language and have a common script? Subsequently, which of these three would be easier to learn? In that case I would love to start on it as soon as I can. I started dappling into Urdu on my won, but the script and letters of the alphabet are harder to internalize than I thought. Can anyone explain the etiology behind these three languages?

So I'm an Indian and I come from a country which speaks in over 50 odd languages, 22 of which are official! I'm fluent in my mother tongue that is, Bengali and the foremost official/ national language Hindi, besides English, of course. Learning different languages has always been an exciting prospect for me. back in school, I had dappled in French and German, but due to lack of practice it didn't really reach any end. Presently I'm trying my hand at Urdu, but it's turning out to be way more difficult than I anticipated. This forum seems like a great place to share resources and ideas, not to mention meet different people who speak different languages! I hope I make some nice acquaintances in Linguaholic and pick up little, at least, if not much, of different languages while here. Thank you for dropping by