Anjali’s Experience With Hindi

Hello everyone! Hope everyone is staying safe during the pandemic as the summer approaches. I wanted to post a quick update for how Anjali is doing during these spring months, and something special that we’ve learned about her during this lockdown time period. To be more specific, we’ve noticed patterns of Anjali picking up a little knowledge in the language of Hindi!

Let’s start with some context. Our family has always spoken both English and our mother tongue of Hindi. However with Anjali, since instructions are already not easy to convey to her, we have always stuck to speaking in English. This is what we thought would be best for her, since it would be consistent with the language that she hears from her therapists and school teachers as well. However, since our entire family was home most of the time during lockdown, we learned about Anjali’s familiarity with the Hindi language!

Perhaps the biggest factor for this may be her connection to music. In my previous post, Musical Magic, I covered how Anjali surprised us all by hearing certain songs a few times and then later humming or singing parts of those songs during her free time. These include a lot of Hindi melodies as well, and the chorus of these songs may have introduced Anjali to a few Hindi words. Another major factor for Anjali picking up these Hindi words, is all of us, since we occasionally forget to use English when giving instructions to Anjali. These instances typically involve my mother, who may ask Anjali to sit properly at the dinner table in Hindi or other basic instructions in Hindi instead of English. To be clear, Anjali doesn’t truly understand the meaning behind the mass majority of Hindi phrases. However, it is still interesting to see that she understood certain words of the language, and we are excited to see if we can develop this linguistic base to increase her knowledge in Hindi. 

So what can we learn from this? I think the important takeaway is that bilingual families shouldn’t entirely rule out introducing a second language to their special needs child. As was the case for Anjali, the child may learn a few phrases and keywords from the language being used by others in the household. Of course, it is important to consistently use the same language that is used by instructors of the special needs child. However, occasional usage of a second language may help such children develop a base of phrases and key words, which are useful for eventually teaching any special needs child the unique ability of speaking a second language!