Lost in Translation

My father's side of the family lives in India. I have been to India several times and I love it there. But I do not know the language. In India it's kind of hard to know the language because there are so many of them. The national language is Hindi, but not everyone speaks it. There are 18 official languages in India and many dialects, over 300. My family mainly speaks Gujarati, and most of them know some English. So I get by. But not really. My family is sweet but they prefer to converse in their native tongue. I really can't blame them. When I am in India my ears and brain get tired from trying to comprehend the conversation flowing quickly around me. Amazingly, I can usually get the gist of what's going on.
 
However, I'm not always attentive. Then my mind wanders and I get fidgety. My eyes glaze over. When others laugh, I laugh to fit in. I smile and nod as if I understand what's going on. I stare into the distance until I am no longer aware of my surroundings. I find odd things to play with. I might even start to rock back and forth rhythmically (which is easy to do because many people have swings in their homes). And in the worse case I will fall asleep.

When the Perfection music video came out in February, the Super Junior M guys were promoting the album in China. And while they can all sing in Mandarin, not all of them are fluent in it. Zhoumi is Chinese so he has no problems and answers many of the questions. Henry is Chinese-Canadian so his Mandarin is really good too (and his English is perfect).  Siwon went to China to study Mandarin for three months. I think that his understanding is very good and his speaking is pretty good. He answered a lot of questions too, but you can tell he'd really like to get out of there. Khuyhun seems to be coming along and has probably made the most progress. Ryeowook is so quiet, I can't tell what he knows.  Donghae is the same, but he's so fidgety in these videos that I think he's about to loose his mind. Sungmin and Eunhyuk are new to the group. Sungmin speaks limited Mandarin properly. And Eunhyuk can say thank you and has a couple of phrases memorized (this is how well I can speak Gujarati).

Back row, left to right: Henry, Sungmin, Khyuhun, Zhoumi
Front row, left to right: Donghae, Eunhyuk, Siwon, Ryeowook






I know these are kind of long and tedious videos but, for me, it's kind of like watching myself x8. The tiredness, glazed eyes, playing with toys, rocking back and forth, not understanding fully what is going on, laughing on demand, trying to end the visit and not being allowed to, etc. Ah, the trials and tribulations of language barriers.