Namaste!

For me, an essential part of preparing to travel is learning a few key phrases in the language of the country I'm going to visit.  So over the last week or two I have been grappling with the complexities of Kannada - the language spoken in Bangalore.

I'm only going for a couple of weeks and most people will probably speak English, so my aim is really just to learn enough to be able to be polite:  good morning, good afternoon; my name is Anne, what's your name? pleased to meet you - that sort of thing.  In my experience a little can get you a long way.  For example, when I visited Istanbul for the first time one phrase "memnun oldum"  (pleased to meet you) made people smile wherever we went.  It even saved me from unpleasantness when I turned down an unwanted invitation for dinner from a man in the street.  Long explanations of how our friends were waiting at home for us had no impact on him, but "memnun oldum" and a firm shake of the hand sent him away smiling.

Kannada is proving to be quite a challenge though.  Everything seems to be rather long.  How can it take a phrase as long as "hogi banni athavā hogi bartēra?" to say goodbye?  And why the question mark?  Am I really learning to say "When will fate bring us together again?" or "Will you remember me in twenty years?"

My niece, who I'm visiting in Bangalore, had suggested that a few words of Hindi might come in useful too, for when we travel in other areas.  Given the trouble I'm having with the few phrases of Kannada I've set myself to learn, I turned to the Hindi page on omniglot with a rather heavy heart.  Imagine my joy then when I discovered that "Namaste" - a word I'm already familiar with from yoga classes - can be used for saying hello and goodbye, and at any time of day or night.  That'll do for me!