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Me, in my head: I'll practice my hindi at the local indian restaurant.
Waiter: what can i get you today sir?
Me: एक किताब और एक सेब।
Waiter:
So, "and" in hindi is "or"... hmm... that's going to give some headaches. Btw, thanks for the Hindi course! :)
You should have seen my face when I realised that! I'm a native speaker so it just always seemed natural to me. (It's like native French speakers not realising how it's weird to say 4*20+10+9 instead of 99.)
Hahaha... XD I only hope that "or in hindi won't be "अन्द" or something with a similar pronuntiation ;)
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Actually, not all native French speakers say 4*20+10+9 for 99. In Belgium and Switzerland, they have a word for 90 that isn't used in France (nonante). Thus they say 90+9 for 99 (nonante-neuf). The same goes with 70 (septante instead of 60+10 soixante-dix).
I'm from France, so you can imagine how I felt the first time I heard those words and realized I had always said 60+10 for 70 and 4*20+10 for 90 ;-)
I just want to tell to the team that set up this Hindi course: excellent job!!! I'm having a lot of fun.
Yes, they made a great job. :) The sad point is that the Hindi course only has 32 levels (very short compared to other Duo languages). But they have the possibility of increasing it (like in the Dutch course, or the Esperanto course).
Surprisingly it doesn't really create any confusion in day to day Hinglish speech.
The only place where it became a headache was the computer class in High school with the and/or/not bridges of computer logic. The teachers generally speak Hinglish and there was total confusion about what he meant when he said Or.
We resolved it by a mutual understanding that all technical terms would be assumed to be in English only.
