When I first came to live in Nepal almost five years ago I attended a month long language course at the rather grandly named Intercultural Training and Research Institute in Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu. In spite of its two staff members it was a great course and my teacher, Parbati, was brilliant. The problem was that I forgot all my Nepali within a week or two of starting work here as English is the lingua franca within the development sector.
Today I returned to ITC for the first time since then and once again Parbati is my teacher. From now on I am determined to have a two hour session at lunchtime every other day until I have a working knowledge of the language. Hmmmm. Today, at my request, we started with the Nepali alphabet which consists of 11 vowels and 36 consonants. At the end of class I took a picture of Parbati's whiteboard. This in on the right.
Wish me luck.
