Learning the Language

So you may be thinking to yourself "How do these Canadian SLP students plan on doing language therapy with clients who speak a different language??"
Good question.  If you know the answer, I'd love to hear it! :)

Basically, we're going to get things done with a mixture of learning some functional Bengali (we have actually learned quite a lot in the first week we've been here) and using Bangla people as translators.

At other placements of mine, orientation involved learning the policies and procedures of the institution/clinician, not learning an entirely different language!!  Needless to say, this is a challenging but amazing experience.

We have language lessons with the volunteer coordinator, Mizan, three times a week.  As well, we are constantly asking our clinicians and ayah (person who takes care of us at the guesthouse) about how to say various words and phrases.

I know that you're itching to join me in learning Bengali, so here it is - Shannon's Bengali 101!!!

My name is _____                       Amar nam Shannon
I'm from Canada                          Amar desh Canada
Greeting (Muslim)                       Assalam aleikum
Greeting (Hindu)                         Nohmohshkahr

There's another phrase in my book about something like "The monkey stole it from me", which is my favourite, but I forgot to copy it down so that I could share it with everyone in blog world.  I will give you the translation at a later date!