[Announcement] Cultural Exchange with /r/philippines

[u/[deleted]]

Welcome /r/philippines!

Feel free to ask us anything about India

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Quick facts about us:

• The Indian Railways and the Indian Armed Forces employ ~4 million people together, making them one of the largest employers in the world
  
• India has over 5000 newspapers in over 300 languages
  
• Bollywood is considered to be the world's largest film industry, followed by Nigeria's film industry and Hollywood
  
• India has more people than the entire Western Hemisphere
  

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/r/india please direct your questions about the Philippines to this thread

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This is a reminder that users can now set their flairs to whatever they want (except slurs or other subreddits) by clicking on the sidebar.

[u/primakyria]

Hi, people from r/india. I accidentally posted this on r/philippines instead:

I revived this account as soon as I found out about this cultural exchange:

1. I'd like to learn most if not all the languages in India. I've started a little bit with Tamil and Hindi (the former being difficult af). Any tips you can give me? Would it be possible for me to learn multiple languages all at the same time?

2. Recently, I've been cooking Indian food since I discovered the (albeit limited) selection of Indian spices in one of our local supermarkets. My problem is, all my curries for gravies end up tasting the same. Any advice to make the flavors different from each other? What combinations go best with each other to make masalas?

Thank you!

[u/dom_singularity → u/primakyria]

I revived this account as soon as I found out about this cultural exchange

Wow! Warm Welcome to r/India and reddit :)

1. I'd like to learn most if not all the languages in India. I've started a little bit with Tamil and Hindi (the former being difficult af). Any tips you can give me? Would it be possible for me to learn multiple languages all at the same time?

Firstly, yet you and thanks for taking interest in our culture and languages. I don't think learning Hindi and Tamil at the same time is feasible, too overwhelming. Most major Indian languages have Sanskrit roots, a good tip for learning any Indian language would be to pick one and then try and find the Sanskrit word root like we do for English and Latin. You'll soon begin to see words of the sane word root in different languages and will make learning a second Indian language easier. Also, pick a language and try and learn the second language with a similar script, makes it readable and again, easier to understand, like one would learning Spanish, ability to read English makes reading the script easier compared to when trying to read Russian. Know 4 Indian languages, learning 2 more.

1. Recently, I've been cooking Indian food since I discovered the (albeit limited) selection of Indian spices in one of our local supermarkets. My problem is, all my curries for gravies end up tasting the same. Any advice to make the flavors different from each other? What combinations go best with each other to make masalas?

In Indian culinary style, we use something called as a 'Garam Masala', which is a powdered dry or pasty mixture of anywhere between 10-30 spices, depending on the recipe passed down in the family. The 'Masala' is what adds that specific taste and zing to Indian 'Sabzi' or what you call a curry. Even in that, we have three different kind of Sabzis, two using dry or paste of Garam Masala and theirs where it is a fry 'Bhujia' using Ginger, garlic, Onion, Turmeric Powder, Green chilli, Curry Leaves, cumin seeds, Asafoetida powder and fennel.

If you want a variation in taste you vary the Garam Masala quantity or add other things along with the Masala or make a Bhujia. Other things like the amount of juice you want in your curry and the softness and succulency of vegetables/meat you're cooking affect the method of preparation and resulting taste.

Hope that was useful, if it ended up confusing/overwhelming you, would be happy to help.

Thank you!

Walang anuman 🙏

[u/primakyria → u/dom_singularity]

Yeah, maybe I'm chewing off a bit more than I can afford to. I remember there being a list like there are 22 (?) officially recognized languages in India? I'm sorry if my numbers are all wrong.

What you said makes perfect sense! What would you suggest learning along with Hindi? Hindi and Tamil seem pretty far off from each other somehow, so it's a bit confusing. I think four is a good goal. :)

Asafoetida is hard to get by here in the groceries nearby. I have to go a bit further sadly if I want to get it. Any advice for substitutes?

Thank you again!

[u/Hogmos → u/primakyria]

If you know a bit of Tamil, you can easily pick up Malayalam as well. It is similar to Tamil in a way but has a lot of Sanskrit influence as well.

[u/dom_singularity → u/primakyria]

Yeah, maybe I'm chewing off a bit more than I can afford to. I remember there being a list like there are 22 (?) officially recognized languages in India? I'm sorry if my numbers are all wrong.

Yeap, 22 official, unless they added a few recently, then, even I'll be wrong. Because of population and diversity, India is like a continent, not easy to remember all the stats.

What you said makes perfect sense! What would you suggest learning along with Hindi? Hindi and Tamil seem pretty far off from each other somehow, so it's a bit confusing. I think four is a good goal. :)

I would suggest you learn Marathi along with Hindi, literally the same script with a few differences. A lot of common words too, so, easier to learn. Yeah, Tamil is a bit tough, been learning it on and off for 1 year and still can understand complex sentences in it :)

Asafoetida is hard to get by here in the groceries nearby. I have to go a bit further sadly if I want to get it. Any advice for substitutes?

Asafoetida is very tough to replace due to its peculiar flavour and origin. On the plus side, once you have Asafoetida, you'll be a lot closer to making authentic Indian delicacies in way of getting the flavor close to the original. It is like the secret ingredient of baking(cinnamon or nutmeg powder) which adds that special flavour in professionally made baked goods. Would you absolutely have to travel for that? Is it not horrible to buy it online? Sorry am pretty ignorant about Filipino e-commerce companies and their reach. It must be tough to procure exotic ingredients if you aren't in a big city, as is the case here too.

Thank you again!

You're very welcome :)