How do you say that in Hindi??

Namaste! Ap kaisay ho? Christelle and I are taking a Hindi class. We walk across Sohna Road to the mall and have a 45 minute class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Our teacher is a retired missile engineer (seriously, a rocket scientist!!) whose daughter owns an English school. I called and asked about Hindi and she roped in her dad. I think we paid 1500 rupees for 3 months of classes (that is about $35). We started before Christmas and we were feeling pretty good about it. We had learned some good stuff (the most useful thing is the times of day, since we deal all the time with deliveries, service people, the maids, etc) and were going along nicely until this last week. I have noticed that sometimes the Indians seem to understand Christelle's accented English better than mine, and had asked the teacher if people would understand us if we only got the words partially right. His answer - no. Not even sort of or maybe, just no! ouch. So we decided to work on strictly pronounciation of the stuff we had already (sort of) learned, and during that exercise, learned that we cannot hear some of the subtle differences between sounds. He said "sit down" and it sounded just like "daughter" and over and over he said the two words and we could not distinguish! We asked how many consonants and vowels in Hindi, and now we are completely overwhelmed! There are 12 vowels and 36 consonants, with an extra three blended sounds. That makes a total of 425 sounds in Hindi; some in the throat, some in the back of the mouth, middle of the mouth, front of the mouth, and (hardest of all) in the nose. Aaaaaagh! we left completely discouraged! Christelle speaks 3 languages fluently (English, Dutch and French with some German just for fun) I only speak one (altho my long-ago learned French that I thought was so gone seems to crop up now and again! Once in awhile, some Spanish for Gringos rears its head, too. Must be firing neurons in that part of the brain) but we are both feeling out of our league. When we watch TV I try to listen for words I know, but Hindi seems to me to be a very smooth, jammed together language - the words are not distinct - and I don't get much. I would really like to be able to understand some of what goes on around me. That would really throw them for a loop at the market when they try to scam us! The teacher taught us things like "you are charging me too much" and "don't look at me like that" but now we realize if we don't say it exactly right, we may really be inviting them to our summerhome in the Balkans. We test our phrases on the drivers and they mostly laugh. We have also learned that if you ask how much or if there is another colour in Hindi, then they think you speak it, and they unleash a torrent of words that we have no idea about. It can backfire.

Still, I am glad we are doing it - it makes me feel like an idiot when I can't get it, but at least I am trying :)