First language

Convo with my 8 years old cousin last year:

Me: Ok Anju , whats your mother tongue (yes, I have weird convos like this, my way of keeping the kiddos entertained :p)

Anju: English

Me: ??

Me: (What ? How ? ) Why do you say that pappu ?

Anju: Thats what we speak na Radhika didi.

Me: Ya (and realizing that it is true and I was speaking to her in english).. hmm .. ok do you know what a mother tongue is ?

Anju: No (:) Shez only 8, give her a break!)

Me: Ok, its the language you speak at home.

Anju: So thats english na Radhika didi.

Me: What? How? (slowly feeling like the dumb one in this conversation) You don't speak in english with mummy and papa.

Anju: Yes, I do. Everyday.

Me: Umm. Ok let me put it this way, mother tongue is what your mummy speaks in. So what does you mummy speak in..

Anju: (confused for a while) Malayalam

Me: (Oh no!)

Me: Well .. with some people, but what she talk to your papa in? (My aunt is from malluland, can't blame the kid!)

Anju: Tamil

Me: Seee (with a sense of accomplishment) Thats what I mean, she speaks in tamil with everybody right?

Anju: Ya but she talks to me in English na Radhika didi.

Me: (Stumped)

This was a while ago and I should have got the message. English is fast replacing all our local languages even at home. All these kids who go to private or convent schools are taught to speak in English thru out the day. And they bring the same back home with them, either due to just being used to talking like that during the day or to impress folks at home. And impressed we are, every time we hear a kid talking ever so nicely in english we are so impressed. Ah new words, new sentences, all so impressive..

Slowly the language creeps into every conversation with every member of the family.

And this phenomenon is not prevalent only among the kids (tho it is more scary that the future generation is oriented that way). We all are falling in that category where English is not the first language just in schools anymore, its rapidly becoming our first language anywhere.

In most metropolitan/cosmopolitan cities, the companies we work for demand that we speak in English. I know I can't generalize it, I still see people talking in local languages in many cities and believe me I am the first one to get pissed about it! Its quite unprofessional too if you ask me, essentially because a workplace especially in IT is an amalgamation of people from different parts of the country and most of who do not speak the local language.

In this situation, its quite unprofessional (and irritating) to talk in local languages.

Which reminds me of an episode about 5-6 years ago when I was in this project which had this one guy who was ever so quiet. He was generally soft spoken and quiet so when he chose to be like that even during our team meetings and all the name calling meetings (:p), we just thought maybe thats how he is. After about 8 months, the project gets over and we have this gala project closure lunch at a restaurant.

We: So S, are you always so quiet, you hardly speak during the meetings?

S: Oh, thats because I don't understand what you people are saying, you all talk in Hindi and I don't understand Hindi.

We: ????

This was 8 whole months of a project mind you! I must admit, that by some quirk of fate, we were all Hindi speaking people in that project so talking in Hindi I guess became natural (not that I endorse that). But imagine this poor south Indian guy who went thru 8 months of really not understanding completely what the rest of the gang was saying!!! I was quite appalled...

Anyways, i digress.

What we also do not realize that we are at work for most part of our day anything ranging from 8-10 hrs. And things like the language we speak for 10 hrs a day tends to seep into our personal lives whether we like it or not.

I find that hubby and me talk in English more often than not, its really not like we cannot both talk in Tamil. But we talk in English... Somehow its becoming the most convenient language that we can communicate in.. Soon we will really forget how to form sentences in our respective mother tongues I am sure..(yes, we have a couple of languages we consider to be mother tongues :P)

I remember when my family moved to Bangalore from Delhi and we were living with my grand parents, thatha wud rap me on my head everytime he would find me speaking with my bro in Hindi. But we just couldn't help it, speaking in hindi was/is second nature to us. In fact till date, i dont think I ahve ever spoken to my bro in tamil, we always always talk in Hindi. Its weird, I know.

But the point is, after a while, thatha gave up and said you guys are useless.

Now, I find that happening with English. I am sure very soon 2 generations from now, kids especially from nuclear families will have very little linguistic skills in their respective mother tongues (so called)

As for my children, I can only feel sorry for them, they will get telugu from the dad, tamil from my mum, hindi from me, kannada from the school (its become a mandatory language in primary schools), mallu from the rest of my family and of course english from.. hmmmm just the air I guess :)