In our modern world, one's mother tongue and one's first language may not be the same. I am much more comfortable in English than I am in my mother tongue. At my workplace, people always spoke Hindi. They got upset if I tried to talk to them in English. The only place where English was allowed were e-mails and I was grateful for that opportunity.
Hi!! Thank you so much for sharing your feedback here!! Never knew these many things are there in speaking English!!! My God Particularly this one I GUESS south india has more schools and education rather than north. Again its a GUESS.
Why!!! Thats the reason am looking for. Is it that you spoke in English to your parents as a kid? Am just looking for various valuable reasons and figure out the root! Nothing else!
English words and phrases were used at home, on occasion sentences too, but main language of conversation was mother-tongue. But, as we entered our teens, dad used to cut out columns from the English newspapers for us to read, and the news broadcast or telecasts we gravitated to were more the English ones. We didn't learn our mother-tongue deeply enough to know the less commonly used words. Didn't learn it as a language in school. As an example, for any given word in English, I've been able to think of synonyms and instinctively able to pick the best one for a sentence. Not so, for any other language. In other languages including mother-tongue, I can understand the meaning of a word if I come across it, but, I wouldn't use it when talking. "abject despair", "silent eloquence", "sheer joy", "annoyance", "peeve" - are a few examples of words or phrases I can only think of in English. What's with the REALLY in uppercase? If we say we are comfortable, we are, no? (Why) would we try to show off in an anonymous forum? Not to go all meta, but I wouldn't know how to use "words in brackets" like I did with "Why" in the previous sentence. And, I wouldn't know what is the word for "meta" in any language other than English. Maybe we are experiencing life in English. We are reading the news in English. Maybe our personal life is happening more in English. Maybe it is hard to use non-English in whatsapp. Maybe personal conversations are so mixed with fB and other conversations that English and mother-tongue overlap, and soon English starts to encroach? The "concern" you mention above - I can relate to it a bit. Was concerned for quite some years that my children will understand my mother-tongue only very little. That my deepest conversations with them will be in English. Maybe even my words from deathbed will be in English if I am to be so fortunate as to pass away surrounded by those who love me.
Yes, I spoke English growing up. English was spoken at home. People not from the same background can find that difficult to fathom. There is a class of English-speaking people in India. Look around you, they are everywhere: Suhel Seth, Swapan Seth, Arundhati Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Barkha Dutt, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Tavleen Singh, Ramchandra Guha. Do you think these people are sitting at home speaking anything other than English? You can get away with speaking English in India if you are rich and powerful. It's an ornament for these people, a confirmation of their status. If you are not a high-status individual, speaking English is a big no-no. People think you are trying to show yourself to be above your station.
when we are raising children in phoren country, speaking a lot of ingliss to every one, we go through peeves, annoyances, silent eloquence, abject despair, etc... The goal is to reach sheer joy. Our mother tongues have these words.... and an erudite native mummy who raised her children speaking her language would know these words... because she too would have had those experiences.
When my cousin (who grew up in India, but has lived in the US for 15 years) talks to me, we end up talking in English. I grew up here btw. Even if I speak in Tamil, we switch over to English. She has commented that Tamil sounds really strange coming from me, since she saw me growing up speaking English - and I'm fluent in Tamil. I'm led to believe that despite Tamil being our mother tongue, there are many thoughts and feelings we are unable to convey in Tamil. I have noticed that it's also by the region someone has come from. People from Chennai already use A LOT of English in normal Tamil conversations, so the switch to English isn't really hard. Now, you find someone from the smaller cities like Madurai, and they tend to speak Tamil over English. When my In Laws are talking to my son, teaching him words (because he's 2 and learning to speak), somehow, the common words are not Tamil words, but English words, surrounded by Tamil words. Like, "Athu enna? Athu Car/cat/ball/shorts" - So even Native speakers find that English words are easier to teach, unconsciously.
Yes, the only language that is becoming acceptable to speak now is neither English nor non-English. An ugly compromise between the two is being born and it is an unsightly mutant, destroying both its progenitors.
Oh, I wanted to add. Our thoughts change, based on the language we speak. So for example, when I speak in Tamil, I act very traditional, and polite. Most of my conversation topics will lean toward how to feed people and weather. Certain types of jokes work with the Tamil language, but others fall flat (like sarcasm and ironic statements) In English, depending on your experience, can be a way to express your actions and feelings more eloquently. Not that there are more words in English, but far more people have a broader vocabulary in English - oddly. My mother, who is from Madurai, is a very good Tamil speaker and teacher in the US, but even she has started using English more frequently. I think it's because she is dealing with people of many different languages, and English tends to be the common one, and chosen often for simplicity.
Ist point example we can say is an English teacher, professor of English. Indians with PhD in english. TOEFL trainer is comfortable in English.My school English teacher an Indian always says she loves English. Regarding this even if they are not with BA English too they can love the language. One aunt (accountant)when I was a kid she used to say , English is easy and she loves it.
