Lakshmi @jskls, Your Kannada is far better than my Tamil or Telugu. For that matter, even I find it difficult to follow Kannada from Mangalore or North Karnataka. The poetry is in bookish Kannada which is the pure form as opposed to the spoken Kannada which has many blended and hybridized words. Even your written Tamil/ iyer/iyengar versions are so different compared to the street Tamil with which I am quite familiar Actually knowing many languages is an asset.
most of my telugu friends learnt tamil from Auto Walas and street vendors. Actually North Madras Tamil is way too different than the book tamil. There are different slangs in Tamil too. My Telugu is not that good but next to Tamil my Hindi is better. Marathi and Malayalam I never tried to learn. Kannada othalakke borillakke kalthulla or kaleela ( don’t know which usage is better) FYI Tamil is not my mother tongue too