Multi-linguism

I read this article about multi-lingual babies http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16455841/ and I realised very sadly that I am no longer a baby.

My parents came to Bombay from Kerala and so their first language was Malayalam and thats what we communicated in at home. I learnt Hindi (India's national language) by way of my interactions with others outside our home. Marathi was the local language of Bombay and it was mandatorily taught in school. English was the medium of instruction in school, so you learnt it automatically. So the result of all this in some ways was that I became a jack-of-all-languages, master of none. I have an accent in every language I speak. The moment I speak English, you know English is not my first language and people can guess that I am somewhere from the Indian sub-continent. The moment I speak Hindi, purists cringe listening to my completely grammatically-erroneous but extremely cool Bombay Hindi (बम्बैय्या हिंदी). Marathi speakers know I don't speak Marathi at home and when I speak Malayalam, the souls of ancient Malayalam scholars writhe in agony at my butchery of their beloved language. But not everything is bad.

I remember an incident which took place many years ago near Victoria Terminus. My friend ,whom I shall mysteriously call AP (I have a better name for him but he won't like it) and I were shopping for a haversack for him. There were all these street vendors, many of them from Kerala, selling their wares just outside Siddharth Law college. AP liked a particular Nike bag and was quoted a price of Rs. 350. Us being college students and all, there was no way AP could afford it. So we tried to bring it down a bit - all conversation being in Hindi all along. So the seller consulted with his partner in Malayalam about what he should do. His partner replied in Malayalam that even if he got 100, he would still be making a good profit. So the seller told us , "I could bring it down to 200, but thats the lowest I can go to. After all even I have to eke out a living". We (AP knows Malayalam too) started laughing and asked him in Malayalam , "Didn't your partner just say that 100 would still be a good price?" He was crest-fallen, embarassed, surprised, happy all at once to see some fellow-Malayalam-speakers in Bombay. Anyway, we paid him about 120 or so for the bag and left. A few other such incidents have taken place every now and then to show me the brighter side of being multi-lingual.

Another advantage I have noticed is that I can pick up sounds and pronunciations of languages much faster than an average uni-lingual person. So I am assuming this is true for most multi-lingual people. I pity all the people who make fun of accents and pronunciations because they are displaying the level of their intellect by making fun of someone who probably speaks one language more than them. Its like a mentally-challenged person making fun of a sane person. You can only feel pity.

I want to learn Spanish. I have a feeling it will come easy to me. It may be a false sense of confidence that I have, but I like the feeling nevertheless. Till then, Adios amigos.