Sam Wrote:
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> Prema, did you grow up in a multi-lingual
> household or community?


nope.. the only other language I started learning was English, that too after I was 10 years old.. I started speaking it only after finishing my masters (25years old)... studing english at college was different from using it in day to day life.. I still rivert back to my lovely kambum-valley tamil... amazingly, kumbum-valley tamil has many words, mostly in pure tamil form, unknown to the rest of the Tamil community... people often smile when we speak in that typcial (lovely) accent of ours..

ahh, as I was writing about "growing up"... so, I didn't mention about hindi... I learnt Hindi When I moved to North India.. that's when I started speaking in English with my colleagues.. but with local community, I had to learn Hindi... I learnt it and now I can speak fluently.. I also can differentiate Urdu to certain extent.. and spoken urdu in Pakistan is what we call as Hindi in UP, India.. (hindi also has regional differeces) this I gathered after knowing a pakistani student we trained in india (in remote sensing) in one of the courses run in our institute... also, I had a pakistanin friend in nottingham, with whom i used to speak very fluently in his urdu..

I started observing about the differences between Tamil and Sanskrit after moving to north India and when I was learning hindi. that was the time, I learnt a lot about hinduism, Brahmins, Aryan/Dravidian.... all those things..






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2005 05:38AM by prema1.