Mother's Tongue

Its supposed to be the first language that you learn to speak. Its obvious, your mom is
the first person who starts speaking to you, and all your vocabulary is nothing but a few words off her wide repertoire. Given this, it should also be the most fluent language that you speak, incase you are polylingual. Its true that your environment shapes the mastery of your language skills, and there is a good chance that you may obtain proficiency in a language different then your own mother tongue. But in my opinion, there is no excuse for lacking fluidity in your native language.

A recent trip involving few conservations with friends, left me into deep introspection on my native language skills. I have never been overtly proud of my abilities to speak in Tamil, but yet I believe I possess good conversational abilities. Most times, it's accented - as they say Bambai (Bombay) Tamil, but I never fail to convey what I intend. I have always prided myself in speaking to my elders in Tamil as a mark of respect, despite most of them being extremely fluent in English. Hell, I even learnt to write and read when I was in 5th grade, only to abandon it soon after for no other reason than being lazy.

But its been more than 4 years since I have left India, and I feel my grip on the language is relaxing at a rapid pace. The thought that I might not even be in a position to educate my kids (in their father's tongue) is extremely pitiful. Its particularly disconcerting when I realise that the probability of my kids being raised in alien environment in a land 10,000 miles away from home country is high. Under this assumption, their only link to their cultural heritage would be through their parents, and if I drop the baton, then an important cultural link could be lost forever

Having grown outside Tamil Nadu, I spend my formative younger years in an environment
where Hindi was all prevalent, and speaking English was a fad. At most times, the more
fluent you could speak English, made you seem more educated and classy. I had seen some of my convent educated cousins show their command of the British language, and in fear of
being ridiculed I started making efforts towards the same. At times, I would pride myself
in being able to communicate with siblings and close relatives in English. Outside home,
bollywood and Hindi ruled the streets. For some reason, the pride for native language never rubbed on to me, and thus even with people who spoke Tamil, I felt more comfortable rambling in other languages. Thus a combination of environment and few misguided personal choices later, I find myself in a bind.

I have always prided myself in knowing multiple languages. In school I learn English, Hindi, Marathi. I picked up how to understand gujrati from neighbours. During undergrad days, I made a weak attempt to learn Telugu and even put in a semester worth of effort to learn German. As I learn Spanish this month, I suddenly feel a strong urge to polish my skills in a language that I should have always known better - Tamil !!