Responses

1. Jag says:
   

   February 16th, 2004 at 7:23 pm (#)

   Inter­est­ing conundrum!

   I con­sider Pun­jabi (or is it spelt Pan­jabi?) to be my mother tongue.

   But I do not feel com­fort­able speak­ing in it. I cer­tainly don’t *think* in Pun­jabi — and the con­ver­sa­tions we have at home with fam­ily as well as par­ents is *not* Punjabi!

   (Eng­lish is what we speak com­fort­ably and think in — even though we can speak Punjabi)

   But I still call it my “mother tongue” — as it is the lan­guage my mum talks to my dad and vice versa.

   You’re gonna find this strange though: my mum has always spo­ken to me in Eng­lish prac­ti­cally all of my life — but for some wierd rea­son — she speaks to my wife in Pun­jabi — and my wife speaks back to my mum in Eng­lish! Can you believe that? It’s really wierd lis­ten­ing to them chatting.

   I’ve no idea why my mum speaks to my wife in Pun­jabi — and I’m equally puz­zled as to why my wife speaks to my mum in Eng­lish. I have asked them both about this — and they both find it com­pletely nat­ural and com­fort­able — and not strange at all!

   I can haz­ard a guess as to why my mum will talk to me in Eng­lish but to my wife in Pun­jabi: My Pun­jabi is not as flu­ent as my wife’s — and my wife is rather sur­pris­ing as “mod­ern girls” go in the eyes of my mum. And I am play­ing you back my mum’s line of think­ing here — so for­give me for this — but my mum’s view of “mod­ern girl” is: more con­cerned about looks and jew­ellery, can’t cook, has no respect for elders — espe­cially mother-in-law — and doesn’t care about hus­band like she and her gen­er­a­tion used to. Except — in the case of my wife — my mum is very sur­prised that she does all of the oppo­site of what “mod­ern girl” sup­pos­edly does. And this is the rea­son why I think my mum speaks to her in Pun­jabi! Kind of like — spe­cial treatment!

2. Shobha says:
   

   February 16th, 2004 at 10:52 pm (#)

   hmmm.….… Ok…I am a tamil­ian.… my par­ents also speak tamil. But our tamil has a lot of malay­alam in it..so its a cute cocktail.….…i speak Hindi.…(i think in Hindi).……Also I speak in English.(i also think in english)..well tht’s abt it! :)

3. Shobha says:
   

   February 16th, 2004 at 10:55 pm (#)

   And btw Jag.…..that was very very interesting!

4. Rajat says:
   

   February 17th, 2004 at 1:34 am (#)

   Hi anita…urs is one of the most widely read blogs and i must con­grat­u­late u for that. u have done a great job :)

   Rajat

5. Jag says:
   

   February 17th, 2004 at 1:36 am (#)

   Shobha — thanks — but the more I think about it — the more I am con­vinced that my the­ory about my mum and her atti­tude is true. When I first got mar­ried — for sev­eral years — my mum always spoke to my wife in Eng­lish. I got mar­ried very young you see (age 22) and it was a “love” mar­riage — so a lot of pain and heartache that took a long time to heal. Any­way — sev­eral years passed and my mum got to expe­ri­ence the mar­riage of the friends and rel­a­tives in my social cir­cle and age group — and most of them were “arranged” mar­riages. But my mum reshaped her views of “mod­ern Indian girl” a lot on the girls in those mar­riages — and my wife became the excep­tion rather than the rule as it were (in her eyes). So she started to speak to my wife in Pun­jabi instead after a few years. The change was almost as if it was stim­u­lated by a bet­ter under­stand­ing of “mod­ern girl” — and her obses­sion of “com­par­ing” peo­ple — espe­cially her own daughter-in-law with other people’s daughter-in-laws. To this day — she speaks to me in Eng­lish, she speaks to all my male friends in my peer-group in Eng­lish — and she speaks to all their “modern-girl” wives in Eng­lish too. But to my wife — she speaks in Pun­jabi! Very strange!

6. Pallavi says:
   

   February 17th, 2004 at 12:54 pm (#)

   ha ha i have a melange of lots of lan­guages when I think… usu­ally its ben­gali since my mother tongue is ben­gali and then some­times its assamese.. since my father tongue is assamese .. LOL.. .

   It depends.. I think in Eng­lish in Ben­gali most of the time.. assamese comes to me when I speak it out so it comes out wrong most of the time LOLOL…

   I guess its the lan­guage you have close.. asso­ci­a­tions with.. like say I have been always fussed over with by my ben­gali aunts and am closer to them so the con­ver­sa­tional quota is more that side than on my father’s side so I guess that makes me par­tial to ben­gali, though now I am get­ting an over­dose of assamese since I am mar­ried to one but that does not stop me from think­ing in Bengali…

7. Mehak says:
   

   February 17th, 2004 at 9:02 pm (#)

   really confusing…infact nice topic to discuss…infact i got more con­fused after read­ing d rest of the comments.

8. Nilu says:
   

   February 18th, 2004 at 12:13 pm (#)

   I once met a girl in a pub, she was obvi­ously ine­bri­ated but she asked a ques­tion that stumped me : So if Eng­lish is not your mother tongue which lan­guage do u dream in?

   I told her it depends on the con­text of my dreams.

   Sim­i­larly our thought too I guess is based on the con­text : viz thoughts related to aca­d­e­mics are in Eng­lish, related to mom are in Tamil, related to friends are in the lan­guage we speak to that per­son. This prob­a­bly is the most fas­ci­nat­ing part of our brain : all infor­ma­tion seems to be instantly cross cor­re­lated and it seems to pick the medium of best expres­sion naturally!

9. Shail says:
   

   February 19th, 2004 at 12:57 pm (#)

   I think “Mother tounge” is called so because its the lan­guage which you feel most com­fort­able with.I used to think in Hindi till I was in college,but for past 3–4 years I have observed that I have started think­ing in English.For most of my day I com­mu­ni­cate in Eng­lish, but I love read­ing Hindi books and with most of my friends I con­verse in Hindi.I feel that “cozi­ness” comes when I talk in Hindi, prob­a­bly because in my per­sonal sphere almost every­one talks in Hindi.

10. Shail says:
    

    February 19th, 2004 at 1:00 pm (#)

    So I can safely assume my mother tounge is “Hindi”(probably so because I’ve only two choices).

11. Anita says:
    

    February 19th, 2004 at 9:51 pm (#)

    Jag: It is quite inter­est­ing that you are not com­fort­able in Pun­jabi but still con­sider it your mother tongue. Do you think the conun­drum arises because of the slight appre­hen­sion in call­ing ‘Eng­lish’ your mother tongue since many Indi­ans uncon­sciously think of it as a ‘for­eign’ lan­guage, though it is quite widely used?

    Shobha: That still doesn’t answer my ques­tion about what you con­sider your mother tongue!

    Rajat: Thanks a lot!

    Pallavi: Yes, you’re right about the asso­ci­a­tion bit. I think that the lan­guage you ‘think’ or ‘dream’ in has a lot to do with deter­min­ing it. But as Nilu points out, they too might dif­fer depend­ing upon the con­text and environment.

    Mehak: Con­fus­ing def­i­nitely. But inter­est­ing in the social context!

    Nilu: That is quite an inter­est­ing obser­va­tion. I am not too sure about it, but it’s def­i­nitely worth some thought. Dif­fer­ent lan­guages depend­ing upon the con­text and the peo­ple. Maybe there’s some sci­en­tific study into this!

12. Jag says:
    

    February 20th, 2004 at 2:39 am (#)

    Hi Anita:

    You asked: “Do you think the conun­drum arises because of the slight appre­hen­sion in call­ing ‘Eng­lish’ your mother tongue since many Indi­ans uncon­sciously think of it as a ‘for­eign’ lan­guage, though it is quite widely used?”

    My answer is; no — not at all because of that — but because over here in UK we are “brown” and so we have it socially pre­scribed to us that we are of “foriegn” (or to be politically-correct: “eth­nic”) ori­gin — no mat­ter what gen­er­a­tion of “brown” you are. So society’s insti­tu­tions pre­sume that Eng­lish can­not be our “mother tongue”. This is ingrained in the fab­ric of every insti­tu­tion: school, cor­po­rate, munic­i­pal, goivern­men­tal etc. So — although we speak Eng­lish 99% of the time — and much more flu­ently than we speak Pun­jabi — or Hindi — or Guju­rati, Eng­lish is not accepted by soci­ety as out “mother tongue” because we are of “eth­nic” ori­gin. Trust me — even though some second-generation Indian immi­grants were born over here — if they have kids (like my own) — the head­teacher of the school will clas­sify the child as “eth­nic” with a “mother tongue” of Pun­jabi! Which implies that the def­i­n­i­tion of mother tongue here in UK is much more closely tied to eth­nic ori­gin than it is to what your “mother” speaks most com­fort­ably in.

    Fas­ci­nat­ing topic.

13. Shobha says:
    

    February 20th, 2004 at 8:45 pm (#)

    Well my moth­er­tongue is tamilyalam.(tamil = malay­alam) :D

14. MadMan says:
    

    February 21st, 2004 at 3:57 am (#)

    I’m a Malay­ali who speaks Eng­lish, Hindi, and Malay­alam fluently.

    But I think in Eng­lish and it’s the lan­guage I’m most com­fort­able with.

    A “mother tongue” is defined as “one’s native lan­guage”. That way, I’d have to say that since my folks are also Malay­alis, it’s Malay­alam. Your mother tongue is an inher­ited trait, not a cho­sen one.

    To me, the lan­guage we think in and which we feel most com­fort­able express­ing our­selves in is the one we should call our “first language”.

15. Mithun says:
    

    February 21st, 2004 at 1:46 pm (#)

    Its good to know I’m not the only one — my father is Ben­gali, mums Maha­rash­trian. I’m an “army brat”, which meant I tagged along all over the coun­try the first 13 years of my life and then spent the next 10 in Pune, Maharashtra.

    No won­der then, that Eng­lish turned out to be the “stan­dard” lan­guage at home. While I under­stand spo­ken Ben­gali and Marathi, I don’t think I could have a con­ver­sa­tion in either lan­guage. But I still try ! So whats my moth­er­tongue then ? I’d have to agree with MadMan’s the­ory — Marathi is my moth­er­tongue and Eng­lish is my “first lan­guage”, but then where does that leave Ben­gali? Is there some­thing called a “father-tongue”?

16. Anita says:
    

    February 23rd, 2004 at 10:22 am (#)

    Mad­man: What I find inter­est­ing is the fact that many of us have a mother tongue but are usu­ally more com­fort­able speak­ing in another lan­guage. I guess, it is inevitable in a coun­try where we speak so many lan­guages, dialects, Hindi and Eng­lish over and above. I think it’s prob­a­bly only here we have a first lan­guage, sec­ond lan­guage, third lan­guage, and so on and so forth!

    Mithun: It’s pretty sad that the ‘father’ gets ignored in the tongue dis­cus­sion! But this might be because of the pre­dom­i­nance of the mother’s lan­guage when she talks to a kid (espe­cially when it is dif­fer­ent from the father). So the father’s lan­guage gets sec­ond pri­or­ity! And some­times no pri­or­ity at all :)

17. Sunny says:
    

    February 23rd, 2004 at 11:25 am (#)

    I speak Ben­gali with my mom , but with the rest of the world it is Assamese ( of course not with the fel­lows who don’t know assamese ) . I speak eng­lish and hindi too . I speak ass more than any other lan­guage . Now tell which is my mother tongue ?

    Note : I speak eng with my mom sometime .

18. Smita Ramchandra Kulkarni says:
    

    February 17th, 2005 at 1:44 pm (#)

    Yes, Even if we speak two lan­guages at home but the lan­guage in which my mother speaks is my mother tounge

19. anisha mohanty says:
    

    June 5th, 2005 at 6:54 pm (#)

    I expe­ri­enced a clas­sic case of Mother tongue ^ Regional Influ­ence… my sar­dar neigh­bour, who has been liv­ing in a ben­gali colony for over 25yrs now is one who has his TYPICAL pun­jabi dic­tion of say­ing “Playyer” for Pleasure…“Mayyer” for Measure.…“Paehey” for paise(in hindi… to top it all calls addresses him­self as “BAWLDEB SINGH” for Baldev Singh!

20. geetha says:
    

    February 17th, 2006 at 6:45 pm (#)

    hey my mother tongue is telgu but i dono tat so i use to speak eng­lish as well as tamil… but my tamil will be bit dif­fer­ent.… so., i started to speak in eng­lish alone…

21. Saif says:
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm (#)

    Hi. I am totally bam­boo­zled. Trust me. Being a VANC trainer for over 5 years now, I think mother tongue or L1 is some­thing which is not acquired. Its there already .For us, our mother tongue would be the lan­guage which we never thought of acquir­ing. It hap­pened auto­mat­i­cally .Eng­lish ‚again is an acquired lan­guage for major­ity of us ( L2 )
    My mother tongue is Urdu with a dash of Eng­lish and Hindi.And I love it unlike my team of VANC train­ers who get pseudo plea­sure in speak­ing in that rot­ten Amer­i­can accent.

    Let us feel proud of our Mother tongue.…whatever it is.And chill.

22. Bhasker reddy says:
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 10:04 am (#)

    wow , I am amazed by u folks . what a fas­ci­nat­ing topic you have been dis­cussing and argu­ing , it was very inter­est­ing and ofcourse puz­zling too .
    each one have put forth their views , after going through all your views , what I want to say abt mother tongue is ‘it’s the lan­guage which an indi­vid­ual aquires by birth and the lan­guage which he/she speaks with his/her mother and this depends on mother’s mother tongue bcos i feel mother is the first per­son in the world any per­son speaks with.
    if mother’s mother tongue is dif­fer­ent from what she speaks to her child , still her mother tongue will b the child’s mother tongue .
    We might learn , acquire , mas­ter many lan­guages in the process of life , but when it comes to mother tongue i feel it’s always related to mother.
    ANITA — u have done a great job.

23. meridia says:
    

    April 4th, 2007 at 11:16 pm (#)

    If you have to do it, you might as well do it right

24. anonymous says:
    

    April 10th, 2007 at 5:21 am (#)

    okay so my mum speaks hindi and engish. so does my dad. and i am flu­ent in both.
    my mum is hindu and my da is half pun­jabi.
    would that make me pun­jabi?? ( but my dad does not speak pun­jabi, my mum does.) and we go to both the mandir and gurud­wara( sorry about the spelling)

    (i have a con­fus­ing stry i knoe!)

    so what would my mother tongue be? and what reli­gion would i be?

    thanks!

25. Arjun says:
    

    April 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm (#)

    Hi yeah ive got com­ment about this my mother tongue is pun­jabi and im 16 and cant speak a word flu­ently at all. never been taught and expected to pick it up per say but havent. so what would my mother tongue be cur­rently liv­ing in eng­land and not know­ing your mother tongue pun­jabi so bad? advice as i feel this may dis­tance me from my reli­gion and rel­a­tives
    cur­rently in eng­land student

    thx

26. shiva says:
    

    May 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm (#)

    Dear Anitha.…

    this is shiva who born and broughtup in tamil­nadu
    but due to my work i have travel all over india since last three years..
    i met my girl at nag­pur who work­ing now in mumbai.we are lov­ing each other like any­thing.
    we both(to be frank she is mere egar) have had big con­fu­tion about our mar­rige..
    she always worry about her fam­ily i mean both the fam­ily!
    she always says..i love you like any­thing in this world..i need you as my part­ner but i think if we marry how our parents{my parents(Tamil)cannot understand/talk in Hindhi or marathi her Parents(hindhi-marathi)cannot understand/talk tamil}?
    her altime ques­tion is this..
    i do not know how to make her under­stand this ..!
    i am sure that both the fam­ily mem­bers are not going to be togather always except some impor­tant fam­ily func­tions! so,that time we both will be with them to com­mu­ni­cate their feel­ings..! right? i said this to her thou­sands of times!
    you please anitha help to marry her!
    and tell me what/how/can should i con­vince her?
    treat me as your brother and help me out..pleaseeeeeeeeesz!

    shiva

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