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Sunday, June 20, 2010

My mother tongue

When I was around 10 years old, Andhra Association in Rourkela invited a legend in the form of ANR, one who stood equal to NTR in his acting capabilities...
My father being an active member of the group took us kids and my mom to meet him personally. ANR himself never graduated from college and so was very insistent that every person must at least graduate. Second, he emphasized that how ever many languages we learn, we must first learn our mother tongue fluently. He also helped fund some Telugu language tutoring schools in Rourkela in those days.
I endorse his views on this subject. At home we were discouraged from speaking Hindi at which we had become very fluent outside home. We weren't allowed to call our parents mom or dad...it was amma and nanna in Telugu. We were also given weekend lessons in reading and writing Telugu at home, Today I can read and write English, Hindi, Telugu and Oriya all fluently. In fact, when I got married and had to leave Rourkela, I bought "Mo Chabi Bahi" (a primary text book of Oriya language) so that I would not forget Oriya after coming to AP. I love expressing myself in different languages but I feel what's the use of learning so many languages if one doesn't first know his/her own language?
I keep speaking Oriya at home..(tho broken and not too fluent now) so that I don't forget the language. A side-effect also is that....perhaps mine is the only Telugu-speaking family in AP which has never lived in Orissa but understands Oriya quite well .:)
My son went to a CBSE school and had opted for Sanskrit as third language as the school didn't have Telugu. I taught my son how to read and write the language--thankfully this saved him in Warangal where he went to do his Engineering and where all the boards on display are in Telugu...duniya mein jitni bhaashaye seekh sakthe ho, seekho lekin MT first...

2 comments:

RamaWish said...

I agree sooo much with you! I never had this inclination to read Telugu as we had more of Hindi domination at home. And Telugu for me was always a language to converse with my God and Parents. But all this changed when i came across a friend who told me how beautiful the litaratures are and did give me an insight to what i had been missing. Now i read more, atleast read the newspaper, try to write in telugu (though sometimes with mistakes) I am scared if I am like this, what will I teach my kids :)... so wanna keep my love and respect towards MT this way!

Beautiful World said...

Thank u for sharing my view and endorsing it.