[rangarx]

Fluent, Read, Write - Tamil and English

Fluent - Telugu, Kannada

Average speaking and understand well - Hindi

Can Understand well - Malayalam

[arijitkanrar]

Being a 'Probashi Bangali' (Bengali brought up outside Bengal), I've been lucky to pickup a lot of languages. Almost all are at the level of understanding and basic speaking only but it still helps.

Here is my current language list
English - Read, Write, Speak, Understand, Think
Hindi - Read, Speak,Understand, Write (forget when was the last time I wrote in Hindi) - Natural byproduct of being a KV Product and Bollywood
Bangla - Mother tongue - Speak, Read, Understand but not write - Having never lived in Bengal except for the beginning few years of my life, my Bangla is just passable. My wife says "You'll be swallowed up if you try to enter a typical bengali adda"
Kannada- Speak, Understand - Courtesy of living in Mangalore and now in Bangalore. My Kannada is quite fluent now although I'd struggle to have complex conversations. Once my friend's relatives in their village in Sirsi were shocked to learn that I was not a Kannadiga because they thought that my accent was like a typical Bengaluru huduga (Bangalore guy). On our trips with our friends, I've become the de-facto translator.
Telegu - Speak, Understand - lived in Visakhapatnam for 9 years. Was very fluent but lost touch after moving out of Vizag. Now can converse but would need about 30 secs of deliberation before forming a sentence.
Tamil - Speak, Understand at a very basic level. I can usually follow conversations if they are not very complex. - courtesy of my roommates in college and now some office colleagues. I now find that whenever we used to go to Tamil Nadu on a trip, I was able to get by in Tamil for the most part.
Punjabi - Understand basic conversations, reply in single sentences - courtesy of my roommates post college.

I always make it a point to learn the language of the place I'm at. I found that it helps give a more personal touch in the conversation if you are conversing in the local language. In Bangalore, for the most part you can get by without knowing Kannada, but knowing it helps immensely! People are automatically more receptive to you and ready to help you more.

[kkstile]

Excellent thread! Most BHPians seem to be familiar with 3-4 languages. I have always thought that we Indians in general have a good aptitude to learn and adapt to new languages pretty quickly.
Quite surpirsed most of the members haven't mentioned Samskrutha seeing that it's written in devanagari script and most would be exposed to it in schools and (or) through shlokas/bhajans.

I can read, write, understand and speak - Kannada (mother tongue) , English and Hindi

Read write and understand Samskrutha

Understand in parts - Telugu and Tamil

[kamilharis]

Interesting thread.

Being from Kerala and an expat, few languages are known by default.

Malayalam : Mother tongue (Read/Write/Speak)
Hindi : School + movies + now working in a company in Saudi where 70% of the employees are from north India. (Read/Write/Speak)
Tamil : Movies + modified Malayalam words. (Speak)
Urdu : I can read/understand a bit.
Not an Indian language but yeah, English is obvious.

[cpabhijit]

Interesting thread, here are mine.

Kannada - Read, Write, Speak (mother tongue)
Hindi - Read, Write, Speak (KV)
Tamil - Speak/Fluent (spent childhood in TN)
Assamese - Can understand fully, speak okayish (wife is from Assam)
Bengali - Can understand fully, now forgetting speaking (class 11,12 in WB)
Gujarati - Can understand most of it, can speak bits & pieces (staying in GJ now)

[esarjun]

Excellent!!
After reading the comments, I get a complete different perspective

- Multilingualism is rare.. oh come and see us on adoption.
- We are more connected than the illusory language barrier

Speak, Write, Understand - Tamil (Mother Tongue) & Hindi
Speak & Understand - Malayalam (I am big fan of Mammukka), even
got "369" number for my car
& A bit of Telugu

I am also fluent in English (how can you miss this Foreign language) also a bit of French & Arabic, as I have stayed and worked in France and Mid eastern countries

[subhro1988]

This is an interesting thread. Having spent my life in different parts of India, I learnt a few languages.

Bengali - Have spent almost 20 years of my life in Bengal. So I can fluently read, speak and write in Bengali.

Oriya - Spent a few years in Orissa. So can only speak. Cannot read/write.

Hindi - Learnt in school and regular day to day activity is in this medium. Can fluently read, speak and write in Hindi.

Marathi - Having spent almost 10 years of my life in Maharashtra, I can speak but could not write/read.

[RYP]

Language is a living organism, it evolves, thrives and some become obsolete. Studies have shown that Language greatly impacts our decision making skills. Try doing this when you are indecisive about something, be it a car or a shampoo or whatever - Run the scenario's pros & cons in your mother tongue first in your thoughts, then through English, then Hindi and so on.. Things which we felt indecisive now becomes 'obvious' in another language. Different Languages run through different train of thought and makes life easier if used well.

One more interesting thing I've noticed in many people is that Language and Numbers have an inverse relationship, where someone who's good in math finds it laborious than an average Joe in learning a new language and vice versa, obviously there could be exceptions to this phenomenon.

Personally i could do a three decimal division or multiplication of any number in a matter of seconds but struggled to learn languages and still don't apart from Tamil, English, half baked Kannada and zero Hindi ( i tried :P), whereas my wife is fantastic with languages and can read, write, speak fluently in 5 languages and is completely overwhelmed when i ask say what is 33% of 300?

I've come to terms with my language skills and stopped pursuing to learn them in an academic kind of way and rather learn them in a casual way through movies, shopkeeper interactions and such.

[dragracer567]

Given that I was brought up abroad, I'm ashamed to say that I'm not fully fluent in any native Indian languages. My personal assessment of myself would be:

1) English - SWURT

Given that I studied in CBSE schools in the Gulf, we had students from all over India with everyone from different states, so English was not just a medium of instruction, it was the language we used to converse with friends. Continuously living abroad with multi-national friend circles solidified English as my primary language

2) Hindi - SUR

Originally learnt as part of my CBSE syllabus, I struggled with the language and never really understood it till I moved to Noida to do my Bachelors.

3) Tamil (mother tongue) - SUT

Mother tongue but never formally learnt it. My parents made it a point to speak to me in Tamil always, hence part of my thought process is in Tamil but I don't know how to read and write the language.

4) Malayalam - SU

A byproduct of living in the Gulf, Malayalam was hard to miss

In the course of time, I also got the opportunity to learn some non-Indian languages, these include:

1) Arabic - WR

Again, byproduct of growing up in the Gulf since Arabic was compulsory.

2) French - WUR

Took French just to get rid of learning Hindi in 9th and 10th

3) German - WUR

We had to take a foreign language during our bachelors, so I chose German.

4) Spanish - SWUR

Learnt it during my time in Ecuador and Spain, I'm almost as fluent in Spanish as in Hindi!

[bpnpmr]

Interesting post. When we speak in an Indian language rather than English, I think the bonding is better - of course, among Indian's.

Thanks to Namma Bengaluru, I can understand, speak fluently and write in English, Hindi and Kannada. I can speak fluent Telugu, however, I am poor with writing.

I spent few years in TN. I knew little Tamil before, after staying in TN learnt to speak better.

Thanks to my profession, I need to speak to people on a day to day basis, hence, I have learnt little Bengali and Malyalam as well.

That make it 7 languages.

Now working on learning Samskrutham (Sanskrit). I always wanted to learn it. There are number of resources on the internet, all for free to start learning this language.

[mmxylorider]

Envious of so many BHPians here. I am one of those regular ones. Mother tongue, common language and official language - Marathi, Hindi and English. For academic purpose, throw in Sanskrit which I learnt for 3 years during grades 6-8, with zero recollection !!! I can however read Gujarati reasonably well and hope that gets me some brownie points.
With one of my kids taking up German and the other Spanish in their high school curriculum, there is an itch to get some fluency in one of them. Time will tell.

[JojyKerala]

Grew up in the UAE and didn't have the opportunity to learn my mother tongue Malayalam.

I learnt malayalam only after coming to Kerala for higher studies. I did this by studying the letters of routes on private and KSRTC buses.

So, proficiency in Malayalam = Can speak (7 out of 10) and read (4 out of 10) but can't write (.005 out of 10).

Hindi: Can speak (7 out of 10), read (5 out of 10) and write (3 out of 10).

Now, here comes an interesting fact:

Arabic: Can read (7 out of 10), write (6 out of 10) but can't speak well (.1 out of 10). Wish i honed my Arabic-speaking skills better!

[eyedocgb]

An excellent thread.
I can read,write and speak

1.Assamese(mother tongue)

2. Bangla (Bengali) - was born in Calcutta(as it was known then) ,lived there for first 3-4 years of life.

3 .Hindi ( stayed at Delhi -Father's Central Government posting and have a second home there)

Having stayed in Delhi,can carry a conversation in Haryanvi and Punjabi too.

4. Few other languages like Marathi(1year in Nagpur),Gujrati(1 year at Dahod),Tamil and Sambalpuri (2 months each at Coimbatore and Sambalpuri,Orissa) - can talk , understand enough to examine patients and to get around
.
5. Khasi and a bit each of Jayantia and Garo languages (courtesy 6 years at Shillong)

6.Recently, picked up Bodo and Mising languages-few lines.

For 4,5,6 - working with patients and attendants has helped me a lot in picking up these languages.

Moreover,as pointed out in earlier posts,it helps to bond and blend in too plus saves from being overcharged sometimes too.

Sanskrit too ( as part of CBSE course)

English is obvious .

Lots of multilingual members here.

Thanks

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by girishv

Kannada : My mother tongue
Telugu: studied in border school/college. Novels by Ta Pu Venkataram, Yandamuri prompted me to learn reading Telugu

I read all Yandamuri novels in 80s using the Kannada translations.

[girishv]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I read all Yandamuri novels in 80s using the Kannada translations.

Me too, but later realized that there was something missing, so learnt reading Telugu.

First time I read "Nishabdam niku naku Nadya" took almost a week to complete. After six months, took only one night ☺️

Though Raja Chendur did excellent job translating, original I felt was always better.

80s really was the best time for Telugu mass novels.