[motorpsycho]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr;4865187[LIST

[*]Havyaka - SU (Mother Tongue - A different dialect of Kannada spoken in few areas of Dakshina Kannada)[/list]

I have friends from Siri, Yellapur area and when I hear them speak their dialect of Kannada, I hardly understand anything. Funny thing is Yellapur is just 65K from Hubli and the language is so different.

[Vinod_nair]

Hindi and English - read and write and converse.
Malayalam - understand but for songs, can talk in broken Malayalam.
Urdu - understand and converse.
Arabic - understand mostly, converse tolerably.
Tamil, bengali, Punjabi - understand mostly.

[TorqueyTechie]

• Kannada - SRWU - Mother tongue
• Hindi - SRWU - Mostly due to friends, movies and little credit to hindi during school.
• English - SRWU - One of the language in school plus reading novels a lot since my younger days helped. Started speaking fluently only after joining work though. Until then it was Kanglish
• Sanskrit - R
• Telugu - RU
• Tamil - U

[Thilak29]

English
Kannada
Malayalam
Tamil
Tulu
Hindi
Telugu (limited)

Polyglot with 6+ languages.

[bj96]

English - RWS
Hindi - RWS
Bangla - RWS my wife is a Bengali. I grew up in Paschim Bongo learning Bengali in school and college
Maithili - US It is my mother tongue. It is very ancient language spoken in Mithila, place where Sita (from Janakpur, now in Nepal, in Ramayana) was born. Unfortunately this language is loosing its popularity to Hindi and now reduced to only few districts in North Bihar. Both my kids understand but can't speak. Late PM Vajpayee Ji made this as one of the recognised languages of India. Its original script is Tirhut close to Bangla script but now Devanagari is widely used.
Nepali - U (not sure, can be considered Indian language )
Marathi - U
Assamese - U
Oriya - U
Regional dialects of Hindi - US (little)

[PrasannaDhana]

I am a typical 80s Tamil guy when it comes to language proficiency, which means we don't really focus more than english and mothertongue.

The times are changing though. I teach hindi in all my schools, even from KGs. Even rural parents want hindi to be taught. So we will have a generation of kids who will be proficient in minimum 3 languages.

Speak, read, write and understand - English & Tamil

Understand - Telugu & Malayalam

[abhi_tjet]

I can read, understand, speak and write English and Hindi.

Marathi, though my mother tongue, I am not very good at. I can read/understand/speak in a broken manner.

Punjabi language was in curriculum when I was in one of the school(I have hopped at least 6 schools). Studied it for couple of years and became a bit proficient in reading/writing/understanding. However, lost touch with time.

[sidhu.algods]

I am lucky enough to travel all over India at an early age, all thanks to Dad's Indian Air force background. My mother is from Bilaspur in Madhya Pradesh, now in Chhattisgarh.

My dad finally settled in Vizag which happens to be his native place. At present I am living in Hyderabad and made this historical city my second home. My mother tongue is Telugu and I can speak English, Spanish, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali very fluently. Unfortunately my reading and writing capabilities limited to English, Spanish, Hindi and Telugu.

[Ponbaarathi]

I am from Tamilnadu. We have two language policy in schools.

Tamil - Read, Write, Speak, Understand.
English - Read, Write, Speak, Understand.
Malayalam & Telugu - Understand a little bit, mostly by watching movies.

[vivek_lm]

A topic close to my heart since I LOVE learning new languages!

Malayalam (SWUR) - mother-tongue, my brain proudly thinks in this sweet language!
English- (SWUR) livelihood, of course!
Tamil- (SUR) very similar to Malayalam and very popular in the southern part Kerala from where I hail, so it was a logical third language to pick up during childhood
Kannada- (SUR) have been in namma Bengaluru for quite a few years now
Hindi- (UR) picked up reasonably after joining the IT industry, but I still cannot converse in it without thinking through sentence by sentence
German- started learning just as a hobby during this lockdown period
Spanish- in the pipeline

[landcruiser123]

I can claim to know the following languages:
1. English - Read, Write, Speak, Understand
2. Kannada - Read, Write, Speak, Understand
3. Tamil (mother tongue)- Speak, Understand
4. Hindi - Read, Write, Speak, Understand
Others:
+French - started learning on Duolingo.
+Malayalam & Telugu - sporadic understanding if I know the context and the same words from Kannada/Tamil.

@mods: We should have a poll for the number of languages. For the sake of simplicity, anyone who has at least one skill in a language can count him/herself.

***

Language is a very interesting topic and I had a chance to interact with a student pursuing her PhD in language studies. I was surprised to learn 2 things:
1. English is a West Germanic Language
2. Sanskrit and Tamil are the classic languages in India.
Here's a broad classification of modern Langauges, similar to what she shared with me:

Originally Posted by RedTerrano

whenever we felt like having a private discussion

I don't know the etiquette in Germany.

During an international student orientation in the USA, I was advised not to have a conversation in any language except English when in a group of students from different backgrounds. I follow this rule and really get extremely irritated when students from certain backgrounds talk in the mother tongue when in a group and exclude all others from the conversation.

We are a huge country made up of numerous types of people. Original state demarcation was based on mother tongues. Despite this, people within the same state might not understand others due to different dialects.

Felt the same with people in Nothern Karnataka/Bangalore. Folks in Northern Karnataka speak Konkan & Tulu in addition to Kannada.

[shady]

Being brought up in Bangalore, I have come across multiple languages as a child interacting with neighbours, friends and studied 3 languages during school.

English - Read,write & converse
Kannada - Read,write & converse
Hindi - Read,write & converse
Malayalam - converse and read a bit (Mother tongue)
Tamil - converse
Tulu - converse (worked in Mangalore for a few years)
Telugu - understand

I used to understand Konkani when I was in Mangalore by listening to my colleagues converse but have lost touch now.

[BopsKA12]

Kodava- Mother tongue(we use Kannada script to write)-Speak,Read,Write
Erava-Tribal language spoken in Coorg-Speak
Kannada-Speak,Read,Write
Malayalam-Speak
Tamil-Speak
Hindi-Speak,Read,Write
English-Speak,Read,Write
Tulu-Speak(limited)
Telugu-Speak(limited)

[satishv1987]

English - Read, Write, Speak
Hindi - Read, Write, Speak
Tamil - Speak
Kannada - Speak
Malayalam - Speak (not very fluent though)
Telugu - Can understand

[puneetakhouri]

The best part of many Indian languages is that because the base is Sanskrit, so even if you have some understanding of one language, you kind of end up understanding the others as well as the words are synonyms to each other. For example - koshish in Hindi becomes prayatna in Marathi and becomes cheshta in Bangla.

Hindi - Mother tongue, no problems in SWUR.
English - Medium of education and school being very strict, fortunate to have a good grip over the language SWUR.
Marathi - Been in Mumbai since the last 8 years, I understand Marathi quite well and can speak and put my thoughts across.
Bangla - Was brought up in Ranchi, being close to Bengal, there is some Bengali influence in our lives so can understand Bangla very well.
Oriya - Oriya being similar to Bangla and one of my close friends being one, do understand it as well. Cant speak though.
Assamese - My many friends from college were Assamese so was able to understand and communicate in it.
Haryanvi - Hat Ja Tau!! My college was in Haryana, one of the most fun languages I have ever come across. Can understand and speak as well.
Punjabi - Lots of punjabi friends and the music is the reason for it.