Happieee Mother Language Day! Yaay! :)

It's the International Mother Language Day today! Yaay! :D

My mother tongue is Telugu. It is one of the six languages designated a classical language of India.It is spoken by 74 million people around the globe.It is thirteenth in the Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages worldwide.
Pride.

My telugu wasn't a cake walk.It was more of an adventure into a world I've never been before :)

Long long ago..in 2002, my second language at school was hindi, till my 5th grade.Then suddenly my mom gets this tinge, that I'm losing out on the language I belong to.In my 5th summers I was taught to walk, talk, read, write, dance and draw in telugu.I had a 98 in hindi ,and i couldn't get a hang of why my mom was behind a new language i haven't learnt before.Tadaa and 6th class had telugu in store for me.All I wrote was shit!So many spelling mistakes.So many errors.For someone who's done everything in hindi, it was troublesome to do the same in telugu all of a sudden.It started hitting me hard when i lost the race for no 1 in class because of *Telugu*. (Ya it mattered very much :p)My teachers were very patient.I must mention - without my Mom , Rama Devi maam and Gopala Krishna sir I wouldn't be able to read & write 'anything-telugu' so efficiently today.
Gratitude.

But it was fun back then, challenging myself with an all new language,what my friends learnt in 5 years was something I had to learn in one summer!

My mom made sure I learnt everything and everyday about the language I belonged to.I used to have an icecream bowl beside and the task was to write all the alphabets neatly twice or thrice before it melts and turns into milk.She has been instumental in keeping the connect through stories, books, classics and strictly maintaining a 'speak telugu only'household.She put in as much effort as I had to.It never felt difficult.Hardwork,Yes !A lot of that went in.We both did it together.

With few spelling mistakes and few more dictations and more and more telugu running through my nerves ,the years passed and I was in 10th,5 years passed,it was 2007!

We had an awesome telugu teacher-Gopala Krishna Sir,who is a walking telugu dictionary.Not just dictionary.Everything telugu.Pure, perfect telugu.He often said this one liner in class -  "Aikamathyame maha balam".We used to laugh it off then.
Now it all makes sense.That's what leadership is - to work with a team and reap better! ;)

I would have missed out on so much fun, hadn't my mom set me up with telugu early in life. I'm a linguaphile.My love for language always makes me curious to express myself in every language i know, but, the beauty of expressing emotions in mother tongue cannot be matched to any foreign language.I love speaking in telugu ,and my love of it propels me to pick up these one liners from movies(thats the only form of active telugu I get to interact with these days) I watch, effortlessly I store and I make sure I throw them on someone :p
Mana bashalo matladthe oche kicke verabba.Aaan :D

P.S - India is home to 780 different languages and 86 different scripts. The sad part is, we have lost nearly 250 languages in the last 50 years.

Let's make sure we don't lose telugu.Keep talking.Keep listening.Keep spreading the ♥ love. :)

P.P.S - You might be wondering why I'm posting something SO telugu in english :P
1) I don't want to spoil the script by typing it in english.

2) Too lazy to find a script converter :p

3) 1 & 2 again.