Nilgiri
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My daughter, from her mother (Hebbar Iyengar Tamil, proper Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and a bit of Hindi) and from me (the less said the better) has learnt and is fluent to a different degree in Kannada, the Hebbar Tamil, regular Tamil, Hindi and Bengali; she is now learning French.
I am deeply ashamed to say that I have not done much about learning Telugu.
Ah ok I understand now. Thats quite a list I must say....you have raised her well. Is she in India learning French or elsewhere? A wonderful language I am glad to have learned and use daily.
Its a pity you didn't learn Telugu (Telungu as we call it in Tamil).....such a beautiful language. I do like me some old Telugu movies very much....just to hear them speak! That presentation in those movies is so sorely lacking these days.
The Tamil I speak is influenced by malayalam to quite some extent ( and I continue to discover how much all the time)...Even the numbers I use are almost all Malayalam (nalu, anju instead of nanku, eindu). To me Tamil and Malayalam are almost a langauge continuum to some extent....given the difficulty I have with some other dialects of Tamil compared to Malayalam. My parents tell me I even speak like a Malayali with my liberal use of nasal pronounciation.....its not surprising since I do trace my ancestry on both sides to Chera-natilam as we call it. @Levina @nair
It was a Chera ruler that built the great temple at Perur.....which is just across the road from where my mom was born.
Our immediate neighbourhood in Coimbatore that I am most familiar with (its in RS Puram near Gandhi park if you know where that is)...actually has a lot of Kannadiga presence....means most of my family on mothers side is quite familiar with their language (having had tenants who spoke it and temples run by them etc).
So while I'm not too comfortable speaking/writing most of malayalam (given my exposure to its core part is limited w.r.t to the influences already in the Tamil i know...which is very close to Palghat Brahmin Tamil).....I dont face this issue with Kannada most of the time. I do have to commit to learning the reading sometime.
For the most part I am just glad I have nothing to do with that abomination of "Tamil" found in Chennai hehe.
Go look at the foundation stone of the Coimbatore building. It mentions a Mrs. B. K. Roy. That was my grand-mum. She was a barefoot bride from Bogra, when she got married, and finished with a Kaisar-i-Hind, playing tennis with the Governor's wife. She was the only one in the family who spoke Telugu, from her camp days with her husband in Rajahmundhry, Bhadrachalam and the Godavari country. She was a friend of Ida B. Scudder, and I remember seeing a letter from the great lady in my grandmother's writing table.
Will definitely have to do this next time I'm there. I will ask about it with my dad in the meantime ...he knows the various histories and old places much better than I and my mom do. He often pops up with random trivia on how Coimbatore used to be all the time.
They are both actually both building a house for retirement not too far away from where the Guild is...Koundampalayam is the name I believe.
These are some fascinating connections you have...wow. All I have is that my grandfather as a young lad saw the Mahatma walk by one fine morning...something he referred to always as his most treasured moment.