Malayalam, a language of God's own country! Options

[Nimii]

I always found Malayalam a sweet language. It is a bit sing a song when spoken.

It is an interesting thing to note that most of the south indian languages have lot of words with a bit of change in the sound so similar. Dr.Unni what does thou have to say here?

N

[tres]

....Its only among Mallus that i have noticed a strange shame in acknowledging that they are Mallus....They gladly admit (with relief, many a times) that they know nothing of the language and they can speak in bits and pieces only......

Very true.. I will relate u all an incidence..

Few years back i was exploring a marriage proposal for myself. The girl hailed from a Malayalam family, residing in Mumbai.

A common friend of ours called me up to tell me that they (ladkiwaale) were expecting me to go and visit them. I told myself, 'Yea.. it had to be like that.. so let it be like that'. But what if they start firing rapid questions in Malayalam the moment they see me??? Well, I will tell them that since I was born and brought up in Bhilai, my Malayalam sucks! But what if the girl was born in Mumbai and hers was still fluent?

Finally, I asked this common friend to tell them that I’d prefer to meet the girl at a coffee joint before meeting her family up.. They seemed to be keen on accepting whatever proposals I were making, for they did agree to it! A meeting place and time was fixed; and never once I had a chance to talk to her in between (for some strange reasons I myself avoided it!)

Driving down to that meeting-place I kept wondering how to start? The obvious 'Hi!' will have to be followed by either a Malayalam sentence or an English one.. I decided to shoot off with English.. Yes. 'Hi! How do u do... Let me first apologize for having kept you waiting for so long!' (I was already late by 15mins).

I sensed I wanted to avoid Malayalam in every possible way!

I found her waiting for me at the entrance of the joint (I had seen her photograph earlier). Parking my vehicle and sporting a big apologetic grin on my face, I approached her. But before I could even blurt out a word, she raised her warning index finger towards me and said, "Please, don't expect me to speak in Malayalam.. My Malayalam sucks!"

Can't tell u how glad I was at that time.. But later that night I really regretted once again for being so poor in my mother-tongue..