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

[unni]

In my humble opinion, the best way to teach children a language is for the parents to speak only that language at home. The kids will learn English and Hindi in school (and Arabic in the Middle-East). The parents do not have to teach them those languages.

I learnt this lesson from my own experience. At the time I moved abroad from India, my elder daughter was 6 years old. She then spoke Tamil fluently (my wife is a Tamilian). Within 6 months, my daughter stopped speaking Tamil but would answer in English the questions put to her in Tamil. But then, the only common language in our home is English, since my Tamil is scanty and my wife's Malayalam is negligible.

Whereas I've never lived in Kerala, never studied Malayalam, cannot read or write in the language. Yet it is for me, literally my mother-tongue, for that was the only language in which I could communicate with my mother. If I speak Malayalam, however badly, it is only because it was spoken at home.

I was all admiration for a couple I met. The husband is from India and the wife from Switzerland. Their two sons spoke Hindi, German, French and Italian, apart from English! The parents take the credit for that.