Mother tongue is the native language, which a person has grown up speaking from early childhood. In every family, there are at least two tongues (languages), i.e., spoken language by mother and father.

When a child is very young, say between one and three years old, most often we see people don’t teach them the grammar nor pronunciation. The adult people while interacting with them sometimes speak the meaningless language of blabber and also make strange sounds. Because children also make different sounds and they love their sounds. We get down to their level and get immersed in their sounds. An educated person is also not ashamed while interacting with children like that. If the same person records and listens to the sounds made while conversing with very young children, would laugh at oneself. The connectedness with the children and love, helps a person communicate with infants through such sounds. It is the communication of love with children, beyond words. In contrast, an educated specialist would make his language more complicated with jargon. Just like a doctor would spoil his handwriting to write prescriptions for a patient, which is understood only by the pharmacist. They would never make it simple to be comprehended by ordinary people. Similary, the jargon of economics is made complex, otherwise it is simple science.

My mother tongue is Telugu. The mother is the first teacher for a child. Naturally, the language known to the mother is the language taught to the child. Education spoils the mother tongue in the name of the refined language. And also an educated mothers tongue (language) is also altered, so there is no way for the transfer of authetic mother tongue to a child.

Writing is required to be grammatically correct. People are less concerned about grammar while speaking. Spoken language is like a shot arrow and cannot be corrected once said. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are two large size states with so many dialects and historical background. But the government is not concerned to print the textbooks based on the dialects for the children in elementary schools. Based on the literature and the board members constituted for preparing the textbooks the language is decided. In the name of the common language, the local dialects are condemned to be lost.

A child educated in the respective mother tongue should get the highest marks. But I saw many times the children getting more marks in another language, such as Sanskrit rather in their mother tongue. Sanskrit is called as scoring marks language by students. That is the motivating factor for many children choosing Sanskrit even in higher education as a language. As a child, I was a poor student in learning including Telugu. Although I learned Telugu till fourth class, my mother tongue, i.e., local dialect did not change. So the definition of my mother tongue is that I still retain the language spoken by my mother + family members + basti language spoken by friends and others + the mix of other languages spoken in the locality + reading + listening to the media +__ +. Therefore being a Hyderabadi, I had a particular flavour of spoken Telugu with a mix of say 85% local Telugu language, 10% Urdu and 5% English. Erstwhile, Hyderabad state now Telangana State, was never ruled by the British, so there was a less artificial intrusion of English into the local language. I took Hindi, Sanskrit and English languages for my studies in the school. If I studied the Telugu Language in school till 10th Class, I would have lost my mother tongue and learned the Telugu called Grandhika Telugu (or bookish Telugu) and would have become an average Telugu speaker. I would not have got good marks in Telugu too. Because I need to unlearn my mother tongue and learn so many new words of alien Telugu. To appear as a learned person, people even with difficulty speak the Grandhika Telugu rather than speak in their native tongue. Sometimes people laugh at those speaking the mother tongue. There is another spoken Telugu called, Vyavaharika Telugu (colloquial Telugu). It is the Telugu language commonly used for the understanding of everyone which is close to the Grandhika Telugu. It is spoken by the Media people such as in Radio and Television. I did not learn even the Vyavaharika Telugu which is understood in general by all the people in the state. It is a difficult challenge to make everyone understand a commonly spoken language when the state is so vast and diverse. In fact, there is no ‘commonly spoken Telugu’.

Once it happened that, while studying Geography, a lady from the All India Radio came for a short bite on the environment for a radio program. She asked me a few questions, and she recorded. Before leaving she said, ‘Your spoken Telugu is not suitable for broadcasting on the radio.’ For the first time in my life, I realized that my language understood by everyone around me is now alien. Still, I preferred and continued to speak the Telugu language that I knew, even if it is alien to the establishment and some people. It gave me lots of freedom of thought and choice of words. I could focus on the subject more rather on the words, which anyway is not understood by some people or the other.

Once I went to Bhimadole a town in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. The Telugu language spoken in the West Godavari has a typical dialect with accent and charm. I was the program officer for the National Environmental Awareness Campaign program. The program was organised by the Gowthami Social Service Society. It was my first public address in life. The venue was in the coconut and mango grove. About 100 people gathered. I started speaking but saw that no one is listening and there is no expression on their face. They are not able to understand my spoken Telugu. It was a mix of Telangana Telugu, Urdu and few English words. I thought the Telugu people could understand my spoken language. Finally, the organisation head understood my problem. The issue was resolved by arranging an interpreter to convert my Telugu into the local Godavari Telugu dialect.

Although I faced so many challenges, but never lost my dialect. It had the geographical identity (GI) and especially liked by the local people where it is becoming a rarely spoken language with the influence of media and school education. I spoke several times on Television and gave lectures on diverse topics but always spoke in my mother tongue. People from Telangana are simple, hardworking and straight. The sentences are also simple with a punch and slight humour. I am thankful for the geography, history, and culture which taught me to speak the Telugu which has become an inseparable part of my personality too.