Ente Malayalam(My Malayalam)…

Relentlessly googling for the answers to my prayers , I shrieked with joy when my searching eyes finally found themselves focussed on these words…

“MALAYALAM, a Dravidian language of India, was recently rated one of the hardest languages to learn by the World Language Research Foundation”, read the google page.

Yes, finally I found proof to win my argument!  Having been taunted for ages ,well it seems too long ago now, for having possessed exemplary (sarcasm at its peak here!) speaking proficiency in the language.

India, being the land of cultural, religious and linguistic diversity finds itself home to 22 beautiful recognised languages. Malayalam being one of the hardest known languages among them. Obviously it’s a piece of cake for malayalees..being their mother tongue and all. But for poor souls like me who end up in God’s own country with a slightly funny slang and grammatical  errors, we are done for !

I love the language but its too damn hard to get a hang of: the confusing alphabets (most of which sound alike)  and the tricky tongue twisting  phrases to be familiar with . To all those people who have mastered this tongue , I salute you folks!

But since life is oh so kind to me! , thankfully I now have a saviour to take care of my special needs. Tis, my good friend and closed confidante is my on demand translator..nobody gets me like she does! However complicated the sentence be, she is spot on. People have actually started asking her directly what it is that I was implying. Talk about reading one’s mind! She processes my string of Malayalam words into bits that my dear friends can understand.

So why have I not decided to end the charade and learn Malayalam once and for all?

It’s simple.

My friends find my weird, partly correct partly wrong shreds of malayalam amusing . I have been using that as a conversation starter quite often. Probably this is what Chandler felt like! I use my broken language and the humour that follows to my advantage, making people laugh , some may call it absurd but it eases the tension when I meet new people. We all have our crazy theories to adhere to. This just happens to be one of mine!

Between  La spelled as ല, ള, ളെ, ലെ  , Ta spelled as ത, റ്റ, തെ, റ്റെ , Na Spelled as ന, നെ and pronouncing the “zh” in Vazhappazham , Malyalam is fun!  And I love ente(my) quirky Malayalam!