aug 20th, 2012 CE
i have felt for a long time that bangalore is *the* best city in the country, period. it is also the future metropolis; which means the same bad elements that have colonized mumbai will move/have already moved in.
i regret that, though i lived there for some years, i only managed to learn a smattering of kannada. that was partly because it is so easy to get by with my (bad) hindi and (bad) tamil, if not english.
4 comments:
Partly, local Kannada people are also to be blamed for this. I have had a very bad experience for living as an outsider in Bangalore a few years ago.
Adult migrants not learning the local language is sad, but can be forgiven. It is an atrocity when children growing up in a state are not taught the local language. This sad state of affairs is severe in Mumbai and Bangaluru.
i think it serves very little purpose to talk about the domination of the local language in urban areas. madras has a huge chunk of telugu speaking people. likewise mumbai with gujaratis. delhi with bengalis. so also bangalore with tamils and more recently north indians. people migrate from various parts of the country to urban centers for better prospects. nobody is going to say no to learning the local language - when it comes naturally and they have time for it. but for locals to harp on the domination of local language doesn't make much sense and borders on jingoism. kannada is talked throughout karnataka - why pick on a metropolitan place like bangalore?
btw i live in bangalore and have multiple neighbours from various parts of india. a sindhi neighbour (who moved here a few years back) of mine talks kannada fluently. likewise some tamil neighbours. but a malayali neighbor and me (and my wife) can't speak much kannada. for some it comes easily, for some it doesn't. what's the big deal?
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