Language and Meaning.

I am proud to say that i am the daughter of Dr. Balaram. The only daughter if i may add. Hahaha.. I am also proud to say that i am a beautiful short Indian girl :) However, i have a problem. I can't speak Tamil well.. No no.. that would be a lie.. I cant speak Tamil at all.. Its like 'almost' a foreign language to me :S... This is due to the fact that.. at home.. my family and i speak english to each other.. At school my friends consist mainly of chinese and indians... which means we communicate in english too.. This leads to the tamil language being almost non-existent to me... and my bahasa melayu sucks like hell.. i cant even reply the mamak waiters sometimes.. i would talk to them in english and they would try and talk to me in tamil or hindi or even bahasa melayu.. This is my problem. Its just embarassing to be an indian girl and not be able to speak the language when neccessary.. I tried my best to pick up small words every now and then.. but it is so hard to keep track of all the meaning, and i tend to juggle the words and mix the meaning and then when i finally decide to use them, its all broken... This is my problem...

However, i have learned that, if you want to improve a particular language, you must try and mix around with people who uses the language daily.. eventually, you would pick it up and use them the way they use them .. I learned this through my 2 super duper cool sabahan friends.. Liya and Sara (Sara is also my puppy's name).. hahaha.. anyway.. I use to hang out with them all the time.. i would sleep over at their house, spend my weekends with them... we were really tight.. So, these 2 girls speak their local language all the time... When  they're angry, when they're upset, when they're excited, when they're hungry even when they're gossiping!... hahaha.. this may come as a surprise to you.. but it was so easy for me to understand what they were saying... some words were kind of weird to my ear and puzzles me.. but then i got use to it.. and i sometimes speak like them too.. u know.. for shit and giggles.. hahaha... but the moral of the story is.. learning foreign languages may seem hard, but the truth is all you need to do is expose yourself to the people who speak that particular language on a daily basis... because if you hang out with them daily.. you would eventually pick the language up :)

-Gayathri-