…  in which Malayalis don’t speak like Malayalis.

In the recent past, I have come across a few youth-ish films in which youngsters talk like foreigners learning Malayalam. (At least the foreigners sound cute.) In reality, even in Bangalore, I don’t hear so much Englishised Malayalam as that. Malayalis born and brought up outside Kerala may have this difficulty in twisting their tongues to the ‘zhas’ and ‘Las’ of Malayalam. When I look around, I see my son and children of my friends let go the perfect Malayalam that their parents taught them when they started speech. In this multi-cultural environment that they are growing up in, holding on to one language is very tough. The children are shifting to a mixed accent right before our eyes, and there is not much we can do about it, except insist they stick to the Mother-tongue at home.

But Kerala is a different story. Or isn’t it? I don’t remember coming across such atrocious accent in Kerala so far. Maybe it is cleverly evading me.

If the youth in Kerala really speak like that, I pity them.
If they don’t, I still pity them, because many of them are going to watch these films and begin faking their accent.

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Malayalam, a Unique Language