第436期:The Languages of India

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Todd: Nitya, in the U.S. we have many different parts of the country and people are very different. What about India? Are people very different in different regions?

Nitya: Yeah, I like, I think that in India the different parts, they have totally different languages, that's sometimes it's a problem because somebody who comes for a travel, for traveling or something in the northern part of India, from South, it's really difficult for them to manage the language, because though our national language is Hindi, and also like, the constitutional national language is English, but still, I mean, India is really huge, people coming from the South, there are some people like who do, who do understand Hindi to some extent, but there are many people who don't understand at all.

Todd: Really, they don't speak Hindi?

Nitya: Yeah, because we have 33 national languages. (Wow) so,

Todd: You have 33?

Nitya: 33, and like if you take on the whole, it's 345 or something

Todd: Man, that's incredible.

Nitya: Yeah, and I think that, I think that every child from India should be able to speak around two to three languages, basically.

Todd: What are the most common languages that people speak in India?

Nitya: I think Hindi, Guthratti, Punjabi, I think I cannot say common. Every state, every like, we have 27 states in India. Every state has it own language. Our general language.

Todd: 27 different general languages. (Yeah) That's what divides the country is the languages?

Nitya: No, it's divided by the states, I mean different states we call different parts of it, and also by the language. Yep.

Todd: Wow, that's pretty amazing. So you said Punjabi.

Nitya: Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam. (Wow) Huge, yeah.

Todd: That's pretty amazing. How many languages do you speak?

Nitya: Six.

Todd: Six.

Nitya: Yep.

Todd: What do you speak?

Nitya: Ok, I can speak Hindi. I can speak Punjabi a little bit, and I can understand the whole of it all, and I can speak Tamil. I can speak Malayalam because Malayalam is my mother's language. She's from the southern part of India. My dad is from the north part of India and I speak Hindi. I understand Telugu, and I guess Marathi also a little bit.

Todd: Wow, and that's not even including English or Japanese.

Nitya: Yeah, OK, and then you include English and Japanese and that.

Todd: That's amazing. OK, well, thanks Nitya.