THE STUDENT

                                            MEET MS.LANGUAGE..

Thulsi Madhumitha is a mother of two and a 

temple-goer like all other 'ammas' in 

Tamil Nadu. In addition, she is also a linguist, 

having mastered 15 foreign languages and 

seven Indian languages. This 45-year-old 

lawyer is also a freelance content-writer 

for several IT majors across South India.

Born as a Chennaite, brought up in Bangalore 

and having worked as a scriptwriter 

for the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, 

she has now she settled in sub-urban 

Tambaram. She is also a well known legal officer 

and translator among the MNCs in Chennai.

Recalling her childhood days in Bangalore railway 

colony, where she learnt Indian languages 

likeHindi,Kannada, Tulu,Malayalam and 

Bengali, she says, " In the colony, 

I had more than 10 friends from different states, 

and so it was not a difficult for me to pick up 

Indian languages."

"During college days, it was fun to discover 

the origin of one word everyday and in a course of time, 

I became aware of the origin of common words 

we use in everyday conversation", she said.

Explaining her fluency in Kannada, 

she said," While practicing Criminal law 

for three years in Bangalore, 

I worked with clients from Shimoga, 

Dharwad and Mysore. Through them I became 

fluent in four dialects of Kannada, 

after which learning Telugu was easy."

"Though I have learnt several Indian

 languages, Mandarin is my favorite, 

as it sounds like singing", she says. 

When I was working in Singapore, 

I was assigned to translate Chinese scripts, 

so I learnt Mandarin. After learning Japanese 

I gained enough confidence to 

pursue a career in linguistics,"

Now she teaches Japanese at the 

Anna University and has also been

 appointed in other Tamil Nadu 

and Pondicherry  Universities 

to teach Spanish, German, 

Swedish and French.

 "One who is fluent in their mother tongue 

and a foreignlanguage can become 

a translator. Housewives with 

a flair for languages can take up 

outsourcing jobs, to earn a hefty sum. 

Linguistics is an extensive field, which 

provides opportunities for anyone,

 irrespective of their age,"

Having a language library in her house, 

she said, “ it took 14 years for me to 

learn all the foreign languages.” When 

asked about her fluency in European 

languages like Portuguese and 

Swedish, she said,” I opted for 

Germen and French as a

 language subject in BA BL

and then it became easy to pick up 

European accents in no time.

While most of her languages fall under the 

Indo-European and Dravidian classes, 

she laments that she is yet to learn sign language, 

knowledge-thirsty linguist, whose teenage 

children are now fluent in seven languages.