Why Differentiate amongst us???

My husband and I talk in Hindi, because our mother tongues are different. But when we go out for shopping, we generally try to stick to Kannada, the local language. My husband thinks it’s necessary or the vendors here take you for a ride. So every time we go shopping, if I am asked in Hindi, I reply right away in Kannada, to show I am Local. I am local anyways, I was born in Mysore. J

Over the weekend, we went shopping for vegetables in the big fresh market, in the center of the Mysore city. We were buying fruits and we stopped at this vendor to buy Chikoo. The vendor was a typical villager, uneducated farmer. I asked him the price in Kannada. And my husband and I talked in Hindi..almost whispered. The vendor still caught that and asked right away, “Doesn’t he know Kannada?”. I replied positively, that he does know, but he’s not fluent and that he didn’t catch your dialect correct. I asked him, “Why, SHOULD he know Kannada?”. The vendor was quick in saying “Yes, of course he should know Kannada, he is living here!”My husband obviously did not like that and told me to tell him, ‘Had he not come here to Mysore and made better money than others, he would not have a customer like him buying his fruit’. I gave the vendor an earful that it is incorrect to distinguish amongst us. We all belong to this 1 country and that there a so many languages in our country that he doesn’t know of! Of course, he accepted that I was right and he was wrong; eventually I was going buy his fruits right!

My husband had a different point of view though, ‘the vendor was not that bothered about we speaking Hindi, but more that a north Indian guy got to marry a Kannada girl (me)’. FYI: My husband is more south Indian than me! LOL  - still the same issue of differentiating based on language!!!