My 2 paise on languages
We learnt Hindi as it was pushed as Rastra basha not out of love. My uncle working in bank got promotion after he passed Hindi exams, it was pushed hard by central govt.
We learnt Kannada my mother tongue as fish takes to water. Sanskrit, astrology came naturally helping our grandfather & uncles in purohitke.
Growing up Telugu was very easy to pick up, Tamil & Malayalam also easy as they shared many common words & phrases. We learnt them in fun. It was joy to try speaking in them, make mistakes & blunders sometimes. I myself fondly remember how my friends used to make fun of my Tamil, the number of times we laughed innumerable.
Hindi was not the same, It was like a foreign language, we had a separate Hindi teacher who used to come twice a week to our class & used to lose temper when we made mistakes. She was fair & foreign to us, she used to make learning Hindi difficult & not fun for us. I learnt Hindi hating the language, it was forced on us - if ever there is a chance for me to undo anything in my childhood it will be about Hindi. Today I know to read write & speak Hindi, however I consciously avoid that language. My experience is not anecdotal, growing up I found most of my friends had same feeling towards Hindi & it's teacher.
Another issue which aggravates is this - Tamizh when they come to Bangalore or KA learn Kannada so fast, same with Telugu speakers or even Malayalam speakers (they are slowest among South Indians to adopt another South language) but (the big BUT) northis when they come do not learn our language. I have personally met people staying for decades in KA & not learning our language. When asked say nonchalantly - there is no need as most Kannadigas know Hindi. They never make even an iota of effort.
Legally, I found out recently that Hindi is not declared rastra basha as per Constitution. I find it amusing/annoying that GOI spends crores on pushing Hindi on non Hindi speakers at the cost of our native language. This is unacceptable to me as a non Hindi speaker & a tax paying citizen
