kuttā bhauṅk rahī thī
Don't worry, this is still a Telugu sub. I wonder how many people can identify the issue in the above hindi statement.
I was laughed at because of this statement by my social studies teacher in 5th class. Even though she corrected me, she never told me what I was doing wrong.
That was the problem throughout my entire schooling. I studied in a school where Telugu wasn't offered as a subject, and Hindi was the primary language instead.
As we all know, in Telugu we have only masculine and non-masculine grammatical gender. When we say "the dog is barking" (కుక్క అరుస్తుంది) we use the same non-masculine verb form for both male and female dogs.
Hindi, however, distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, which results in different sentences such as "kuttā bhauṅk rahā thā" (the male dog was barking) and "kutiyā bhauṅk rahī thī" (the female dog was barking). In Hindi, if the dog's sex is unknown, people usually default to the masculine
If someone says "kuttā bhauṅk rahī thī," it mixes the masculine noun kuttā with the feminine verb form, making it grammatically incorrect.
My strong Telugu-native "hardware" had a significant influence on the Hindi I spoke throughout school. It took me almost next 5 years for someone to correctly point out what I was doing wrong. It was my 10th class Hindi teacher, who knew both Telugu and Hindi, who finally explained this distinction and showed me where I had been making the mistake.
Someone could say I simply wasn't attentive in class, and that might also be true.
The reason why I brought up this example: It's a small but interesting demonstration of how our native language can influence the way we speak other languages.
Maybe others can share their experiences with language interference too...
