If you grew up in a Malayali household outside Kerala and understand more than you can say, this class is about you. Here is the vocabulary of migration, and the documented pattern by which a family loses a language in three generations without anyone ever deciding to. I am Dr. Reshmi R. Nair, an applied linguist from Kerala. I have taught hundreds of learners to speak Malayalam as it is actually spoken. പ്രവാസി - pravaasi - one who lives away. Not quite emigrant, not quite expatriate: it carries the sense of being away from where you belong, in principle temporarily, for a very long time. It may be the most important word in modern Kerala. THE VOCABULARY OF MIGRATION വിദേശം - videsham - foreign country ഗൾഫ് - Gulf നാട് - naadu - one's home place. നാട്ടിൽ പോകുന്നു (naattil pokunnu) means going home, and home means Kerala, whatever passport you hold. ലീവ് - leave - which for a Gulf worker means the trip home അയക്കുക - ayakkuka - to send (money) കുടുംബം - kudumbam - family ഗൃഹാതുരത്വം - grihaathuratvam - homesickness, nostalgia THREE-GENERATION LANGUAGE SHIFT First generation: the migrants. Malayalam stays the language of thought and feeling. Second generation: bilingual. They hear Malayalam at home and speak the local language everywhere else, and they shift to ANSWERING their parents in the local language while still understanding Malayalam perfectly. Linguists call this receptive bilingualism, and it is the pivot point of the whole process. A child who understands but does not produce is not lazy - they are responding rationally to being understood without effort in one language and only with effort in the other. Third generation: usually monolingual in the local language, with a handful of food words, kinship terms and endearments. Which generation are you? Comment below. #LearnMalayalam #Malayalam #Kerala