I had my first author conference call today for the adaptation I've been handling as a development editor. The professor is based in Bengaluru, near the southern tip of India in the state of Karnataka. My boss and I sat together in a conference room sharing a speakerphone, listening while the professor's assistant dialed us in and summoned him to the line.
The professor was in another meeting, so his assistant blurted out a string of other-language unintelligibles and put us on hold. While soothing jazz played over the intercom, I turned to my boss and conversationally asked, "What did he just say?"
My boss shook his head like, What a question. "Oh, I have no idea. He was speaking in his native tongue."
I had been assuming that because what I'd heard wasn't English, it had to have been Hindi. It was then that I remembered there are twenty-two official languages spoken in India. That doesn't even count the unofficial combinations. I find myself reading signs without realizing, that loopy non-roman alphabet isn't even devanagari. I could be looking at a third (fourth, fifth, sixth...) language without even knowing it.
Here I was proud of myself for buying groceries in Hindi. Arre wah.
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