I and my husband speak telugu at home. My son was born and has been travelling a couple of countries during his first 6 years of his life and so we had to take the common language which he and his caretaker and the locality could understand as his first language. It happened to be English and so it was his mother tongue . He never learnt any other second language all through the 6 years including my language telugu. When we shifted to India 4 years back, he had Hindia and Marathi at school and so he picked up both the languages quiet fluently. I am proud of his Hindi linguistic skills. We still speak English at home with him and he still continues to have English as his mother tongue in his records.

Last month a census lady came home and she refuses to enter his mother tongue as English in the records. She cant accept the fact that mother and father have Telugu as mother tongue and how come the son has English as mother tongue. He still doesnt know a single word of Telugu till date, so what does the definiton of mother tongue actually mean??

Is the census lady right that my son's mother tongue is Telugu or am I right that his mother is English as he was completely brought up in an English spoken atmosphere? Or the next best language Hindi takes any place for him as mother tongue?