A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish.
During the making of 'Abdullah' I asked the assistant director to teach me Hindi; he taught me to read the script too. He also taught me Urdu. Now I can sign autographs in Hindi, Urdu and can write my name in Tamil.
Now I know Hindi, and I can read and write Hindi, but the problem is that I can't improvise when I am acting because I think in English, so I have to translate my thinking from English to Hindi, and therefore, I speak slowly.
Once, a man at the customs duty check at the Delhi Airport asked me a question in Hindi, and I told him that I didn't speak the language. He got angry and said, 'How could you not speak in Hindi? Hindi is our mother tongue.' I told him that it wasn't my mother tongue. He got furious, and made me wait for over 45 minutes.
Dubbing for myself in Hindi is a big task. I know Hindi. I can read and write Hindi, but I dont normally speak the language, and that is very important.
I'm not a television anchor for a Hindi channel or a radio jockey. So I may not be able to have a spontaneous conversation in Hindi. I'm a Bollywood actress, and I can certainly speak my dialogue in Hindi.
While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.
Hindi has never been a trouble. In fact, Hindi is the only language I can speak and write apart from Malayalam and English.
Until we got married, Radha didn't utter a word of English and now she won't speak Hindi. Her Hindi's pretty good actually - she learnt it while watching Hindi movies.
I haven't even grown up on Hindi films because my Hindi is bad; I am a Parsi and we speak English or Gujarati at home.
Of course you cannot compare my Hindi with a Hindi-speaking person, but I am confident enough to hold a conversation in mixed Hindi-English.
For 'Dum Maro Dum,' I had a diction tutor, as I had to get rid of my Hyderabadi Hindi and learn Goan Hindi. It wasn't easy, because these two kinds of Hindi were mutually incompatible. I had to unlearn one kind of Hindi and then learn a new kind.
I watch a lot of Hindi films. I live in Hyderabad, where 60 per cent of the people speak Hindi.
I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.
I was born and brought up in London, so I couldn't speak Hindi properly. But as I am socialising more with my Hindi speaking friends, I'm getting better at the language.
While I am fluent in Hindi, I was a little worried about my accent. So when I was approached for 'Karwaan,' I told them they need to first listen to me speak in Hindi, in case it sounds off.