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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
'Bigg Boss' was the first time I was exposed to a situation where I had to only speak in Hindi. Prior to that, I was learning but never practising.
I speak Hindi fluently because my mother speaks only in Hindi and Urdu.
While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.
I watch a lot of Hindi films. I live in Hyderabad, where 60 per cent of the people speak Hindi.
Hindi has never been a trouble. In fact, Hindi is the only language I can speak and write apart from Malayalam and English.
I am learning English and can understand better than I can speak it. But having said that, I am learning as quickly as I can.
I speak of knowledge, sir, which is not the bed-equal of learning ... I speak of what comes from learning. I speak of understanding.