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In mid-2019, I embarked on a month-long language homestay program in Jaipur to train myself in spoken and written Hindi. After which, I confidently journeyed to Hyderabad to commence my
fieldwork for my PhD dissertation in anthropology. To my dismay, I found it difficult to comprehend what the local people in Hyderabad, particularly the cab drivers and stall vendors were
saying. There were words I had never heard before, such as “Nakko”, and also a Telugu-ish accent to their spoken Hindi or Urdu. Some people I met who migrated from Delhi to Hyderabad
affirmed my confusion, that even though they were fluent in Hindi, they were lost in translation speaking with people in Hyderabad. I came to realise subsequently that these people in
Hyderabad were speaking in a regional tongue called Dakhni, which is not exactly Hindi or Urdu, but a dialect of Hindustani bearing a composite tongue of Persian, Marathi, Telugu and
Kannada. My exposure to Dakhni deepened through an Urdu teacher that I met in Hyderabad. In our everyday Urdu classes, I noticed that she spoke the Dakhni tongue with much ease and
affection.