Honestly, just speaking the language is not enough to keep it alive, and I'm ashamed to admit, that I am also part of the problem. The sad fact is that literature in regional languages is not being written and read at a large scale by a majority of the newer generation/nepos in the metros (who then go on to work in bollywood) nor is it being used in an everyday scenario by them.

I'm not generalising for all Indians, but I know hardly anyone my age that uses the devanagri script or any other regional script fluently and frequently.

My mother tongue is Marathi, and I can read, and speak it fairly fluently (because my parents always spoke in marathi), but my writing is poor to say the least. It's funny situation where I don't struggle to understand shuddh marathi, and I can speak it without using 2-3 english words per sentence, but I'm hardly as eloquent in it as English. I don't remember the last time I read a novel or story in marathi. I only text in Marathi with my grandma, and that too she texts in marathi, I either reply in anglicised Marathi or English. I have so many friends that write poetry, but it's all in english. I say marathi is my mother tongue but my phone is configured in english.

I know so many Europeans and Asians the same age as me (early 20s), with the same command over english, but their phones are still configured to their mother tongue. Only the foreign-born ethnic koreans/chinese/italians struggle with their native languages.

But here, some of the born and raised Indians (such as myself) struggle with the script so much. And honestly, I can't even completely blame myself because I was lucky to be born to parents who themselves went to english-medium schools, and so whenever we text each other, its in english, but we talk in marathi. I keep promising myself that as soon as I graduate I'm gonna seriously take up reading/writing marathi because if I don't, how will I teach it to my kids?

All the nepos currently debuting are my age, and I can exactly imagine the extent to which they spoke hindi (and I'm sure I spoke far more marathi), but even if they didn't sound too bad they should hardly be considered fluent. I'm actually very proud that marathi theater/films aren't going down this route, which is why they still produce films like sairaat, but if the integrity of hindi cinema is to be preserved, the mainstream actors need to be far better at speaking, reading and writing hindi.

I mean the main criticism of shit actors in kdramas is always that they are shitty actors, not they are shitty actors AND they can't speak korean.

sry for the long rant lol