Mother tongue sins

Being a Telugu speaker and a true lover of the language I had the fortune to read and hear some of the beautiful nuggets of the language. Iam sure, everyone else who has a taste for his/her mother tongue would have enjoyed the linguistic beauty of their mother tongues. All of us would surely relish speaking our mother tongues.

I have also had the misfortune to witness some not so beautiful aspects about speaking mother tongue. Iam not sure if the following ills are totally exclusive to Telugu speakers alone or present in other language speakers also, it is for you all to add.
I have seen two categories of people who do disservice to their native language. One category who speak it when it is not supposed to be spoken, another categeory who do not speak it when it is supposed to be spoken. Iam sure atleast on occasions, I also would have behaved in either way, but no harm in recording my experiences.

There is an old joke which says that when two punjabis meet, they speak in Pujabi, when two tamilians meet they speak in Tamil but when two telugus meet they speak in English. I have been a witness to this recently. I went to watch a telugu movie of the most famous telugu hero of the day. All the punches of the film are in hard-core telugu slang, only a genuine telugu would follow them. I have watched two groups of people enjoying the film in the first half. Each group amongst themselves is conversing in hard-core telugu. In the intermission, one fellow in the first group recognized an old friend in the second group and they chatted infront of me for sometime, in which language??? of course English. Again in the same theatre I saw this telugu family who came with a 5/6 year old boy. The elders themselves are speaking in chaste telugu, but with the kid they are conversing only in English. The kids talk tells me that his English is at a good level, but his Telugu language skills are a big Zero. Come on, if you want your child to develop competency in English, there are numerous other ways and other times to do it, not by converting a telugu boy into an English dude. or is it just showing off....

I also have seen it as a matter of prestige to speak in English, to show that one is posh or more civilized, even though the other fellows native tongue is same as yours.
Is this exclusive to NRIs? Not sure....

That much about the first category of people I have mentioned. Now to the second category. When you are conversing in a multi-lingual group,one suddenly starts speaking to you in your (and obviously his)native language. Others are simply dumbstruck trying to make something out of it. Likewise in a multi-lingual group, I have seen people start conversing in Telugu, just because he/she and his/her friends speak Telugu, but what about other people in the group. If one is going to speak a language just because majority of his friends speak it, how the hell will others can interact in such groups?
This is another form of disservice to the language. This is my take. Over to you..