thank you for the explanation

You're welcome. I've spent a little over 5 weeks in Tamil Nadu in the past decade, surrounded by the friends and family of a good friend (and I see a lot of them here, too). While almost everybody, but the oldest, speak English, a lot of the daily speech around me was in Tamil, and while I've looked through dictionaries and reference grammars, I do not really speak or read it, but I do know what it sounds like. And, I must say, I am truly amazed at how young kids learn English in India. I found myself at various times speaking to and playing word games with kids as young as four, all the way up to 18 or 20. In fact, one of the youngest was suspicious of me that I did not seem to speak Tamil (besides telling taxi drivers ille "no"). She'd never met anybody who could not speak Tamil. LOL, or MDR as the French say.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.