A Piece Rewritten For The Language Enthusiasts अर्थात भाषा -प्रेमी ग्रुप साठी
ENGLISH, DESI FLAVOUR AND OF COURSE ME!
Children are always amazing. Indeed they are! They
are spontaneous and down right funny. They coin words in such a way that you
and me would never imagine. In case we were to incorporate these children’s
quotes in some Children’s Dictionary it would certainly make interesting
reading.
Sarah, my grand- daughter, is now
nine years old. She lives in Saudi with her parents and visits us during her
vacations. She speaks fluently in Hindi and English. When she is around here in
India,
she tries to speak to us in Marathi, often coining words in a funny way. On one such occasion, when they had come to visit us. It was
some four years ago or so. One fine morning, I was surprised to see a peacock on the roof top of a
building just opposite to ours. So I called out Sarah, “Sarah, come here. लौकर ये, तो बघ मोर! Can you see that
peacock over there?” I was stunned when she said," हं बाबा, मी देखलं!" She had just coined a new word ' देखलं - dekhla' ; ‘I saw’, was what she meant.
Mi = I (in Marathi) but the word dekla was indeed innovative – coined
from Hindi dekha देखा and Marathi baghit la बघितलं , both meaning ‘saw’.
Then there was this kid, Bharati,
some 8 years or so. She had come to visit my mami (aunt), who happened to be the girl’s granny. Bharati was
telling her about her school, her teacher and recited all the poems she had
learnt. My mami was impressed; I
could see it in her eyes. “My little Bhartu, oh my phad phad English speaking doll, माझी फाड फाड इंगलिश बोलणारी बाहुली!", so saying she picked her up and
took her in her arms. Embarrassment was writ all over her face – grown up girl
of 2nd standard being taken up and thus cuddled in arms – this was
simply too much. But what the little one said was amazing. “Oh God, Aaji आजी (granny) has taken me kade!” Spontaneously she had used the beautiful
Marathi word ‘kade’ (कडे वर घेणे) for crude English
‘taken me in her arms’.
Children are funny! This happened
when Sanju, my nephew, was young (But he is still funny. But that’s a different
story), may be he was about six years of age then,. He was looking at our ceiling fan. Suddenly he
said, “ मामा, तुमचा पंखा गर गर फिरतो ?(Mama, your fan goes round and
round)”. “ का? तुमचा गोल गोल फिरत नाही का?(Why, yours doesn’t?)”, I asked. “ होय, तो गर गर फिरतो पण तो नाही -नाही असं करतो. (Yes, it does. It goes ‘gur gur’ But it also says ‘No – No)”, so
saying he moved his neck to the left and then to the right and repeated the
action several times. " हे असें (In this manner)". I
realised that he was talking about the table fan in his room.
What perhaps started as child’s
innovative episodes is now taking firm root in our write ups and
communications. One may like certain ‘Hinglish’ words, but to use these words
in formal communications is some thing else. I have decided to preserve, at any
cost, my Oxford Dictionary (1950 edition), passed on to me by my father. It has
all the authentic English words and phrases and idioms. The current editions of
Oxford Dictionary, they say, have some 200 Indian words. (We should be proud,
you would say) Words like bungalow, masala,
vindaloo, lakh(lac), crore, taluka and many others have been popular and frequently used by English speakers in Britain and America sine
the time of the British Raj. Their
distinction of being of Indian origin is almost forgotten. Who knows, the dictionary will have phrases
like – “She will take mi kade”( it
will not required to put it in italics), ‘The earth goes gur gur around itself’ and ‘his
aai and baba took good care of
him’. At times, it is quite a fun to read the net lingo. Some of these words are
also incorporated, again they say, in the latest edition of Ox. Dic.( that’s my
abbreviation 4 u). Hence we have some thing like ‘chillax’ (chill out and
relax), ‘stavacation’ (staying at home on a vacation).
Do we know what ‘Emoji Pictograph’ is? Refer to a dictionary, you would say. And there you are! We do have ‘emoji pictograph’ in Oxford Dictionary- an entry that is not a word but a symbol, a record of sorts, I believe, showing a yellow smiley face weeping tears of laughter. It has been declared as ‘THE WORD OF THE YEAR’, a ‘No –Word’ is being declared as a word. Now there could be more of such emoticons. And soon all the words in Oxford Dictionary may all be replaced by pictures or signs. For every action there could be representative picture or sign. For every emotion there would be emoticon. One may start wondering whether it is English Dictionary or Chinese!
Do we know what ‘Emoji Pictograph’ is? Refer to a dictionary, you would say. And there you are! We do have ‘emoji pictograph’ in Oxford Dictionary- an entry that is not a word but a symbol, a record of sorts, I believe, showing a yellow smiley face weeping tears of laughter. It has been declared as ‘THE WORD OF THE YEAR’, a ‘No –Word’ is being declared as a word. Now there could be more of such emoticons. And soon all the words in Oxford Dictionary may all be replaced by pictures or signs. For every action there could be representative picture or sign. For every emotion there would be emoticon. One may start wondering whether it is English Dictionary or Chinese!
But I shall have my own
dictionary, the original one, to check that I have spelt ‘Quality’ correctly
and not written as Kwality and would not need any Xpert (sorry, expert to
be correct) to tell me about it. I shall have all the samoaas, tikkas, paneer, tandoories- the whole lot of Indian
cuisine – with all its desi
flavour. But as for English --- no desi flavour please!
More loyal to Queen’s English than the Queen herself!
Vinay Trilokekar
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