Diluting agent of language
Candy Hunt :
Anuradha MALALASEKARA
Although most of us think that sorry is the hardest word to say,
there are many words which keep many people's tongues twisted. Most of
those words usually come from different linguistic cultures and happens
to mix up with the local language due to the language contact. As two
people who are willing to change according to each other's wishes save
their relationship while others who remain inflexible fall apart, words
which accept changes to their structures survive in a foreign linguistic
culture. Others unfortunately face a fadeout.
My memories go back to good old twenty years to the time I first
started to get my Japanese lessons at Sasakawa Centre. Sitting enjoying
every bit of salty sea breeze and a very foreign language, I started to
feel how my mother language Sinhalese and Japanese look similar in many
ways. It was almost like exchanging parts from two same jigsaw puzzles
that came in two different colours. After the class we, the new
students, were keen to talk to our sensei who was much resembled a doll
made in Japan, but we were not armed in that much Japanese so we sought
the refuge of English.
So here comes the challenge! We felt sad how our teacher struggled in
her English. She knew her English but the challenge was to her to
pronounce it! We heard words resembled 'buritushikku kaunsiru' (British
Council), hotto doggu (you guess what) and majasushikku shiti (Majestic
City) during our conversation with her, but it took us sometime time to
retrieve most of them.
After many years I realized what she did was a process what we also
happened to do over centuries. As a country which can be proud of for
been exposed to many linguistic environments, we have earned many
foreign words to nurture our lexicon. Since the Buddhism was brought and
made contacts with India, we have been presented with many foreign
concepts along with names of them. Word 'Karma' became 'karume' and
mantra' became 'manthara'. All we have done was we have added some extra
vowels to make pronunciation easier.
Same process continued when European invasions happened. English
brought the same dilemma as it was full of tongue twisting consonant
clusters. Station, school and many more words contain unpronounceable
sounds for the Sinhalese. Here comes the solution! Why don't we localize
it with some local ingredients? Station became 'istesan' or 'istesama'
and school became 'iskole'. Its important to keep in mind that these
words are vital in day today Sinhalese speech as nobody says 'dumpriya
pola' to railway station.
In Linguistics, there is an area called Epenthesis which discusses
the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior
of a word. It has been used to add some flavor into creative
performances mostly to generate humor. Writers make their characters
speak differently to reflect societal and class differences. A Sinhalese
writer can build two different characters just merely changing their
speech and this would be the first step to create urban-rural dichotomy!
That means that people who use 'processed' foreign words are
different from the ones who use the authentic one. Usually, in our
linguistic society, a person who cannot pronounce the word 'station' as
it is, is subjected to get discriminated. That reflects another layer of
society which emerges out of linguistic capabilities.
I know we all yell against stereotyping on newsprint, but when we
become a part of that society we get flushed down by the mainstream.
It is surprising that how a very interesting area of linguistics
reveals a dark side of society. Anyway it is hard to remove socially
embedded concepts, but at least we can be aware of them, though it is
hard to refrain from practicing them!
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