Unglish
As an English-speaking Indian, I am cut off from the free and uninhibited exercise of language. I know the tourist's Hindi, which allows me to function in the local market and perhaps half-chat with a friend. I can cuss, but without salt and spit. Hindi writing is a closed world; the written language is not as louche as the spoken one. It may be that the memory of a short story by the great Munshi Premchand (read in high school, painfully, word by word) survives to keep the door to the presumed universe of Hindi literature open just a sliver. But what's the point of that?
I know the dilettante's Italian -- enough to read by, and enough to miss nearly every nuance sensible to the adept. I can speak Italian to exchange information, but not to enlighten.
French: I read a bit, produce a pungent accent, but can't say 'Rachel' well enough to please a girl named Rachel.
Spanish: Okay, I struggled semi-successfully through a lengthy passage in sixteenth-century Castilian -- on the strength of my dilettante Italian.
Farsi: Grammar's a cinch, but my vocabulary is khaile khaile kochik. Not a sentence goes by in which every word is an old friend.
Arabic: Forgot it at an impressionable age.
Marathi: Forgot it ditto. And I have family who speak nothing else!
Punjabi: Alas, none. Living in Delhi.
Telugu: Wokkati, rendu... I spent nine academic years in rural Andhra Pradesh. Admittedly, at boarding school.
Urdu: A purely mechanical conoscenza; I can read the words... But Mirza Ghalib is clothed, when he is clothed at all, in coarse literalness. Who can show me what the big deal is about zulfein?
Wish I knew (in alphabetical order): Czech, French, Gaelic, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Ladakhi, Lakota, Latin, Marathi, Pashto, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Telugu, Turkish, Urdu, Welsh. Oh, Danish, after watching Babette's Feast. But why I wish I knew these languages, that's hard to figure out. (But not impossible, of course.)
And English. It is my first language -- my mother tongue, the vessel of what thoughts I have, the source of my livelihood and the engine of my imagination. These days, Indians have claimed it, parked their golden Sonatas and black Optras right on top of it, poked their flag into its balding crown. But that's no language, it's a happy muddle. You can't be subtle in Hinglish, unless you want to be subtly ridiculous.
Living in India, in my own land and history, breathing (when possible -- cough, cough, thhoo) my own air, surrounded by Bengalis, Mallus, Punjus, and other oo's, ee's, ites and wallas, I am a linguistic exile. The (real) English, Brits, Britishers or United Kingdomites speak and write (when they can do either) a language that is in their very hair roots. They get it genetically, from their grandparents. Americans speak American, with the speed of summer lightning (to borrow rudely from Henry Higgins). They are glib -- even too glib. But I'm an island. Not Simon & Garfunkel's rock, rather more like a muddy sandbank in a polluted river, into which many things have sunk, but few grown.
I know the dilettante's Italian -- enough to read by, and enough to miss nearly every nuance sensible to the adept. I can speak Italian to exchange information, but not to enlighten.
French: I read a bit, produce a pungent accent, but can't say 'Rachel' well enough to please a girl named Rachel.
Spanish: Okay, I struggled semi-successfully through a lengthy passage in sixteenth-century Castilian -- on the strength of my dilettante Italian.
Farsi: Grammar's a cinch, but my vocabulary is khaile khaile kochik. Not a sentence goes by in which every word is an old friend.
Arabic: Forgot it at an impressionable age.
Marathi: Forgot it ditto. And I have family who speak nothing else!
Punjabi: Alas, none. Living in Delhi.
Telugu: Wokkati, rendu... I spent nine academic years in rural Andhra Pradesh. Admittedly, at boarding school.
Urdu: A purely mechanical conoscenza; I can read the words... But Mirza Ghalib is clothed, when he is clothed at all, in coarse literalness. Who can show me what the big deal is about zulfein?
Wish I knew (in alphabetical order): Czech, French, Gaelic, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Ladakhi, Lakota, Latin, Marathi, Pashto, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Telugu, Turkish, Urdu, Welsh. Oh, Danish, after watching Babette's Feast. But why I wish I knew these languages, that's hard to figure out. (But not impossible, of course.)
And English. It is my first language -- my mother tongue, the vessel of what thoughts I have, the source of my livelihood and the engine of my imagination. These days, Indians have claimed it, parked their golden Sonatas and black Optras right on top of it, poked their flag into its balding crown. But that's no language, it's a happy muddle. You can't be subtle in Hinglish, unless you want to be subtly ridiculous.
Living in India, in my own land and history, breathing (when possible -- cough, cough, thhoo) my own air, surrounded by Bengalis, Mallus, Punjus, and other oo's, ee's, ites and wallas, I am a linguistic exile. The (real) English, Brits, Britishers or United Kingdomites speak and write (when they can do either) a language that is in their very hair roots. They get it genetically, from their grandparents. Americans speak American, with the speed of summer lightning (to borrow rudely from Henry Higgins). They are glib -- even too glib. But I'm an island. Not Simon & Garfunkel's rock, rather more like a muddy sandbank in a polluted river, into which many things have sunk, but few grown.
posted by frantyck at 11:00 AM
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