<div>“Banni, banni,” a shopkeeper ushered me on my maiden shopping venture here in the Garden City two decades back. <br /><br />‘Sheer euphoria’ is how the shopping experience at Commercial Street was described to me, and I was looking forward to that euphoria. <br /><br /><div>But the banni instantly put me off. “What’s the problem?” my spouse asked me with the strange enthusiasm that only newly-wed husbands exhibit, and only for a brief spell. <br /><br />“Look at his audacity, he is calling me panni (meaning pig in Tamil, which I understood),” I complained. <br /></div><div><br />My husband knew then that he had married a hopeless linguist!<br /><br /></div><div>Speaking languages has always been a sore spot with me. <br /><br />I believe it is an art so fine that it can be compared to tightrope walking. <br /><br />A small slip and communication can almost become catastrophic and repugnant. <br /><br />From vocabulary to grammar and from the tenses to spoken tones it is an adventure into the world of words. <br /></div><div><br />Master it and the world is at your fingertips, miss it and your world can come plunging down!<br /><br /></div><div>Picking up languages, I have also realised, is inversely proportional to one’s literate state. <br /><br />Working and the blue-collared categories are far more intuitive in picking up languages than their scholarly counterparts. <br /><br /></div><div>The point brings to my mind a math professor in my MBA course who taught us ‘Operations Research’. <br /><br />Though a wizard at his subject, he was a hopeless linguist. He probably never got to do any research on spoken English. <br /><br />Yet, with his daring spirit, he was a chatterbox of sorts and always ended up tickling our funny bones with his broken English. <br /><br />Mixing some high vocabulary with all the wrong tenses, his class was a two-hour session of ‘how not to speak English’. <br /><br />“Students, no doing copy in the test, I espying you from my chair,” he would warn us before surprise tests.<br /><br /></div><div>The course being an evening part-time diploma with most of the students employed during the day, the average class performance read quite like the batting scores of a bowler. <br /><br />“I taking care not to be frightened of your papers. Clutching my wits, I reading your paper and then, like shooting star come your wrong answers,” he would yell at us. <br /></div><div><br />“Please wait a minute for five minutes, no single person talk at the same time,” was his most famous line during a class mayhem.</div><div> </div><div>Picking up bits and pieces and speaking a foreign tongue at the end of the day also requires guts, something that the political class has in abundance. <br /><br /></div><div>Before the 2000 G8 summit in Okinawa, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was coached in a bit of English. <br /><br />Upon meeting Clinton, he was to say, “How are you?” <br /><br />The response was supposed to be, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?” Mori was to answer, “Me too.” <br /><br />When they actually met, Mori was said to have made a slip-up by saying, “Who are you?” <br /><br />Clinton replied, “I’m Hillary’s husband.” To which Mori replied without a hint of hesitation, “Me too.”</div><div><br /></div></div>
<div>“Banni, banni,” a shopkeeper ushered me on my maiden shopping venture here in the Garden City two decades back. <br /><br />‘Sheer euphoria’ is how the shopping experience at Commercial Street was described to me, and I was looking forward to that euphoria. <br /><br /><div>But the banni instantly put me off. “What’s the problem?” my spouse asked me with the strange enthusiasm that only newly-wed husbands exhibit, and only for a brief spell. <br /><br />“Look at his audacity, he is calling me panni (meaning pig in Tamil, which I understood),” I complained. <br /></div><div><br />My husband knew then that he had married a hopeless linguist!<br /><br /></div><div>Speaking languages has always been a sore spot with me. <br /><br />I believe it is an art so fine that it can be compared to tightrope walking. <br /><br />A small slip and communication can almost become catastrophic and repugnant. <br /><br />From vocabulary to grammar and from the tenses to spoken tones it is an adventure into the world of words. <br /></div><div><br />Master it and the world is at your fingertips, miss it and your world can come plunging down!<br /><br /></div><div>Picking up languages, I have also realised, is inversely proportional to one’s literate state. <br /><br />Working and the blue-collared categories are far more intuitive in picking up languages than their scholarly counterparts. <br /><br /></div><div>The point brings to my mind a math professor in my MBA course who taught us ‘Operations Research’. <br /><br />Though a wizard at his subject, he was a hopeless linguist. He probably never got to do any research on spoken English. <br /><br />Yet, with his daring spirit, he was a chatterbox of sorts and always ended up tickling our funny bones with his broken English. <br /><br />Mixing some high vocabulary with all the wrong tenses, his class was a two-hour session of ‘how not to speak English’. <br /><br />“Students, no doing copy in the test, I espying you from my chair,” he would warn us before surprise tests.<br /><br /></div><div>The course being an evening part-time diploma with most of the students employed during the day, the average class performance read quite like the batting scores of a bowler. <br /><br />“I taking care not to be frightened of your papers. Clutching my wits, I reading your paper and then, like shooting star come your wrong answers,” he would yell at us. <br /></div><div><br />“Please wait a minute for five minutes, no single person talk at the same time,” was his most famous line during a class mayhem.</div><div> </div><div>Picking up bits and pieces and speaking a foreign tongue at the end of the day also requires guts, something that the political class has in abundance. <br /><br /></div><div>Before the 2000 G8 summit in Okinawa, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was coached in a bit of English. <br /><br />Upon meeting Clinton, he was to say, “How are you?” <br /><br />The response was supposed to be, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?” Mori was to answer, “Me too.” <br /><br />When they actually met, Mori was said to have made a slip-up by saying, “Who are you?” <br /><br />Clinton replied, “I’m Hillary’s husband.” To which Mori replied without a hint of hesitation, “Me too.”</div><div><br /></div></div>
