Language as currency in constantly shape-shifting world

Womansplaining

Conversations about imposition of language abound in public discourse today, and I am here to make a case for letting people choose their lingua franca.

Growing up, the only thing I wanted to study, and master, was English. As a child who couldn’t quite roll her tongue in ways that Kannada, my mother tongue, demanded, I was often bullied, both at home and at school, which likely contributed to my love-hate relationship with it. English, on the other hand, felt easier to learn and to speak. It was my safe place. It was where I felt I belonged, and it’s still the most beautiful, most validating, most affirming relationship of my time on earth, this abiding love affair with the discovery of new words in English, and new worlds that unfurl because of it.

As a result, during my formative years as a debilitatingly introverted misfit, I was driven almost entirely by the need to be able to find my spot under the sun where I could communicate effectively with the world around me. This involved constantly trying to please my English teachers, barely attempting to connect with my Kannada teachers, and not caring about the third language – or its teachers -- that school curriculum mandated. All this resulted in a high affinity for learning words like ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ (the longest word in English, which means a disease of the lungs caused by swallowing asbestos dust) that I once parroted during a school competition (won a prize for it, too), writing a poem in 5th standard and being chastised by my teacher, Mrs Uma, on the profusion of commas in it, and when I was at the very beginning of my teens, borrowing a book from the library on 'Erroneous Zones', thinking that would reveal to me, in excruciating detail, why the back of my ears – and knees -- were ticklish.

Once the dreaded 10th standard exams were done and dusted, I somehow found the courage to approach my stentorian father, to declare that I wanted to study English and literature. This was quelled with one fell “No”, as the ‘system’ back then demanded the study of science and math and medicine, if one wanted a career that would help them make money. We weathered that storm such that there were favourable outcomes for both of us: of his desire to see his daughter gainfully employed and fiercely independent, and of mine to follow my passion where it took me, albeit later.

During my grad school years, I chose to study the etymology of language during one semester – Indic, Germanic, Latinate -- where one of the class exercises involved reading a poem in a language entirely foreign to us (I think it was Swahili) and trying to interpret it phonetically and build a world around it that made sense to us in some form (hat tip, Lewis Buzbee!). Several of those were hilariously lost in translation, quite literally, but what it revealed to a bunch of us from disparate backgrounds and cultures was that the currency of communication is what has shaped society and civilisation. Because of that one class, I believe the world became a smaller place that day, a more intimate one where, despite the lack of knowledge of languages we didn’t converse in, the attempt in deconstructing pieces of literature in other languages had, at its very foundation, the human attempt of making sense of the world.

In our attempt to become a more inclusive society, perhaps it is the need of the hour to recognise that the mix of both nationalistic fervour and stubborn federalism when it comes to language is what ironically kills discourse. Perhaps, what we should do is let people be where they are, speak from that place, and try to understand, sans judgement and contempt. Phonetically, if nothing else.

And now, after decades, I can safely say I know the right meaning of ‘erroneous’. No longer need a dictionary for that word.