Talking point

" TALKING POINT""

Once upon a time I worked as P.O. in a bank  in west Bengal. I did not, then, know bengali and was trying to learn it fast and this endeared me to the bengali staff there. So one day as I was busy learning the ropes in a cash payments counter, a dada (friendly staff member) affectionately offered me a goldflake cigarette and asked "dada aap ekto cigarette khayiega?" (would you like to eat a cigarette). I was amused. I said "dada, cigarette to peete hain, khate nahi". He laughed and said "cigarette is not a liquid. How can you drink it?"

You can see that  both of us had a valid point of view.

You come across lots of strange things when you  study  languages. and meaning of words. This study is called SEMANTICS.

In Bengali "khaben" covers both eating and drinking. " Mishti khaben" is Ok and so is "Jol khaben". So while a man of the north "drinks" a cigarette, the man in the east "eats" it! An Englishman who "smokes" a cigarette would find it amusing.

If you are a north Indian,  you can pick up bengali early as the base is sanskrit, in common with hindi. The problem is only with the pronunciation. "jal" (water) becomes "jol". Most words have a O pronunciation in place of A. So "khabar" becomes "khobor".

I find that this particular shift in pronunciation has something to do with the region. In the entire east the first letter of  hindi alphabet (अ) "a" is pronounced as   "au" ( as in "awe") but as you move westward the accent gets changing. In Bihar the accent is still "gol gol - round" but not so pronounced as in Bengal.
In lucknow it further changes and so in Ambala as we move west. "a" of hindi alphabet  is not " au" (as in AWE) in lucknow - it is "a" as in "fur". In the west beyond  Haryana it becomes "aa" as in "carry". So "Kah rahe the" of lucknow becomes "koh rahe the" in Bihar and "keh rahe the" in Ambala.

That reminds me of G.B.Shaw's PYGMALION where  Professor Henry Higgins claims that he can tell which part of the country a man has lived by simply noticing the way he pronounces words. To some extent I can also place a man's hometown the way he pronounces hindi words.

Sometimes this shift in pronunciation conveys an altogether different meaning as is evident from the following :

A Bengali gentleman once invited his Lucknow wala friend to his house. He said " Dada aaj raat me humre ghaur pura family ke saath bhojan karne aiyega" (please come to our place at night for BHOJAN with your whole family").

Now this lucknow wala literally took it as dinner ("bhojan")  though the bengali gentleman meant "bhajan" - a religious hyme singing event. He  visited his friend and returned stark hungry!

We should try to have some working knowledge of languages of other regions of India too. It is generally a pleasant experience.  Long time back in a South Indian restaurant in Lakshmi talkies premises in Allahabad, I met a nice young manager from Tamilnadu  so I would greet him with a loud "Vanakkam" and then  order "irantu kapi, irantu dosa" for me and my cousin. He became a friend . I also used to  asked his south indian  waiter to "tanni kontu" to his  delight as no one in Allahabad spoke to him in his language.

But a word of caution is necessary. Be sure of the meaning of what you say by either keeping a language primer of the language or by checking it up with a friend of that region otherwise there may be an occasional embarrassment.

A friend of mine having poor knowledge of english  once complimented an British lady married to an Indian doctor. She was a sharp witted (Tej buddhi) lady so he said, "madam you are a fast lady" which was a derogatory remark and caused an embarrassment !!

So move cautiously as there may be some landmines too !!"

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