Love for Words

I am one among the thousands from Tamil Nadu who is neither fluent in my mother tongue Tamil or the tongue which gives me work, English. We can say that it is insanity as well as a boon that we were introduced to the language of English right from our Kindergarden, a language which is still as alien to me as it was when I read "Tiger Tiger burning bright", the first poem whose meaning I could comprehend a bit when I read it for the first time. Coming back to the topic, it was good that we were taught English in Tamil during our Kinder Garden which is the best way initially, teaching a new tongue through a known tongue, but bad that it was the same way we were taught over our entire schooling.

The main problem in dealing with English among of us is the dogma imbibed deep within us which proclaims, "English is one of the toughest things to learn and is complex". When this mindset is set in each and every child right from their infancy, it is no wonder that we struggle to learn the basics lest alone think about mastering the language. I cannot see when we can remember the lyrics of hundreds of songs still vividly though it has been years since we heard them, why cannot we remember words and grammar provided we have the passion for it.

I can say with confidence and shame that I cannot express / write what I feel using either English or Tamil alone. Vocabulary is something extremely important for expressing yourself in any language and if I look back and recollect the new words I have learnt after 5th standard has been extremely low. Though I have thought about this on number of occasions since College I have never taken sincere, sustained efforts. I need to thank my Appa for the decent grammar he has taught which had made me survive with a very mediocre vocabulary.
I appreciated the beauty of Tami for the first time when I was in College asked me whether I have ever paid attention to the lyrics of இளைய நிலா பொழிகிறதே.

These two verses in that song made me go on a high, which I believe I would have reached with a snort. (I have never taken a snort :-( ).

"வரும் வழியில் பனி மழையில்
பருவ நிலா தினம் நனையும்
முகிலெடுத்து முகம் துடைத்து
விடியும் வரை நடை பழகும்"

"முகிலினங்கள் அலைகிறதே
முகவரிகள் தொலைந்தனவோ
முகவரிகள் தவறியதால்
அழுதிடுமோ அது மழையோ"

I don't want to translate this to English and make these beautiful lyrics awful. These words made me realize that I have been living in a different world altogether, a world which was too machine like. These lines are something which I would say symbolize creativity, the feeling which has the power to move the world and is moving the world. From there on I started reading more and more especially Tamil which I have neglected for years. I started not just loving, but discovering more thoughts, perspectives in books. This was how my love for Tamil began, a tard too late, which took about 17 years after my birth. And it is no exaggeration that this discovery has turned my life upside down, I am indebted to Kani for his question.

English was something which I loved in School, think I can attribute a variety of reasons for why I loved the language. One of the primary reasons is that I was fascinated by the language right from the day my Amma made me showed a piece of Calvin and Hobbs in the Sunday edition of The Hindu during my secondary school. My fascination to English is akin to that of my fascination towards Wine.

As am sipping some Red wine and writing this blog, I laugh at myself about the delusions I had regarding wine. I believed wine as concentrate of the grape juice, like the Grape juice which Amma used to make, until I first tasted Golconda, the most common wine you get in India, at Thiruvanmayur. My first glass (actually not glass, but the usual plastic disposable cup) was a bitter experience, I didn't like the sour taste of it and moreover it crashed all the dreams I had about wine. However after coming to Delaware I slowly started appreciating the beauty of wine and do take it regularly. I realized slowly that wine is not just made from grapes alone but from variety of berries and fruits just like English which is not for elite alone.

It was in the Palani hostel I winked for the first time on the beauty of English. It was one of those golden days when we were putting vetti mokkai at Room 212 (Think the room number is right), Peter (aka Vivek) explained the beauty of the word Laconic, a word which got it's name from the place called Laconia of ancient Greece. The legend mentioned in Norman Lewis's Word Power made easy (Never completed beyond 3 chapters in that) says an army camped on the outskirts of Laconia and sent out a messenger to the King of Laconia asking him to surrender. The messenger came to the court room and said, "If we capture you, we will destroy the city, kill all the men, will take your children, women, etc". The King of Laconia replied with a typical wit of a Spartan, "What if". And from then on Laconic was used to symbolize short and crisp language with wits. This word hit a spark in me and wherever I come across a new word I try to identify the origin of the word which has become a favorite past time of mine.

So why do we need to care about these words be it any language? Language has been one of the most beautiful inventions of mankind, just imagine a world without language. Certainly it wont be a world of void but without it we would not have progressed so much. It is the tool with which we convey and obtain our feelings, need, knowledge across centuries and millenia, things upon which the entire world moves on. Had it not been for lanugage human civilisation would take countless more millenia to reach the stage we are in.

I know that I cannot neither do I have the desire to be fluent in English like what .Higgins in My Fair Lady or like Kamal Hassan in Tamil, but I believe before I breath my last I can say proudly that I made every effort to learn and appreciate the beauty of Tamil and English.

And finally the thing which triggered this post was the explanation regarding the Orgin of the Word Sincere by Professor Langdon in Dan Brown's lost symbol.

Sin-cere - Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture “without wax”—literally sine cera—was considered a “sincere” piece of art. The phrase stuck. To this day we still sign our letters “sincerely” as a promise that we have written “without wax” and that our words are true.

I am an avid fan of Dan Brown not just because of his plots but the details which is giving in his books regarding language and arts, I am thinking of writing a separate post regarding Dan Brown in near future.

And the rant ends here for now

PS: You may ask, "Why the hell you are typing this blog in English". Two reasons, I do blog in Tamil once in a blue moon, I am still poor in typing and spelling. Hoping to blog in a frequency in Tamil also.