Awesomeness :) :)

And a Repost – but something I find so relevant even after a year in a new environment! https://pinashpinash.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/its-awesome-really/

Trivia: Vernacular – “native to a country” from Latin vernaculus  – domestic, native, from “verna” – home-born slave, native,”  Therefore, vernacular language – language of the slaves, Words and their implications with reference to their past!! Be careful when you use the term.

MJ was telling me the other day that people use the word‘awesome’so much these days to describe anything and everything, from the relevant to the irrelevant, that the word has lost its meaning and charm for her. I saw myself nodding to what she said. I really don’t know what to discern if somebody says awesome after every word or sentence they speak! I don’t know whether they mean the slangor the meaning !!!!

American culture catching on us fast, may be… we talk like them at least, use their spellings, their punctuation style and we think or even better, are made to believe that those are the correct forms of language, decorum and dictum. Common problem. But nobody cares! another common problem again!!

For people who are schooled totally on British English and Indian English as a extension, American English sounds a little offish. Take no offense plzzz… Only in the usage, let me remind you, in pronunciation to be precise and vocabulary in general, nevertheless I enjoy their literature and their spirit of pursing the dream.So most of us mix together all the englishes when we write and speak, and if you are submitting a written document to a university professor who specialises (is that z or s;-), or somebody with strict rules on the lanuguage,  they will tsk tsk at it and jot down at the margin in red ‘to stick to one form of the English!! Plzz!!’

Let’s make things clear here a little, otherwise I may be in some danger of being misunderstood. And the clarification is, I have absolutely nothing against the Americans per se and I fully understand why they rebel today or have rebelled in the past against anything remotely British.

Hold that thought there and come to India… Does it not make you wonder why most of the Indians, that is, us, revere even the tiniest of ants imported from the West! Always!!

We have a similar history …We went through the same tortures of colonialism. We were exploited and used, we were divided in the name of region and religion under the reign of the great queens and kings of the English monarchy, to be given Independence in 1947 and labelled as what, a part of the third world!! And still we are using this global language. See the catch, it is the language of the globe even though Mandarin Chinese has a larger number of speakers according to statistics.

Without hesitation or shame, we can say that the introduction of the English language was a blessing in disguise, ablunder at the hands of the then British govt. It opened the floodgates to its literature, all kinds. And we in turn won our freedom. We have to profusely send our flowers and deepest regards to Thomas Macaulay for his vociferous Minuteagainst the Orientalists to make his mother tongue as one of the subjects for our instruction.

But the downside: we neglect our mother tongue …yes, the tongues spoken by our mothers… However, mother tongue can be a wrong word in the context because our mothers would be using more of the English language therefore, we speak the same and in the purest literal sense, follow it!So, native tongue may be an option… whatever the terminology, this is an oft vocalised debated, our neglect for our own languages favouring English because English is the language of power and status and to many of us, ease….

Ok! Put up your hands, eh… comment, that is, how many of us think in English or find it easy to think in English rather than our so called native tongues… I’ll tell you my case, there are times when I think in all the languages I have been trained in and at times, I forget a particular word in one language but remember the same or the synonym in the other. That’s when these English-English-Native Languages dictionary comes in handy Are we born translators!!

Would love to know your take

Enjoy your ThursdayPic Cout: usmansheikh

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