It’s been an adjustment, to experience this website’s growth and witness our readership change. People leave, others join, many lurk. While I miss some of our now-absent personalities who were prolific with their pondering (Punjabi Boy, Jai Singh, DesiDancer and Espressa come to mind), I’m thrilled about our new commenters, who are expanding our discussion and bringing their unique points of view to our cacophonous, rowdy, online adda. I’m especially looking at our first-gen contributors, like Runa and Malathi, because for stories like the one I’m trying to blog, I think their perspective is invaluable, for helping us find nuance and context. What I’m trying to say is, HELP.
Al Mujahid for Debauchery left this on our news tab:
Unbelievable. Pakistani actor Moin Akhtar (a muhajir/Indian origin himself) plays Hyderabadis from India in blackface in this ‘comedy’ show.
Wait, WHAT? And here is where the DBDs come in, because I don’t understand the clip below or know who these actors are, and as I’ve stated before, I like to get as much information as possible before I get my outrage on– and believe me, I could rage about actors in blackface.
What on earth is going on? And would someone who watches desi tv please tell me that this an uncommon practice? I fast forwarded through the clip, but I don’t get the greasy, huge-black-glasses-equipped, buck-toothed character, and by “don’t get”, I mean my spider sense is tingling. What, if anything, do all of you know?
Wow. I really am stunned to find the number of ‘DBD’ issues that are spilling over into ‘ABD’ interactions, and while many DBDs themselves are moving on past them, they are acquiring new lives and sharper edges in the 2gen diaspora.
And BTW, it is not quite true to posit that Hindi advantaged only North Indians. ‘Hindi’ as constructed post-1950, is an artificial language, that in its Sanskritized vocabulary is actually just as foreign to people from the so-called Hindi belt as it is foreign in its grammar, syntax and script to many people from the South.
Interestingly, South Indian Brahmins who could read Devanagari (because they knew Sanskrit) were actually at an advantage in some ways, and many of the people employed by the Govt of India post-1950 to manufacture the vocabulary of the new Hindi from the Sanskritic base, were SI brahmins. North Indians were at a slight advantage only because the new Hindi retained the grammatical base of the old Hindustani, but even then, as Camille points out, people from Punjab, especially Sikhs who use Gurmukhi, or Kashmiris, etc, find Hindi can be quite unfamiliar in significant ways. It is really Bollywood that has, in a soft power kind of way, established Hindi in North India.
If, from ‘Hindi’, you take away the Sanskritized vocab, and bring back the Persian vocab, replace the Devanagari script with the Perso-Arabic script, you get Urdu – which served as the link language throughout most of the Mughal and British periods. And some version of it was spoken almost everywhere, including South India, Bengal, Nepal and even parts of Sri Lanka – that’s why you have all the regional accents of Urdu that the clip and the program linked above was able to spoof. The Persian script was not known to all, but then not that many people could read and write anyway. However, the spoken version was available to all, and did serve as a link language in the pre-1947 period, since English did not fully penetrate everywhere.
The special animus some Bangladeshis have regarding Urdu has to do with their history within pre-1971 Pakistan, where they saw it, and the Perso-Arabic script, as hegemonizing their own, and they associated it with the oppressor. The irony there is that Urdu is not native to Pakistan, just as, in its Sanskritized form, Hindi is also foreign to most of the Hindi belt. But the spillover of this sentiment into the 2gen is worrisome indeed, especially since it would lack both the historical context and the situational nuance.
Both India and Pakistan, each in their own way, chose ‘national’ languages that were seen as ‘belonging to’ hegemonic majorities (the ‘North’ in India and the ‘West’ in Pakistan) – while they were truly not that – and begat sub-nationalisms, which in the case of Bangladesh was successful (of course there were other reasons too, but that was at the root).
And I’m stunned to hear secessionist sentiments being expressed, ok, half-jokingly right now, regarding the four Southern states, by the 2gen diaspora. Let’s stay clear of half-thought-out non-inclusive categories, shall we? All these wounds, however personally hurtful they might have been to us in our childhood and youth, are not worth nursing so continuously in the diasporic community to the extent that they lead us to demand new imaginary homelands! Let us instead, in our own lives, choose inclusiveness, not division and exclusion, because this is the kind of thing each of us can make a difference to. And more knowledge always helps, because you realize that the categories through which you see the world are too rigid, the real world is wonderfully more complex.
i just say, bring it on, baby. at least they’ll be bhangra at the wedding 🙂
ponniyin selvan, sorry about the grandparent mix-up 🙂 i am not advocating any extra language recitation. nor am i saying people hould be forced to find commonalities. rather, i am just lamenting the existence of certain viewpoints, inasmuch as they are based on stereotype and political rhetoric.
See, I don’t think this is funny, I think this is sad. And I’ve sometimes heard the even more extreme version, which is “water drink karo, ji”. I think it’s sad because it’s a total, unnecessary degradation.
I think you’re right, not just for Kerala by the way, and I think 100 years is a good appproximation of the time-frame it will take. Nigeria has shown us that you don’t need excellent educational facilities and rich people to become an English-speaking country…what’s happened there is that upper class folks all speak good English, and poor, illiterate people speak a pidginised ‘street English’. Traditional languages like Yoruba, Igbo, etc. are dying out. PEOPLE WOULD RATHER SPEAK PIDGINISED STREET ENGLISH than their own tribal languages! Extrapolated to India, Hinglish (and other regional mishmashes) is already very common place…it wouldn’t be a huge reach for some kind of Indianised English to become the main spoken language on the streets of urban India in a generation or two. Rural areas will follow a generation later.
i usually say….im not trying to marry “a punjabi”. i would preffer marrying a specific girl. that usually causes people to scratch their heads and go away.
languages always change. why degradation?
“although i do know a $hitl0ad about starwars. im not very confrontational though…”
Bring it. if you’d like, I mean.
Well “Hindi” is national language. Not a language of a state. That’s how democracy works, what majority of voters want, that’s what they get. When Hispanics become majority here, most of out grandchildren will be speaking fluent Spanish.
So if you want Tamil/Telegu/Punjabi/XYZ/whatever as national language, just outbreed the Hindi speaking people!!!
From the Foundation for Endangered Languages:
The most authoritative source on the languages of the world (Ethnologue, Grimes 1996) lists just over 6,500 living languages. Population figures are available for just over 6,000 of them (or 92%). Of these 6,000, it may be noted that:
52% are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people; 28% by fewer than 1,000; and 83% are restricted to single countries, and so are particularly exposed to the policies of a single government. At the other end of the scale, 10 major languages, each spoken by over 109 million people, are the mother tongues of almost half (49%) of the world’s population.
I don’t know about you all, but I think this is a major loss to the world… I don’t blame anyone for wanting to preserve their mother tongue, despite all the ways that perfectly reasonable sentiment has been twisted and manipulated for various ends.
Are you saying eventually we’ll all be speaking ‘newspeak’?
Languages do change. That’s a natural process. And sometimes conditions make them change faster, other times slower. But let’s take the phrase in question here….”Drink water, sir!” (or a better translation would be ‘have some water, sir’) The Hindi/Punjabi rendition is “Paani peeyo, ji”. This is as basic as it gets. To replace ‘paani’ with ‘water’ seems unnecessary, but ok, maybe that’s fair enough in some circumstances. To further replace ‘peeyo’ with ‘drink karo’ is just mind-boggling (and incredibly lazy) to me. I mean, what are you left with then? Where did your language go?
Well “Hindi” is national language. Not a language of a state. That’s how democracy works, what majority of voters want, that’s what they get. When Hispanics become majority here, most of out grandchildren will be speaking fluent Spanish. So if you want Tamil/Telegu/Punjabi/XYZ/whatever as national language, just outbreed the Hindi speaking people!!!
Your missing some MAJOR points IMO.
If you want to compare English-speaking United States – well when the US was created as a nation some 200+ years ago, everyone spoke English. Note that I am not including African-Americans who still spoke their native African language or the Native Americans, b/c they were not considered part of the US nation.
The period of India’s creation also was a time, when governments were trying to uphold human rights. When India was formed, the majority of Indians, didn’t speak Hindi (unlike the US nation-state was created by only English-speakers)…the majority spoke other languages. India is a democracy and its a democracy that’s unique to its billions of people who do not share a common language – which is one reason the Indian democracy demarcated states according to linguistic traditions. There’s no reason that a minority language, such as Hindi, should be chosen as THE language to represent India; As a democracy India will have to learn to accomodate the millions of non-Hindi speakers and non-Hindi traditions.
Curry and Rice Girl in #219
Putting aside humility and modesty for a moment, I want to share with you, Curry and Rice Girl, a few, selected lines from a poem I wrote in 1999, when I was single and had to live through conflicting emotions and thoughts. The poem was called ‘My Mother’s Extension’
…[My mother] was relegated to being under-educated, I make up for it by striving to be over-educated. For every year of education that she didn’t have, Her value in the marriage market soared. For every year of education that I do add, My value in the marriage market drops. The age at which she wanted to add a missing career slot to her family life, Is now the same age that I want to add a missing family slot to my career life…
Less than a year after I wrote those lines, I met the man who would become my husband.
You can kick your legs and cry as much as you want. The same democracy you are talking about gives us freedom to choose whatever we want. So you can keep on complaining. But till the day hindi speaking people start learning one of the south indian languages, it is not going to happen.
The Hindi/Punjabi rendition is “Paani peeyo, ji”.
“Paani peeyo, ji” is is an incorrect and unnecessary Punjabization of Hindi/Urdu.
Hindi:’Paani pee lo’
Urdu: ‘Paani pee leejiya’
PS, I agree with you completely about Hindi. One thing though…African-Americans did not retain African languages for any appreciable length of time…they were drawn from various linguistic groups from Western Africa, and deliberately kept apart from others speaking their own languages, so as to minimize the risk of planning a rebellion. From what I’ve read, there were a few 2nd gen people (this would have been in the 1700s) who knew some of their (usually) mother’s language, but that’s it. Furthermore, most African traditions and cultural aspects were forbidden outright. So those things went underground, and re-emerged in different, transformed ways, especially in African American musical forms like jazz and blues. Fascinating stuff.
this goes to the root of the problem for south indians, IMO – the lack of courtesy or reciprocity. and as others have said, if english and the regional language suffice, why must they learn hindi, esp. if nobody outside their regions feel the need to learn their language?
aren’t these just a different form of the same word – lo (tum) vs lijiye (aap)? (for non-hindi speakers, it’s just a grammatical question i am asking) or is there something i am missing that distinguishes the urdu from the hindi here? and is ji really more a punjabi word? i ask as someone who is not a native hindi/urdu speaker, and also an ABD.
I am gasp kunta…kinte..
ACD,
Surely you mean “Paani Pee Leejiye”
Also isn’t that the formal Hindi and not just Urdu Typo?
aren’t these just a different form of the same word – lo (tum) vs lijiye (aap)? (for non-hindi speakers, it’s just a grammatical question i am asking) or is there something i am missing that distinguishes the urdu from the hindi here?
You are correct.
and is ji really more a punjabi word?
I think so. Its not used in Urdu.
Surely you mean “Paani Pee Leejiye”
Yes. My bad! Leejiya makes no sense. It was a typo.
i think hindi types in english letters beter than tamil. i mean. getting from the english letters in tamil to the pronounciation is hard.
Al Chutiya, I was just using Camille’s phrase as a talking point. By the way, in Hindi you can say ‘paani pee leejiye’ too (polite form) just as in Urdu you can ‘paani pee lo’ as well…although I grant you that in Urdu culture, the emphasis is on always being polite, even to children.
“Ji” is used in Hindi a lot, for respect. Al Chutiya, is it never used in Urdu?
Al Chutiya, I was just using Camille’s phrase as a talking point.
I know. I am a vigilante against creeping Punjabization of Urdu/Hindi 🙂 In Pakistan, the process is almost complete. Hindi in India is still relatively free of being Punjabized. We have to be alert at all times 😉
Btw, did you get my second email? I apologized to you in the email for unfairly attacking you a week back.
like ‘zh’? i never understood how they came up with that transliteration. and the ‘L’ vs ‘l’ and ‘r’ vs ‘rr’.
btw, while i have some hindi speakers at attention – lijiyega – does it belong distinctly to either hindi or urdu?
As an aside:
I personally find Urdu so much more expressive than Hindi. I mean who can imagine Jagjit Singh singing Mirza Ghalib ghazals in any other language .”Nazaakat”,”Adaa”,”Muskaan”, “Tehzeeb”, “Fizaa” – these are words that lose all subtlety in translation to Hindi or English.
“Ji” is used in Hindi a lot, for respect. Al Chutiya, is it never used in Urdu?
Its used by Pakistani Urdu speakers quite frequently now or at least the ones who are in North America. I dont believe Indian Urdu speakers use ‘ji’ outside ‘ji’ as in ‘yes’ or ‘haan’.
Right, in Bangalore, Hindi suffice (along with English). No need of any South Indian languages. If I remember my geography lessons correctly, Bangalore is in the South.
And yeah, in Chennai , the cabbies do not even take give you or charge quaraple (Even if you speak English!!), if you do not speak Tamil.
Yeah, you’re right! Although Urdu has done a lot of damage to Punjabi in Pakistan too!
No worries. I will check my email later. Thanks.
PS@361, you wrote:
“If you want to compare English-speaking United States – well when the US was created as a nation some 200+ years ago, everyone spoke English.”
Actually, there were many debates and arguments about what the language of the US should be at inception. The population had German, French, Dutch, and English speakers. If I recall correctly, the majority of the population spoke German. But the drafters of the Constitution were English speakers, and they made English the national language.
Those are all basically Persian words (some of them might have Arabic origins, I’m not sure). Anyway, Urdu is very expressive for what it’s trying to say…it reflects the culture of the Urdu-speaking people beautifully. And it’s very Indian too. I’m not sure you can say it’s ‘more expressive’ IN GENERAL than Hindi or other languages. Ghazals, other Urdu poetry, the best Bollywood songs of the past, they are all in Urdu. But it’s very culture-specific. You can’t make a good garba song in Urdu. Some would say Kavaali is not well suited to Urdu either (most having been in Sindhi or Punjabi for centuries). If you try to translate a Punjabi song into Hindi, it sounds horrible. Similarly, if you translate an Urdu song (let’s say ‘Kabhi kabhi’) into Punjabi, it sounds even worse. But they’re all very expressive languages in their own way…they excel at expressing their particular culture.
english is not the naitonal language of the united states. the US does not have a national language. this was done intentionally.
Al Chutiya, I never got your 2nd email.
PS, you are correct. Languages, cultures, societies are not static. But when we lose a language (e.g. Punjabi, Malayalam), we also lose a whole body of literature (fiction, non-fiction) and movies that were expressed in that language. I think that a translation can never do justice to the original language in which the book was written. Of course, one can learn only so many languages in a life-time, and translation is the practical compromise we make. I understand Amartya Sen’s point about preserving something out of fear of change, but one can also preserve certain aspects so as to be in touch with the literature while also welcoming change – it’s not an either-or situation. But I also see many people (desis and non-desis) making serious attempts to learn regional Indian languages, so there’s hope. 🙂
It is used in Urdu, but in a slightly different way. More to signal assent in a respectful way than as an honorific suffix – for example, ‘Ji, Haan‘. Or just ‘Ji‘ – meaning, Yes.
Punjabis use ‘Ji’ as in ‘Chachaji’ but in Urdu it might be ‘Chacha mian’ or ‘Bade chacha or chotay chacha’ etc 🙂
It is disturbing to see the above. What you are talking about is majorityism—like in China. Han Chinese, all good. Everyone else, become Han Chinese or you don’t count. Democracy involves a fair bit of compromise—in fact imo a very important part of democracy in India is the “coalition” politics which does give everyone leverage to negotiate.
The problem with this attitude: B’lore will go the way of TN if you go ahead think this way. There is a lot of unprecedented resentment against the condescending attitude of North Indians against Kannada, and statements like this will only amplify it. I am not speaking of extreme language freaks, but an average person on the street doesn’t like your attitude.
First, as far as “national language” or “importance” goes, Kannada (and all the other 3 south indian languages) generates comparable literature with Hindi with a population that is a fourth of the Hindi native speakers.
Second, this resentment is a sign of a problem—Bangalore has had and nurtured large Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam speaking populations for a long time. It is the first time language is becoming a popular issue in Bangalore. No one wants to see Kannada go the way of Marathi in Mumbai.
what happened?
My guess is, it was swallowed up by Hindi/English as tons of non-Marathi speakers descended onto it. Kannada’s risk is more so for English though, because of IT sector.
Maybe thats why some peeps are tryin to keep it real with ‘Bengaluru’
most of my friends that “lived in bangalore for a few years” dont know a word of kannada…after living there for a few years.
teach them this one ‘hube’
Interesting. On what basis? Do non marathi speakers make up the leadership?
i don’t think this is really true – my cousin moved to b’lore from madras, knowing english, tamil, telugu, and hindi. but kannada was definitely mandatory – he couldn’t have run his business otherwise. and the issue about english sufficing is also very class-specific – most of the people, e.g. weavers, he deals with do not know english, so kannada is very necessary.
many from thess states would argue that the literature is more voluminous, and pre-dates hindi literature.
puli, even though it is in maharashtra, in bombay, marathi has been edged out by the other languages that predominate business, namely gujarati, hindi, and english. i think this is mostly because of bombay’s position as a cosmopolitan business centre. so even though marathi still is spoken in bombay, it is not by a majority (maybe not even by a plurality?), and if hindi is known, marathi is pretty much not needed in most situations. the biggest marathi-speaking city is pune, where hindi is oftentimes not welcome. but as i am not from bombay, the natives should jump in and correct me.
well, quite a bit more than that. it is expected that if you have a lot of non native speakers, especially mobile ones, they may not be able to pick up the language well. on the other hand, what happens in mumbai is that if you are a local marathi speaker, especially if you are not a hindi speaker, you encounter a fair amount of bias and prejudice.
sm intern: the last comment has completely screwed up formatting—could you delete it?
The South is “conservative” when it comes to drinking and dancing but progressive when it comes to women’s/lower caste/minority rights in general.Humour based on physical/economic/social features is also considered crude, maybe this is because the populace (As echoedabove) considers itself ugly on average.
Now all these adjectives are relative to the North.
really? most of the steriotype as ugly ive heard comes from non-south indians. most of the south indians i know dont consider south indian ugly…
Some of the most popular ones are from other southern states, actually, specifically Tamil Nadu. Check out Trisha and Shriya. Genelia, who is of Goan descent, is also a popular one (and a total cutie pie and great actress to boot… yes and Indian actress who is actually in the biz to act! not to cause drama!) The Tamil ones are very fair, but I’m surprised that Genelia is as popular as she is honestly (not that I mind… I’m just saying objectively, she’s darker-skinned than most of the other actresses).
Bhumika is Punjabi? Seriously? Huh. I always assumed she was Tamil or something because of her darker skin (I guess if I had known her last name was ‘Chawla,’ that would have tipped me off).
I asked my parents why not a single actress in Telugu movies is Telugu (seriously, I went on a Telugu movie-watching spree with my parents this summer, and not a single one of the actresses was of Telugu descent), and they said it’s because people think Telugu girls are ugly. Eep. Personally I think it’s because they’re all too busy studying computer engineering. 😛
I personally find it offensive as a woman– basically what it signifies is that it only matters what the women look like, not what they say or think or anything like that. Of course we all knew that about Indian cinema though; at least Bollywood has more drama!!` centered around the actresses though.
I just think it’s ridiculous that some actresses basically spend their whole lives acting without speaking. C’mon, Siddharth learned Telugu in two weeks for his first Telugu movie and it became a hit and now he’s singing songs in Telugu dammit… surely the women can keep up with that?
I go to lunch, and the mutineers go crazy! Firstly, Punjabi-haters, calm down. I think it is silly to rail against the “Punjabization” of Urdu or whatever. You could also argue that Pakistani Urdu has been Arabicized and Persian-icized to give it a more distinct identity from Punjabi. Does it matter? Only in terms of the geopolitical history that leads up to that. Also, Punjabi is more widely spoken than Urdu in Pakistan, and is, in my opinion, a more indigenous language. I don’t say that to argue that one is more or less authentic, but just to say that there’s a difference between what you speak “on the street” and what you speak formally.
Also, with respect to the “better expression of sentiment” found in Urdu, I think you could argue that this is because words/ideas are borrowed from Farsi, which is what a great deal of literature and poetry was originally composed in throughout Punjab (and if not Farsi, then in Urdu). Punjabi is often seen as a “low” language, or at least described this way.
Hmm… Punjabi speakers, please correct me, but I’m pretty sure that in Maajaa Punjabi you would say the same. The difference seems to be between whether you’re conjugating in the formal/informal second person. I wouldn’t think of this phrase as Urdu if I heard it (not saying it isn’t Urdu, just saying I think there’s more overlap than folks think). I could be wrong, but the equivalent (formal, second person) in Doaba Punjabi would be “Paani pile, ji”.
And lastly, “ji” is just an honorific in Punjabi, although it’s hardly being used as an honorific when you say: “Ji ayaa noo.”
It is lazy, but just as we see Spanglish in the U.S., I think the growing level of “Pinglish” or “Pungrazi” indicates how societies are changing and how language is changing as a reflection of that interaction. That said, I’m pretty sure people know the “proper” way to say something in Punjabi, still, right? I hope, at least.
Himanshu, I think PS responded really well. Hindi is NOT the majority language, nor was it at Independence. To prioritize Hindi as the “state language” was inherently divisive. Again, it is not the language itself that is a problem, it’s giving that language primacy over all others, and then also refusing to teach the other language forms. You mentioned you were taught Hindi, English, and Oriya. That is NOT the case for many of the folks born post-Independence.
But they did also form Black English, which has grammar and syntax rules that echo the rules and syntax of many West African languages.
Huh? While individuals may be self-deprecating (or not), it’s hardly fair to say the same thing about an entire population.
Aren’t Marathi speakers kind of pushed onto the outskirts of society? Are you seen as “ignorant” if you speak Marathi? (i.e. not worldly enough to speak Hindi/Gujarati/English)? By the way, I have NEVER heard Marathi spoken, which I think is a shame. [conversely I’ve heard Oriya, Kannada, Malayalee, Tamil, Telegu, Gujarati, Bangla, etc., etc]
Sigh. There are quite a few “dark” Punjabis out there. I think the skin color as “regional barometer” is, on average, totally ridiculous.