Language is More Than Words

January 29, 2019 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

2019 has been declared as The International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019) by UNESCO. The official launch of IYIL was held on 28 January 2019. The aim of IYIL is to “draw attention to the critical loss of indigenous languages and the urgent need to preserve, revitalize and promote indigenous languages around the world”.

Of the 6000-7000 languages in the world today, about 97% of the world’s population speaks only 4 % of these languages, while only 3% of the world speak 96% of all remaining languages. A great majority of those languages are spoken mainly by indigenous peoples.

India is one of four countries, along with Nigeria, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, with the largest number of living languages. A mammoth project to conduct a comprehensive survey of Indian languages was launched in 2010. Initiated by Prof. G.N. Devy, founder of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre in Vadodara, and undertaken by a large team of scholars, the project called the People’s Linguistic Survey Of India (PLSI) set out to document and preserve 780 languages which are being spoken in India today. These are being published in the multi-volume People’s Linguistic Survey of India, towards providing an overview of the extant and dying languages of India, as evolved till 2011, and as perceived by their speakers. The volumes chronicle the evolution of these languages in all their socio-political and linguistic dimensions, and encapsulate the worldview of their speakers. PLSI proposes to complete its task of publishing 92 volumes by 2020.

In the last couple of years, I have had the enriching opportunity to learn about some of the indigenous people of the north east of India and a glimpse of not just the incredibly rich traditions of textiles in the region, but equally the close ties between language of the people and the language of their textiles. Not only does every tribe have their own dialect, but each dialect has wonderfully nuanced words to describe every textile that they weave, and even every motif that is woven on these.

Names of textiles of the tribes have references to the history and geography of the tribe, as well as names that literally relate to colour, size, on which part of the body they are worn, as well as referring to age and status of the wearer. There are specific shawls for elder men or women, for those who have special social status (as in the Naga the Feast of Merit shawl), for a new bride to wear to her marital home, and for covering the deceased.

As Ganesh Devy puts it “in every manner without any exception, the language we learn or use is the absolute condition of our narrative of the world and the way we see the world.”

Of the numerous examples of this, is that of a textile of the Bodo Kachari tr

ibe of Assam.The multi-use decorative textile called Aronai is characterised by a zig-zag motif called Hawjagor (hill pattern) in the Bodo dialect. This pattern is inspired by the hills which form an important part of the history as well as the geography of the Bodo people who settled by the foothills, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra in Assam.

It is in the names of motifs that women weave onto the textiles that the symbiosis between life, nature and culture is most evident. The names not just reflect how nature inspires form, but also reveal a keen eye for subtle detail and the richness of language to reflect this.

A common triangular motif on wrap skirts of the women of a small Naga tribe is called impeak bam. The word Impeak translates to ‘stretching out/extending/ spreading out’ and bam means ‘wings’; and the motif symbolises a flying Hornbill. While a similar but smaller triangular motif is named to mean the wings of the bird called a Swift.

Some of the motifs of the Liangmai Naga tribe in Manipur are named literally to represent elements such as fish bone (kakhara thua), cow’s teeth (kabui hu), and ripples in a lake (kazai kapai). There is even a woven line stitch line called matiang kang meaning ‘group of ants.’ These are only the tip of the iceberg of detail, as it were.

One of the traditional shawls of a small Naga tribe of the Manipur Naga Hills has a motif called inchitatpi that translates to ‘head of a long worm’ found in the woods. Another has a pattern representing cucumber seed called angi thei ru. Getting into even more minute detail, another tribe has a popular motif called aphinamik which literally means the ‘eye of a dove’.

There are patterns representing frog’s feet called sangkang nou ban and grasshoppers’ egg called changkow gum, and even a stitch called kabi n’dui where kabi translates to ‘good’ and ndui translates to ‘egg’, relating to the arrangement of eggs on a paddy plant!

What evocative words and how beautifully they capture richness of life lived in synergy with one’s environment. These are only a tiny sprinkling of the vocabulary of a tiny segment of indigenous people and languages.

Sadly with ‘modernisation’ comes homogenisation. A lot of the local weaving traditions are being replaced with mass-produced machine-made garments, and with it are lost not just the textiles and motifs but also the language that represented these.

According to UNESCO, approximately 600 languages have disappeared in the last century, and they continue to disappear at a rate of one language every two weeks. Up to 90 perccent of the world’s languages are likely to disappear before the end of this century if current trends are allowed to continue.

And Ganesh Devy expresses the Domino Effect that this has—“When a language dies, its speakers decide to migrate. First, they migrate to another language and then they physically start migrating to another region. The second thing that happens is that their traditional livelihood patterns go down. They may have some special skills and that disappears. Thirdly, a unique way of looking at the world disappears.”

–Mamata

Old Wine in New Bottles

November 6, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 2 Comments

In recent days the life and style sections of the newspapers are carrying numerous articles with titles like 10 Beauty Hacks to Make you Glow, Be the Best Hostess With These 20 Useful Party Hacks; 15 Kitchen Hacks to Save Time; Have a Sparkling Diwali With These Simple Hacks…

I was intrigued by this oft-used word Hack. My vocabulary dates back to days before even Computer Hackers became news. The only meaning of Hack that I could recall related to the act of roughly chopping down a tree or, as we read in novels, a word used to refer to a slogging journalist or so-so writer. How the word leant itself to beauty and parties and kitchens was a mystery to me.

Being the curious word aficionado that I am, I looked up the word Hack in the dictionary. I was surprised to find the word had many more meanings than I had imagined:

Cut away

Fix a computer programme piecemeal until it works

Significantly cut up a manuscript

Cough spasmodically

Be able to manage successfully

Kick on the shins

One who works hard at boring tasks

A mediocre and disdained writer

An old-fashioned taxi

An old and overworked horse.

This search, having significantly expanded my list of two meanings, still did not reveal what I was looking for—the links with beauty, kitchens and parties. I thought to myself “What the Hack”!

And then Eureka—I came upon the word Life Hacks! And I discovered…

Life hack (or life hacking) refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life.

It is a tool or technique that makes some aspect of one’s life easier or more efficient.

Aha thought I, at last!

Then came the more amusing part. I discovered that there are so many websites offering innumerable Life Hacks for everything from how to get up in the morning, to how to carry out some of the most basic functions of life and living—from the sublime to the absurd! For example: ‘Do a 20 minute good workout in the morning and you can be lazy the whole day without feeling guilty!’ OR ‘If you left home and forgot to brush your teeth or you ran out of toothpaste, chewing an apple can help with bad breath.’

I am sure one could come across some handy tips, but thinking back a bit…

Were these nifty suggestions not too long ago shared widely as DIY TIPS!

Baking soda and hot water to clean drains; a face pack of honey, cream and turmeric for that glowing skin…where did I hear those before? From mothers and aunts, of course. And magazines carried them under the title Grandmother’s Secrets!

I certainly spent an amusing hour browsing the many sites, and along the way I also found what I think is the best way to describe this term: A life hack is a colloquial term for common sense that makes people feel good about their basic creativity, or lack thereof. Typically life hacks are not all that helpful, they are simply advertised well so as to provide a false sense of improvement in the user’s day-to-day operation.

Well well well. What a great way of repackaging tried and tested ‘do-it-yourself’ ideas. Why go to Granny when Youtube will show you how!

–Mamata

Man and Machine

September 18, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

On 22 August our land line phone (yes, we are perhaps the few remaining dinosaurs who still have a land line!) went dead. My husband in whose name the number is registered, called the complaints number and after being taken through the usual route of Press 1 for___and Press 2 for ___ , and so on finally made contact with a human voice to register the complaint. He was told that someone would come to our home the same day by midday. In the meanwhile, I received at least four automatic messages on my cell phone (not in any way connected with the landline provider, with various offers and deals.) My husband has innumerable times told the landline providers that he should be contacted on the landline number only. But that is another story!

Back to this story! We waited at the stipulated time, and well beyond, for the person to show up. Towards evening we got a call (on the landline, at least!) from the engineer to say that he would be arriving shortly. When he finally did arrive and we told him that he was to have come at least 6 hours ago, he said that he had got the message about his call, just an hour ago. The gentleman, (one from the not-quite-all-tech generation) himself expressed anguish at how the mechanised ‘auto-response call systems’ were so out of synch with the human work force that was meant to execute the work.

During the same period that he was at our place I received three messages on my cell phone saying that “Your service request has been assigned to engineer _______. He will be visiting at your premises between 23 August 2018 09.30 am-23 August 2018 10.30 am.”

By the time the many messages were received, the engineer had solved the issue. Now he had to report to the ‘authorities’ that the task had been successfully completed. This too through the automated number system. However, try as he might, his completion report was not registered. The engineer tried patiently for over half an hour, through whatever means he knew to simply report ‘task completed on 22 August’, to no avail. He was quite at his wits’ end, and finally left befuddled, (and worried about how to account for the visit and the task).

On 23 August at precisely 09.40 am, I received three messages on my cell phone confidently informing me that “Dear Customer. Our engineer ________just arrived at your premises to attend to your service request.” !?!

–Mamata

In a Word

September 8, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 1 Comment

When we were in school we were told that the Eskimos have a hundred or more words for Snow and forest-dwelling indigenous people have a multitude of words for Green. In recent years this information has been debunked by many linguists. While the numbers are not that important, to my mind this example is still meaningful as it draws attention to the fact that every culture and language has its own vocabulary to describe the nuances of a phenomenon or event or feeling.

In the past few years I have come across some really evocative words which I love to share.

Tsundoku A Japanese word which refers to the habit of accumulating books with the intention of reading them by and by, as opposed to obsessively collecting books just for the sake of having them. This word apparently has been used for over a century, and a person with a large collection of unread books was called a tsundoku sensei. This is something I have always done, and I was so happy to find a respectable name for the same!

Komorebi Another Japanese word for the delicate interplay of light and leaves when sunlight filters through the foliage of trees. How often we have been touched by this delicate and fleeting moment. Artists and photographers have tried to capture this, but this single word perfectly paints the picture.

Shinrin-yoku If you want to prolong the moment and immerse yourself in the experience—the Japanese have a word for that too. This word means ‘forest bathing’, a practice that includes mindfully experiencing the beauty of the komorebi while breathing the cool fresh air and hearing the leaves rustle in the gentle breeze.

Waldeinsamkeit If you were German and enjoying Shirin-yoku, a feeling of solitude, and a connectedness to nature, this is the perfect word to describe how you feel!

Mångata If you lingered long enough for the sunlight to be replaced by moonlight, this is what you would also see. A Swedish word for the glimmering, road-like reflection that the moon creates on water. Another luminescent word that paints a perfect picture.

Hygge Back home after a rejuvenating walk in the woods, what could be better that to curl up with a book from your tsundoku and get lost in the wonderful world of words! The Swedish have the perfect word for just such cosy comfort and contentment!

If only, we may say, our life could be a series of shinrin-yoku and hygge! The Japanese say that there is no reason why it cannot be. After all, is it not a lot about how you approach life? It is all about having a sense of purpose and meaning and a feeling of wellbeing–essentially ‘a reason to get up in the morning’, and to see the sunlight rather the clouds. They call it Ikigai.

According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai. We just have to find our own.

–Mamata

A Parliament of Owls

August 23, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 4 Comments

No this does not refer to a House of sleep-deprived MPs at an all-night Parliament debate!

This is what a group of Owls can be called!

The English language has some wild and wonderful names to describe groups of animals or birds. We use some of these collective nouns occasionally when we talk about a Herd of cattle or a Flock of sheep. In school we often had to fill in the blanks or match the following– a Pride of lions, a School of fish or a Pack of wolves.

I have always been intrigued and fascinated by some of these collective nouns. I think that a Gaggle of Geese sounds just so appropriate, as does an Army of Ants (especially having once been literally attacked and badly bitten a marching regiment of army ants—no joking!).

Here are some delightful feathery ones!

Imagine a Parliament of Owls which includes members from the following: A Murder of Crows, a Convocation of Eagles, a Deceit of Lapwings, a Ballet of Swans, a Siege of Cranes, a Conspiracy of Ravens, a Company of Parrots, a Murmuration of Starlings and a Flamboyance of Flamingos!

And what about our four-legged friends? Here are some quirky ones!

When Noah invited representatives of all animals onto his Ark, he had to select a pair each from: An Ambush of Tigers, an Array of Hedgehogs, a Bloat of Hippos, a Crash of Rhinos, a Rumpus of Baboons, a Shrewdness of Apes, a Singular of Boar, a Skulk of Foxes, a Sleuth of Bears and a Mob of Kangaroos!

Not to mention the hoppers and slitherers from a Colony of Frogs, a Knot of Toads, a Quiver of Cobras, a Bask of Crocodiles, and even a Culture of Bacteria!

These are only a small taste of the numerous terms used to describe groups of different kinds, the history of which can be traced back to the Middle Ages in England. The earliest known collection of terms of collective nouns or ‘venery’ (an archaic term for ‘hunting’) is in the Book of Saint Albans, a kind of handbook for hunters first published in 1486. Included among chapters was a list of the Compaynys of Beestys and Fowlys, where many of the common terms of venery made their first appearances including pride of lions, flock of sheep and herd of deer.

While serious scientists may not be amused at the attribution of human traits to describe the animal world, for the language lovers, discovering new terms can be great fun.

Even more fun is trying to coin one’s own terms! Here are some that I thought of: A Cacophony of Koels, a Preening of Peacocks, a Menace of Mosquitoes, and a Buzzload of Bumblebees!

–Mamata

Crossed Digits

August 7, 2018August 7, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 2 Comments

“Digits crossed!” is an expression that my friends and I use when we are hoping for things to turn out well—with double the power of “fingers crossed!” Yes, we hope to ensure this by metaphorically crossing not just the fingers, but also the toes.

In today’s ‘digital age’ where the digit-related terms are so commonly used—digitization, digital camera, digital natives, digital divide, digital detox….we relate the word only to numbers. We seem to have forgotten that the word’s anatomical meaning. The word digit has its roots in the Latin root word digitus which means “finger or toe,” and English borrowed from this to mean “number.”

In fact, the practice of calling numbers digits comes from the digits on the hands — specifically, the habit of counting to ten on one’s fingers.

The digit in this sense was also a unit of measurement, long ago when people used their hands and arms for measuring things. The width of a first finger was called a digit. This was used to measure things. The width of a palm was called a hand breadth. The width of an outstretched hand was called a span. The distance between an elbow and the tip of the longest finger was called a cubit.

The Egyptians had a standard length from the elbow to the middle fingertip, a distance of about 45-50 cm which they called a cubit. The width of the hand or four fingers was called a palm or hand and was about 9-10 cm. Hands is still used for measuring horses.

The ancient fathom was the distance between the outstretched arms about 1.8 metres. It is still used for measuring depth at sea.

The foot may have come from an ancient Babylonian brick measurement but in fact it works out to the approximate length of a man’s foot about 30 cm. The finger became an inch, which the Roman’s made one-twelfth of a foot.

In this digital age, if you want to sound smart, you can refer to your finger, thumb, or toe as a digit!

If you want to sound smarter still, go digital in Latin!

Here’s what they are called:

Thumb Pollex

Index finger (pointer finger, fore finger) Digitus Secundus Manus

Middle finger Digitus Medius Manus

Ring finger Digitus Annularis Manus

Pinky ( little finger) Digitus Minimus Manus

And keep your digits crossed!

–Mamata

What Say You?

July 26, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 4 Comments

When I lived in Kenya, and learnt a little bit of Kiswahili, it was great fun to discover curious words or phrases. One of the best ones was to the local word for curd/yogurt. This was called Mazeevaa Lala—literally “sleeping milk!”

I was reminded of this recently when I chanced upon a Maltese saying My eye went with me, to mean that you have fallen asleep, as not taking your eyes with you would result in a sleepless night!

This is one of the many sayings in a delightful book titled Speaking in Tongues: curious expressions from around the world–a compilation of proverbs, idioms and sayings from different languages of the world, put together by Ella Frances Sanders. What brings the words alive are the accompanying illustrations, also by Ella who describes herself as “a writer out of necessity and an illustrator by accident.”

From Finnish to Igbo, Armenian to Yiddish, each double spread presents delectable sayings and drawings that blend the wit and wisdom of the ages while also placing these in their cultural context.

Cannot resist sharing some:

Even the monkeys fall from trees. This well-known Japanese saying reminds that even the best and the cleverest can still make mistakes, and cautioning to keep overconfidence in check! Perhaps the recent World Cup surprises where the superheroes fell from grace is an apt analogy!

You are my orange half. A Spanish term of endearment that means that someone is your soulmate or love of your life. Not quite sure what is so endearing about an orange, but reminded of the Amul chocolate ads that urged us to “Share it with someone you love!”

Horse horse Tiger tiger. To describe something that is so-so, or neither here nor there. This is a Mandarin expression; its origin lies in a story about a painter who painted a half tiger half horse but nobody bought it as it was neither one nor the other.

To pull someone out of their watermelons. A Romanian idiom that means to drive someone crazy! Not much light on why being in or out of watermelons can be harmful to mental health!

Stop ironing my head. An Armenian way of saying “Stop bugging me!” Popularly used when someone keeps asking irritating questions and won’t leave you alone. In many Indian languages we have our own equivalents in the form of “Don’t eat my head.”

To give a green answer to a blue question. A Tibetan reference to when the answer is completely unrelated to the question asked. Something that people in politics are adept at!

This is just a sampler of the 52 proverbs, expressions and idioms that have been passed on from one generation to another in diverse cultures. Interestingly, they reflect not just diversity, but also the sameness as it were. As I read I immediately thought of similar ones in Hindi and Gujarati, as will surely be the case in all languages. Remember how we had to memorise proverbs in our language subjects in school and what a pain it was? Maybe it is time to revisit these!

A perfect one to end with. To have a head full of crickets.

How the Spanish describe a mind buzzing with crazy, wonderful ideas, whims, and flights of fantasy…(what some would call nonsense!)

Nicely sums up how I often feel!

–Mamata

Talk Time

July 14, 2018 ~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

All through school and college, one of the best parts was the ‘night-spend’ (before it was called ‘sleep-over’!) at a friend’s place. The high point of this was staying awake till very late, sometimes even till dawn, simply nattering the hours away. Though well past our school and college days, for myself and my friends, this continues to be so, even today!

We never seemed to run out of conversation. Conversation was comfort, it was catharsis, it was heart-to-heart and tête-à-tête, and more. Conversation was face-to-face communication.

It was not just with friends–face-to-face communication was a way of life. Families caught up with doings and happenings/news over daily meals, and at family get-togethers; colleagues exchanged views over a cup of tea; housewives met at the corner for a chinwag to exchange neighbourhood gossip, and senior citizens bemoaned the state of the world as they took their constitutional in the park. We communicated daily with the shopkeepers, the domestic help, the essential service providers like the milkman, the presswalla, the newspaper supplier, and the auto drivers.

Today we are told that the world is “connected” like never before. We are in constant communication, as it were…Through the press of a button we can order our groceries and daily requirements; we can book tickets for movies or order in food; we can upload pictures of our latest travels; we can stream live the family wedding from the exotic destination; we can open our hearts to the BFF through Twitter and Instagram…and we can even text our children in their bedroom to say that dinner is ready!

The world is “connected” 24/7. Time saving, effort saving, technological marvels we say. But somewhere in all this, have we not lost something precious? Something that is a basic human need–Face-to-face communication, an ancient and abiding human gift? Are we losing a vital connection?

“When you speak a word to a listener, the speaking is an act. …Listening is not a reaction, it is a connection. …And it is a mutual act: the listener’s listening enables the speaker’s speaking. It is a shared event, intersubjective: the listener and speaker entrain with each other. …When you can and do entrain, you are synchronising with the people you’re talking with, physically getting in time and tune with them. No wonder speech is so strong a bond, so powerful in forming community.” (Ursula K. Le Guin in a piece titled Telling Is Listening.)

Perhaps the next time, before we sign up for “Unlimited Talk Time” offers, let us see if we can make real Time for Talk.

–Mamata