The languages of my day

"Hey!!! How are you?" A friend at office greets me. That's the coolest, Americanized way to
greet the cool and not so cool people in the yuppie metro culture in India. "Great", I say these days, instead of plain old "fine". I've imbibed this one. But somehow, a "hey" just does not come out as spontaneously as the good old last century "hi". I think a lot about these and other
words that I use in my daily vocabulary. Which makes me ponder over not just the range
of words, but also the range of languages I use in a day.

As I write, I think. Mostly I try to think in English. Obviously as a writer I would have a good command over English. But wait a minute, which English? You think, this would be a no-brainer, because there is only one language called English, plain and simple! Unfortunately no! At the Indian writer level, working in an American company, who has studied and imbibed the English language and grammar in a British convent school for over a decade, is daily and hourly exposed to Bollywoood media, and is living in the Shiv Sena-dominated, politically driven, communist Maharashtrian culture, would you believe, there are a few "Englishes" to chose from?

Thanks to 10 or more years of convent education, some formidable nuns, and tons of Enid Blytons, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Arthur Conan Doyle, British English has seeped into 78.593% pores of my skin. It has just been flowing out from my tongue in auto-mode, on the default setting for many years. But after entering the professional world, inevitably the American dollars beckoned. Soon came the realization that at American-affiliated Indian IT companies, any female Indian writer is more than willing to embrace the American stars, stripes, slang, terminology, even the handsome Obama, et al. In fact, in the race of life, an Indian writer can shift into fourth gear by learning American English, and get on to fast track career growth. It's not so challenging. Even though one is tuned to thinking in British English, one can manage to keep up with the professional writing in American English.


Switching on and off between these two language modes is one problem that can be easily resolved. One just has to try not to confuse oneself and tangle one's thought process within these two "Englishes". At the same time, what I always believe is that one must try not to forget how to converse in the common language of the people, that is "Hinglish". Sooner or later you realize that it's hard to converse with colleagues, buddies, and pals, if you cannot converse in the common dialect, by somehow attaining a balance of Hindi and English in your daily conversation. So if you started that sentence in English, the trick is to finish it off in Hindi. Everyone does it! See how TRP advertisers sell their FMCG wares? You got it! They speak "Hinglish", the dialect of the people. So of course, "Hinglish" just creeps into the remaining pores of your skin. But one has to try to squeeze the regional language Marathi into the pores, too. After all, in Pune, local colleagues at work might just lapse into a little Marathi without warning. So if you add in a few words of Marathi into the Maharashtra-based Indian writer's articulation technique, then you get the fourth type of English, which is "Indian Regional English".

I do like to think of "Indian Regional English" as different from the "spoken vernacular" and the "written vernacular", Marathi. And mind you, both "Indian Regional English" and the "spoken vernacular " are such important languages in your daily life, you just cannot afford to chill, and freeze on a limited selection of words for emergency use. You need to strive to expand your vocabulary in these areas as well. For instance on any day in office, you might not be pre-warned when a colleague answers several critical technical queries in "Indian Regional English", at home your domestic help mutters that she's not available for the next four days, or on the road the noveau-riche owner of a flashy car curses you and your slow but steady driving, all in the "vernacular".


Switching to and from different English modes can be done with ease, and can become as simple as switching automotive gears, if one practices hard enough. Although these seem like several languages to master, it's sad that one can't really claim to be a multi linguist at this. You see, the four versions of English are just sub-languages, and the "umbrella" or "blanket" language is actually only English. So I was about to conclude this blog with the sum total of the languages I speak, that is only 3. But a couple of phone calls that jolted me out of my linguistic reverie! One call was from my mother, to whom I responded in my mother-tongue, that is Sindhi. Oooh, I completely forgot to add this language to my list. The language of my childhood and my impressionable years. The other call was from my father-in-law who let out a few phrases in the Punjabi language, that is my husband's "father-tongue". I attempted to answer in the same "tongue" as a few thoughts occured to me. You see hubby's mother is a Maharashtrian, so the "mother-tongue" ought to be Marathi. Now I know that there is a confusion here because the language his mother speaks would not be his mother-tongue, but the language his father speaks would be his mother-tongue. And you might be wondering which of these is my daughter's mother-tongue? Worry not! I shall not let the strangeness of the English language dilute my focus on this blog post about "my" language medley and the pontifications that make me wonder which languages I speak in, write in and think in.


Back on track, I chewed my pen and decided that sleeping over the confusion would restore my clarity of thought and language for this blog post, so I left it at that. But the evening conversation with my daughter churned up some more thought-provoking words or rather words-provoked thoughts. As I entered the house, my daughter chirped, "Hey dude!". Then later she went on to ask me what "modhu" meant, as her cousin brother (whose mother is from Gujarat and speaks Gujarati) had told her "shut your modhu", just for fun, and a fight had ensued because of the language barrier and incomprehension. "Modhu" means mouth in the Gujarati language. Simple and harmless, not at all profane, I explained to her! Fortunately, since I knew the meaning, I had prevented a little Gujarati spark from fanning into a linguistic fire right there. As her cousin interjected a few more words in Gujarati, my daughter quipped, " Mama, if you know Gujarati, then you have to teach me also". Thankfully, my son has just learnt to speak only a few words of a single language, and still has a long way to go before he reports any such perils.

And last but not the least, I must mention that my day finally ended after a late-evening call from hubby dear with some friends, seated at a wine-tasting lounge in Nasik, which is like the Napa valley of India. Completely oblivious of my linguistic dilemma, he read aloud from a wine menu and asked if I knew what "aperitif" meant? I racked my brains to dig up French vocabulary learnt at school. Yes, I said, making the final language switch for the day. "Aperitif" means an appetising drink, served before meals.

Linguistically tired, I tried to sleep, thoughts still lingering on my lexical predicament, pondering and wondering which of the above languages I would use in my dreams.