WHAT NOW OF BALD AND BOLD?

                            WHAT NOW OF BALD AND BOLD?

Whoever has gone through my write-up “BALD BUT BOLD” would either have been amused or angered that Tamils and Malayalees are presented for their dark sides. Me being a Tamil [thus a South Indian] myself, it is unfair to bracket me in the group of persons bashing Southerners. My intention in all such write-ups /utterances.[spanning over several years now] has all the time been that our men render themselves to be  sheer butts of jokes by a cavalier attention to the finesse of languages be it English or any other Indian language.

Inevitably, every time one addresses any inadequacy, ultimately the source to blame is the clan named TEACHERS. I know they may rise in revolt chiding me for pinpointing the teacher as the prime source of error. Granting that the mistakes of every student need not after all be ascribed to the teacher, still the teacher can not get rid of the ignominy of having missed the chance to put things in right mode for the learner to grasp the best nuances of applying the language. The grand escape for the teachers, now-a-days is to take shelter under the umbrella of restricted freedom to reprimand learners by punishment.

Still, my opinion persists to clarify that ‘learning a thing is not hinged to punishment’; rather it is the way the message is fed to the learner. The ‘inadequacy’ has its roots in the mechanics of reciting alphabets to their nearest original sounds as to distinguish P from B,  G from C, D from T, S from Z even as the difference between J and G are laid clear. Honestly, too often we are happy that the alphabets are repeated A to Z in quick sequence, with little attention to their ‘sound value’ or phonetic quality. I have not known of instructors taking pain to to pay attention to tell the learner as to how a certain sound like ‘F’ is let out by curving the lower lip to touch the lower teeth permitting the air to ‘escape’ between this assembly and the upper lip. If the air is let out between the lips it would sound “PH” -the way most Bengalis do while using IF; it rather sounds IPH as if one smokes.    The fate of ‘Z’ among several Indian cultures is even more bizarre. People conveniently settle for J to spell Z as they readily say joo [zoo] or juvaaljy [zoology] as against that of the southernmost southerners who say SWALLOJI for Zoology. Northerners are no paragons of virtue on matters of language culture be it grammar or pronunciation. For them BIOLOGY is BIA LAAJEE  PHYSIOLOGY is PHYSIALAAJEE, MORPHOLOGY is MORPHALAAAJEE, PSYCHOLOGY is SAIKKALAAJEE all kinds of inundations in pronouncing,  besides saying ‘TO NOT FORGET in place of ‘NOT TO FORGET and WITH REGARDS TO in place of WITH REGARD TO  and a host of others that sound ‘un English’ for  adherents to  traditional patterns of formulation of statements.

Undoubtedly, a certain degree of Emboldening is characteristic of neo-linguists who tend to brush aside all ‘well meaning suggestions’ to overwhelm the contrary opinion by suggesting that ‘these are modern usages’. .The wrong is given a label of modernity to silence the critics. .Mere ability to handle a system like   computer or some engineering work  is taken as proficiency in all knowledge domains  It is time people realized their folly before we are irretrievably stupid. Ironically, the  stupid ones  are happy of their prowess while the ‘well-informed’ languish for speaking  the truth. and are readily condemned as of being archaic. Teachers need to ponder over strategies of reviving right steps to impart language traditions.

Prof. K. Raman