Loan Ranger

Originally posted at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

It’s difficult for us sometimes to speak a sentence in our regional tongues without inadvertently throwing in an English word. And not just an English-derived word, but an actual, true-blue English word having its own place in the Oxford dictionary. And not because our vernaculars lack terminology for these things/ideas, but because the ‘native’ terminology simply hasn’t gained currency and the English word has stuck.

And thanks to the fact that our country was always a much sought-after tourist destination, even in historical times, we attracted people from the world over, including Persia, China, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Britain. Some of these people stayed on longer than expected, and left behind their legacy, in terms of architecture, cuisine, administration and of course, language.

While it may be common knowledge that our subcontinental languages possess a vocabulary deriving – to varying degrees – from these tongues, noteworthy is the morphing these words go through when being absorbed into the vernaculars.

The very reason this process of morphing came to my mind was when I noticed the presence of the same Portuguese-origin word in two unrelated languages – Tamil and Konkani.

What Tamil calls a ஜன்னல் /ɟənnəl/ and Konkani a जनेल /zɔnɛl/, is known in Portuguese as janela /ʒanɛlə/, and in English as ‘window’ :-)

These two Indian languages, spoken on different coasts of India, and belonging to two different language families, both use terms derived from the same Portuguese word, albeit with very different pronunciations as you can see above.

Tamil approximates the Portuguese /ʒ/ to /ɟ/, while Konkani approximates it to /z/. Also, the Portuguese vowel /a/ becomes /ə ~ ɐ/ in Tamil, while turning to /ɔ/ in Konkani.

Similarly, Arabic نصیب /nɑsˁiːb/ ‘fate’, is pronounced only slightly differently in Hindi/Urdu - /nəsiːb/, but quite differently in Marathi - /nəʃib/, and even more differently in Konkani - /nɔʃib/, after going through appropriate ‘naturalisation’ processes in each language. In fact, the Marathi and Devanagari Konkani spellings for this word reflect this naturalisation - नशीब

Let’s select an English word that is more or less found in most subcontinental languages today, in order to compare the phonetic metamorphoses that loan words go through in these various languages - Office

Hindi /ɔfɪs ~ aːfɪs ~ aːpʰɪs/, with the latter more likely to be found in rural areas

Urdu /aːfɪs/, since Urdu speakers seem to get around better with the /f/ sound. Not too different from Hindi

Bengali /ɔfɪs ~ ɔpʰis ~ ɔpʰiʃ/, again with the latter typical of a rural accent

Gujarati /ofis ~ opʰis/ – Was there ever any doubt :-)

Marathi /ɔfɪs ~ ɔpʰis/

Kannada, Telugu, Tamil /ɑːfis ~ ɑːpis/ – The open /ɔ/ is normally beyond the phonetic means of an average speaker of these languages

Malayalam /oːfis ~ oːpis/ – Malayalam is an exception among Dravidian languages in that the open /ɔ/ is replaced by closed /o/ instead of even more open /ɑ/, resulting in that characteristic ‘Mellu aaksend’!

Poor Microsoft must have had a hell of a time deciding how to transcribe ‘Microsoft Office’ into these languages during localisation.

While most of us can trace the ‘foreign’ origins of a word in our regional languages quite easily, in most cases when the word is from English or Persian/Arabic, the majority of us are oblivious to loan words that have come from other languages, such as -

Hindi चाय /caːj/, Marathi चहा /caɦaː /, Gujarati ચા /caː/, Kannada ಚಹಾ /caɦaː /, Urdu چائے /caːj/, Bengali চা /caː/ –
from the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese character 茶 /tsʰɑː˨˩/ – Tea

Tamil கக்கூஸு /kɐkkuːsɯ/, from Dutch kakhuis /kakhøjs/ ‘shit house’ – Latrine

Hindi चाबी /caːbiˑ/, from Portuguese chave /ʃaʋə/- Key

Marathi गरज, /ɡərəz/, from Arabic غرض /ɣɑrɑdˁ/– Need (n.)