Saturday, April 21, 2007

Inja Holiday: On the use of language

The local language of Kerala is Malayalam. The written form is quite as exotic as it sounds, with loops and curves, quite unlike Hindi sanskrit.
Interestingly, many Keralans do not speak Hindi, only Malayalam and English. So much so that there is a thriving local film industry, becuase many locals do not understand the Hindi-based Bollywood productions.

The Indian flavour of English is somewhat formal, and very precise in terms of grammar. It bears more of a resemblance to polite Victorian English than the Estuary English now prevalent in England. A local will ask 'What is your good name, sir?', and will tell you that the weather will be hot this afternoon, even if it rains in the forenoon.

The media are rather moralistic, which may or may not represent the views of the majority. Combining this with the formal language structures leads to some rather amusing constructions. For example, Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty (Bollywood goddess and recent Big Brother winner in the UK) were presenting at an Aids awareness event when Gere made a rather awful faux pas - he grabbed Shilpa (well, you would, wouldn't you?) and planted a smacker full on her lips, in a rather theatrical yet good-natured stunt. The media went crazy - it apparently broke a multitude of decency rules, and was seen as an infringement of Shilpa's good name. The press ran a story about an indecent act, and ran on to describe the event thus: 'It is all indecency and nudity which our society cannot tolerate.' I just loved the reference to nudity.



By the way, Kerala has a higher literacy rate than the UK...

No comments: