A Linguistic Marriage

It’s fascinating how words move from one language to another. Why and how they move can be enlightening and often down right funny. English and Italian have a close relationship even though English is not classified as a Latin-based language. The connection comes in part from the years that Julius Caesar and his troops spent on the British Isles.

Take the word tooth, for example. It comes to us from Old English, but the Italian, dente, comes from Latin. From that root in English we have dentist, dental, dentifrice, etc. Likewise, the word hard in English is duro in Italian. It’s Latin root gives us durable, duration, duress, and endure.

English speakers learning Italian and Italians learning English have to be wary of “false friends,” words that appear to be the same, but aren’t. In Italian, the word for farm is fattoria; many Italian students of English think fattoria is factory. Other examples are more confusing: sensibile in Italian means sensitive. A sensible person in Italian is described as being di buonsenso. And if you want to order prosciutto without preservatives, say senza conservante because preservativo means condom.

In general, Italians love to use English words, but they often get them wrong. Last year on my other blog, Italian Intrigues, I wrote a piece about the Titty Bar. It’s not topless; in fact, the name is intended to conjure up a warm, family feeling. In this case, the name has as much to do with pronunciation as meaning. But it makes English speakers smile.

Often, an English word migrates into Italian to perform one narrowly defined task. Take chat, for example. Italian has a perfectly good word, chiacchierata, that is virtually equal in meaning to the English word. When the practice of Internet chat emerged, the English word was adopted, but only for Internet chat. Thus when someone says to me, “I was chatting with my friends,” I have a mental image of people talking face to face while they mean keyboard to keyboard.

Piercing and lifting are two other words that have narrow meanings in Italian. The first is body piercing, the second a face lift (or beauty products purported to have face lift properties). I once helped an Italian jewelry designer develop a presentation about her work in English. She had designed a line of gold jewelry in which the metal had been pierced to make intricate designs. She refused to believe that pierce was the correct word, and even after I showed her in the bilingual dictionary, her preconceived reaction to the word made it impossible for her to use it. We had to find another, more complex, way of describing her work.

Italians immigrating to America developed a slang that combined their own language with the new one. A classic example is Dean Martin singing about pasta fazool in “That’s Amore.” He was singing about an Italian dish called pasta e fagiole (pasta and beans).

Image from Western Connecticut State University

In Italian, a photographic camera is a macchina fotografica. Simple. Descriptive. But how we English speakers came to use camera for the same mechanism is quite interesting. It’s the Italian word for room. Camera di letto, bedroom; camera di pranzo, dining room. So how did camera come to mean macchina fotografica in English?

Before the invention of film, artists could record images by constructing a “room” outside, known as a camera obscura, dark room. Light passing through a small hole was reflected onto the opposite wall. It was upside down, but it maintained perspective. Artists could then trace the reflected image for an accurate record of the scene. Later, a box with mirrors to reverse the image was constructed, and the camera as we know it was born.

Know of any other languages that play tricks on your comprehension?

No, Really, Who Am I?

Someone recently asked whether my family is north or south Indian, and the question gave me serious pause. I know, it should be a fairly straightforward question for anyone to answer, yet I’m embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t do it. Even after a bit of research, I’m still not quite certain. Yes, I see you shaking your head and muttering “no way.” And yet…

Part of the problem is that both my parents are from Bombay, born and raised. Bombay – or Mumbai, as it's now called – is a little like New York. Once you move there, it’s hard to remember anywhere you’d been before. (That dig is specifically directed at my New York friends, who’ve fallen off the map, so to speak.)

And yes, at least a couple of my grandparents and possibly most of my great grandparents were born in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Some of my ancestors even took their surnames from the tiny villages in Karnataka where they lived. That makes us south Indian, right? Maybe.

The distribution of Konkani speakers along India's
southwestern coast. (Photo by ImperiumCaelestis)

The predominant language spoken in Karnataka today is Kannada, a Dravidic language like the other main south Indian languages such as Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil. Dravidians belong to one of two major civilizations that have their roots in ancient India, the Aryans being the other and from which north Indians and Pakistanis have descended. Scholars believe the Indian subcontinent was entirely Dravidian until the Aryans migrated south from Central Asia and possibly the Caucasus (southern Russia).

The two traditions are as different as night and day. The languages are completely different, though today, they reflect slight influences on one another. The Dravidic languages have curly alphabets that look and sound different from north Indian languages, which use the more linear devnagri script. Aryans are typically fairer, Dravidians darker. The two have different accents, and many would say, very different cultures, even histories. Though India is probably one of the most successful melting pots you'll find, as with any large, diverse culture, biases and discrimination exist between these groups. Not as a rule, just on occasion.

Perhaps I’m just reluctant to choose sides, you’re wondering? It’s more complicated. My family speaks Konkani, which happens to sound a lot like Marathi, the main language spoken in Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. Konkani also shares a lot of etymology from Hindi, a north Indian language. Without much effort, I can understand a good bit of both languages (though more Marathi than Hindi), whereas I cannot understand a word of South Indian languages. I've heard quite a bit of Kannada spoken around my in-laws’ home in Bangalore but still can't understand more than a handful of words. (They, too, are Konkani, yet my father in-law can’t speak a word of it. Or maybe won’t.)

A NASA satellite image shows the location of
the ancient Saraswati River, which has since dried up.

It’s also been established that the Konkani-speaking community from which I hail, known as the Saraswats, descended from one of the five Hindu Brahmin communities that once lived on the banks of the ancient Saraswati River. Many subcommunities hail from these original Saraswats, including the Kashmiri Saraswat Brahmins, of which former prime minister Indira Gandhi was a notable member. In fact, many people from her community use the surnames of “bhat” or “pandit,” meaning priest and religious scholar. Gandhi’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru, whom I wrote about last week, was widely called Panditji, the “ji” added as a term of honor. Many Konkani-speaking Saraswats from Karnataka are descended from pandits as well, from even just a few generations back, before their own kids started moving away to study, work, and eventually take up other occupations in big cities and abroad.

Last month, after being asked about my northern vs. southern roots and stumbling over my response, I did a little research. That is, I turned to Wikipedia, where I learned that my community likely did descend from the original Kashmiri pandits – though not conclusively. (Damn you, Wiki!)

I’d been hearing bits and pieces of this theory for years, even had an American college professor who wrote a book on the topic, so it was interesting to gather more details. Beginning in the early 13^th century, forced conversion to Islam had begun in Kashmir, driven in large part by a Mughal general from Turkmenistan. Between 1389 and 1413, religious persecution of Hindus was at its peak under a sultan who at the time ruled Kashmir, leading many Saraswats to head southwest to Goa (just a bit north of Karnataka), drawn there because of the fertile land along the Arabian Sea and the religious tolerance under its local (Dravidian) kingdoms. 

On their way south, the Saraswats passed through Gujarat, which may explain why Konkani-speaking Saraswats share some vocabulary with Gujarati, words even Marathi and Hindi, with their closer linguistic association to Gujarati, don’t use. (Hard to otherwise explain this fact.)

Cover page of the 1622 book,
Doutrina Christam em Lingoa
Bramana Canarim ("Christian
Doctrines in the Canarese Brahmin
Language"), by Fr. Thomas Stephens,
a Jesuit missionary priest in Goa

Before the Saraswats arrived in Goa, the local form of Konkani had already been influenced by other cultures, for example, by ancient Sumerians who had settled there. Goa had long been a major trade center with the Arabs and Persians as well, so many Arab and Persian words infiltrated into Konkani – such as dhukan for “shop,” fakt for “only,” and karz for “debt.” A few centuries after the Saraswats arrived and adopted Konkani as their new language, Portuguese traders followed by Christian missionaries landed in Goa. From the 16th century until the early 19th century, the Goa Inquisition resulted in many forced conversions, this time to Christianity. To avoid persecution and/or losing their land, a great number of Saraswats converted to Catholicism and even today are known as “Brahmin Catholics.” Goa still retains this largely Christian, Portuguese-influenced Konkani culture and language.

Meanwhile, a smaller group of Saraswats moved farther south, into the small villages and towns of Karnataka. Some moved farther still, into Kerala. In both Karnataka and Kerala, they were able to practice their religion, build temples, buy land, and hold government jobs. Today along this coastal stretch, you’ll find not just Saraswats, but Konkanis of all religions and dialects, too numerous to count. Konkani Muslims in Karnataka, for example, are descended from the intermarriage between the locals and Arab seafarers as well as through conversions. The sailor-warriors from Ethiopia, known as Siddhis, also adopted the language and planted roots in the area. (Yes, there are black people in India. And they weren't slaves.)

When Bombay became a boom town in the early 19^th century, a great many Konkani-speaking Saraswats – no doubt, drawing from their adventurous, nomadic roots – migrated there, so much so, that many families, such as mine, lost most of their connection with the south, while others, such as my husband’s family, retained it. Though exact numbers are hard to come by, it’s possible that today as many Konkani-speaking Saraswats live outside of India as within it.

A few parts of this history still aren't clear: how and why did we pick up the Konkani language? It appears that Konkani existed in the south long before the Saraswats’ exodus from Kashmir. The earliest-known proof of its existence dates to about the 2^nd century A.D., and Konkani was already spoken on the Konkan Coast, from Goa to Kerala. But that fact only raises more questions – if Konkani was already spoken in that part of the world, what did the Saraswats speak before they moved there? And if we adopted a language that already existed in the area, could we also have been absorbed into its culture through the mixing of bloodlines? Maybe we have both north and south Indian blood? 

And why did the Saraswars adopt Konkani, of all things, and not one of the more widely spoken (read: more useful) majority languages, one with a real script?

A map adapted from A Historical Atlas of South
Asia, Oxford University Press (1992), lists Konkani
as an Indo-Aryan language. (Image by BishkekRock)

The origin of the Konkani language is a puzzle anthropologists are still figuring out as well. It appears to be an Indo-Aryan language, related more to Sanskrit than to the Dravidic languages of the south. One article I found says these Saraswats spoke Sanskrit in public and invented a simplified version, Brahmani, that they spoke at home. Brahmani may have formed a sort of grassroots version of Konkani. A study by the Indian Anthropological Society found that some Konkani speakers (not the Saraswats) are descended from Australoid tribes that came to India from the Mediterranean in pre-historic times, spoke early Dravidian languages, and migrated to north India! (Then moved back with the Saraswats? If so, no kidding about our nomadic spirit. No wonder I'm so antsy.) 

Even the origin of the word “Konkani” is disputed. It sounds a bit like the word Kannada, but it could also have been derived from the Persian (Aryan) word kinara, meaning “the language of the coast." The anthropologists who conducted the study conclude it could just be a language born of the confluence of Indo-Aryan dialects that absorbed some Dravidic characteristics. Either way, Konkani has the structure and syntax of an Aryan language and the grammar of a Dravidic one. 

All that to say that the Saraswats who left Kashmir for Karnataka probably took along their own dialect (possibly Brahmani), borrowed some useful Gujarati words along the way, and melded it all with a Dravidic form of Konkani, which in turn borrowed from the Persian and Arabic. Sounds like a real stretch, but if it's true, it's a pretty astounding amalgamation of cultures and languages.

Either way, I’ll just have to change the subject next time someone asks me that question, don't you think?

I Say Tomate, You Say Tomato – English, Arabic, and Spanish Word Migration

Photo by Fastily Talk

It wasn’t until I started learning Spanish as an adult that I realised a lot of words used in English were, in fact, of Spanish origin. I grew up with words such as cargo, chilli, chocolate, and oregano, using them in the English sense but not having a clue about their beginnings.

English and Spanish are both part of the Romance language family (along with Italian, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Catalan), so once I got my head around learning a new language, Spanish didn’t feel so hard (except for the grammar, don’t get me started on the grammar!). Since becoming fluent in Spanish, I’ve found I can read or hear other romance languages and get the general gist. And when words from one language are used in another in the same context (or at least sounds similar), then it makes life a lot easier.

American English (as most of you know) comprises of a lot of Spanish words passed to us from Mexican and Central and South American immigrants. This influence dates back to the days of the Gold Rush, and with more adventurous palates, Spanish words are used to describe certain dishes of which there is no English equivalent. Sometimes we adapt a foreign word even though there is a version in English – coriander is often substituted with cilantro, a Spanish word of French origin.

But it’s not just Spanish that influenced the English language. A lot of Spanish words have strong ties to Arabic, harking back to the occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the 5^th century and continuing on into the 8^th and 9^th centuries. Many people of Islamic descent occupied this region, and as time went on, many Arabic words migrated into the Spanish language. You’ll find many words in English that begin with al have Arabic origins and commonly a Spanish influence. Classic examples are alcove and alfalfa.

The Internet and increasing travel opportunities have opened up new worlds of language, so it's no surprise that words from numerous languages are adopted across borders. Perhaps one day, there will be a single common language, such as Esperanto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto), but in the meantime, English will continue to adopt new words from different cultures and put its own spin on it.

Photo by Enzik

Here some examples of Spanish to English (with a bit of Arabic, Caribbean, Nahuatl, Quechua, and Arawak thrown in):

adios

aficionado

alcove (Arabic al-qubba)

alfalfa (Arabic al-fasfasah..)

alligator (from el lagarto, "the lizard")

alpaca (Aymara allpaca)

armada

armadillo (means "the little armed one")

banana (originally an African word but was adopted in Portuguese and Spanish then English)

barbecue (Caribbean barbacoa)

barracuda

bonanza

bravo (Italian and old Spanish)

cafeteria (cafetería)

canyon (cañon)

cargo (Spanish meaning to load -- cargar)

chaps (chaparreras)

chihuahua (dog breed named after Mexican city and state)

chocolate (Nahuatl language xocolat)

cigar, cigarette (Spanish cigarro)

cilantro

cinch (Spanish word cincho)

condor (Quechua)

conquistador

corral

el Niño (means the child and this weather pattern was named this because it appeared close to Christmas)

enchilada (Spanish participle enchilar which means to season with chili)

fajita (In Spanish faja means a sash or belt which best describes the cut of meat)

fiesta

flan

flotilla

Picture by John Ryan M. Debil

galleon (Spanish galeón)

garbanzo

guacamole (Nahuatl ahuacam, "avocado," and molli, "sauce")

guerrilla

hacienda (silent H in Spanish)

incomunicado

jalapeño

llama (Quechua)

machete

machismo

maize (Spanish maíz but originally from the Arawak mahíz)

mariachi (a Mexican musician that performs a special type of music)

matador (in Spanish it means a person who kills)

mosquito

nacho

oregano (from orégano)

papaya (Arawak)

patio (often means courtyard in Spanish)

piñata

plaza

poncho (originally Araucanian, an indigenous South American language)

potato (Caribbean batata)

puma (Quechua)

rodeo

salsa (In Spanish this word refers to any sauce or gravy)

sassafras (sasafrás)

savvy (Derives from sabe which means to know)

siesta

silo

sombrero (The Spanish version of this means any hat, not just the Mexican hats most people think of. The word originates from sombra, which means shade)

stampede (estampida)

tango

tequila (named after a Mexican town that makes this drink)

tobacco (Caribbean tabaco)

tomatillo

tomato (Nahuatl tomatl)

tornado (tronada which means thunderstorm)

tortilla (in Spanish, an omelette is called a tortilla)

tuna (atún)

vanilla (vainilla)

vigilante

yucca (Caribbean yuca)

The Traveling Word – Denglish, Yenglish, and Linguistic Globetrotters

Public Viewing in Berlin
Photo by Thalan

I love it when words go a-travelin’. I picture them walking down the syntactical breezeway on their spindly, alphabetical legs, clad in a Hawaiian shirt, a Stetson on their vowelly heads. And like some global travelers, the first thing that happens to these linguistic tourists is they immerse themselves in the local culture and gain an experience that changes them forever.

When the globetrotting word or phrase is English (or American or Australian, for that matter) and the language receiving it German, the cultural merger is known as Denglish – a melding of “Deutsch” (German) and “English.” These words have been absorbed from English into German, sometimes undergoing a semantic shift along the way so that they no longer mean exactly the same thing they did in the original language.

Here are a few of my favorites:

A Handy (pronounced “hendy”) is what German speakers call a cell phone. This word has been around so long, it isn’t really Denglish anymore but a regular German expression. And while cell phones are certainly “handy” (some would say “indispensable”), the term is based on the human appendage and not on the device’s convenience. “Handy,” in its German usage, may have been derived from Motorola’s Handie-Talkie AM SCR536, a handheld radio transceiver American troops used in World War II.

A public viewing, in American English at least, has me picturing funerals and corpses, especially when the deceased is famous. Michael Jackson had a public viewing when he died, as did Teddy Kennedy. But in Germany, you’re likely to find a Public Viewing at a soccer game. There, it refers to the live broadcasting of sports matches, concerts, or other major events on oversized video screens set up in public areas such as city squares, shopping malls, or bars.

The German term was coined in 2006 during preparations for the World Cup Soccer Championships. FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, introduced Fan Fest events, where they broadcast the matches on video screens in major cities around Germany. The reason, ostensibly, was because they’d miscalculated the number of fans attending the World Cup and didn’t have enough tickets to sell.

Interestingly, the Denglish version of “public viewing” has migrated back into English usage, at least in the media, where it is now applied to sports broadcasts. But for me, the expression will always have to do with a state funeral.

Here’s another of my favorite Denglish words: If a German speaker were to ask me to turn on the Beamer, she wouldn’t be suggesting I get into the luxury car sitting in my garage (I wish!) and warm up the engine. In German, a Beamer is not a BMW but a video projector. The term is derived from the English verb “to beam” or shine a light, which is precisely what a projector does.

Denglish also works in the opposite direction. Take the über-use of über. In American English these days, the expression is a prefix meaning “the most,” “the best,” or “the ultimate.” We have über-achievers (especially here in Silicon Valley), who are a step up from overachievers. The chocolate fudge cake you ate for dessert was probably über-yummy, and if you have a teenage girl in your family, chances are you’ve heard her refer to her brother as an “über-dork.”

The German original has the connotation of exaggeration as well – as in übertreiben (to exaggerate). But über in German can mean “across,” as in übersetzen (to translate – literally to transport words across linguistic boundaries). And it can stand on its own; über means “over” or “via” or “above.” Note that Germans always write über with an umlaut (the two dots over the u), while the term is becoming so well integrated into English that it’s often written without the dots.

Then we have the English word, “mensch” – a decent person. Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life is a mensch – a regular, stand-up guy. Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind is not. Except in German he is, because Mensch in that language means, simply, a human being, male or female, neither good, bad, nor devious. In English, though, mensch isn’t really Denglish. It’s Yenglish, because English borrowed the word from Yiddish (which, in turn, got it from German). This globetrotter has a lot of stamps in its passport.

What are some of your favorite traveling words? Any Denglish, Yenglish, Spanglish, or Franglais in your vocabulary?

Off The Beaten Track: Calypso, Tell me a Story

Sangeeta Nancy Boondoo, an attorney with the government of Trinidad and Tobago, is a student of life. She's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to learn and do. She loves to travel, and though she hasn't yet been to India, the land of her ancestors, it's at the top of her list to visit someday. She loves to go to the beach, take nature hikes, and bake. She does not like to cook, but she collects cookbooks anyway, along with all kinds of other books. A girl after our own heart...

Calypso music, like the steel pan and chutney music, originated from my beautiful, small country of Trinidad and Tobago, and unfortunately, it is a largely unappreciated art form in a world filled of “production-line” type music. Calypso music had its birth amongst the Afro-Trinibagonian slave population and is reported to have been a means of communication between the slaves in a time when their communication with each other was severely limited by the plantocracy, who were no doubt afraid of a slave revolution, which occurred regularly on other Caribbean islands. Calypso music has since developed to become witty social commentary set to music, and over the years, has served as historical records of events, whether local or global, capture Trinidad and Tobago’s attention. As we approach Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, the local highlight of the calypsonian’s year, I thought it appropriate to share a few of my favourite songs and explain the stories they tell.

One of my all time favourites is Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola.” Yes, you read right – Lord Invader’s, not the Andrews Sisters. Here’s Lord  Invader’s original version:

Apparently, Lord Invader’s intellectual property rights got infringed way back in the 1940s. If you want to read about it, you can at: http://www.rumandcocacolareader.com/RumAndCocaCola/main.html 

What does this song have to do with our history? Well, firstly, Trinidad and Tobago, though a British West Indian colony, has always had ties with the United States.  In 1941, the U.S. and Britain signed the Lend-Lease Agreement, also called the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement. As part of this agreement, the Americans got 99-year leases of the deepwater harbor on Trinidad’s north coast, along with three army bases, one each at Chaguaramas, Wallerfield, and Carlsen Field. Thousands of Trinidadians worked at these bases for higher wages and in better conditions than they were accustomed to. My grandmother spoke fondly of my grandfather’s experiences while working at the Carlsen Field base. There were also the female Trinidadians who worked in an entirely different manner – as prostitutes, entertaining the Americans and Canadians who were stationed here; they too made higher wages than the other islanders. 

Lord Invader was inspired by this situation, and the fact that the Americans used to chase (drink) the local rum with their Coca Cola at limings (hangouts) such as Point Cumana. The wages of the prostitutes was apparently so high that mothers would pimp or even join their daughters in the profession, “working for the Yankee dollar,” as Lord Invader eloquently put it.

In 1936, Attila the Hun sang “Roosevelt in Trinidad,” a lively calypso recording the visit of then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Trinidad. Roosevelt was on a secret mission to Casablanca, and because of the tumultuous period before World War II, he flew the longer route through Trinidad as part of the secrecy. The calypso extolled Roosevelt’s virtues. Listen to it here:

It is said that Roosevelt became a fan of calypso music after hearing this song. Wouldn’t you too if you were flatteringly portrayed in song?

Jumping a few decades later into 1967, Lord Kitchener sang the popular “Take Yuh Meat Out Mih Rice,” a conversation between a Bajan (a citizen of Barbados, a Caribbean neighbor) and a Trini (short for Trinidadian), complete with the accents. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have shared a long love-hate relationship, and in this calypso, the Bajan and Trini, unable to make it alone and being hungry, decide to pool their resources to make a meal of meat and rice, the Bajan contributing the rice and the Trini the meat. After the meal is finished cooking, the Bajan continuously diminishes the Trini’s contribution as a justification for reducing his own share. Over the years, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have had disputes over maritime borders, cricket, and flying fish. Why flying fish? Well, the Bajans alleged that they have fished flying fish, the national icon of Barbados, off the coast of Tobago since the seventeenth century. We Trinis, for the most part, do not take too kindly to the Bajans passing of our fish as their own. In the opinion of many, this calypso song, though decades old, still applies. It’s sure to put a smile on your face! Take a listen:

One of the best calypos around is Ras Shorty I’s “Watch Out, My Children,” released in 1997. In the 1990s, the country’s drug problem began to surface. After meeting some young boys high on cocaine and looking as if their lives had been wasted, Ras Shorty I was inspired to write this song. Interestingly enough, the United Nations International Drug Control Programme chose the anti-drug anthem in 2002 as its theme song. It is timeless and beautiful, and if you listen to no other calypso on this list, I ask that you at least listen to this one:

 

There is a tremendous amount of calypso music, though my list is short and does little justice to the great art form. Calypsos have recorded much international history, such as about the Russian Space Station, Edward VII’s abdication, the first nuclear weapon, and a visit by the famous German airship, Graf Zepplin, to Trinidad in 1934 on its way to the Chicago Fair. While calypsonian musicians have stopped naming themselves “Lord,” the stage names are still unusual, and the music continues to tell our story and define us as a nation.