English Rigmarole!

I have been suffering from what is called the Obsessive Pronunciation Syndrome. Mostly, when I articulate in English, I tend to fumble for the fear of wrongly pronouncing whatever follows. I have been practicing this since childhood and deserve a pat on my back. I am improving. Improved but at the same time I have espoused an inexplicable habit of rectifying people on their pronunciation. As I believe in the truth of the adage “Old habits die hard!” it blissfully accompanies my conversations with sometimes quite unknown people. Either the audience is left in awe or the orator herself suffers from the guilt of insolence.

This has altogether become an involuntary act. I do not realize until the person I try to correct becomes quiet suddenly, or chases to bang my head. It would be fun to share some of those instances.

Now I hail from a geography where people are too good with their Pro-noun-ciations. That is how they would render it saying “Boss your pro-noun-ciation is wrong”.

Even funnier is when you travel to eastern India and you would come across people who would be in a serious attempt to vandalize the language – “Babu, the baash wheel leebh!” Please move your ass sorts! Well to decode- it would read as “Babu, the bus will leave”.

There are these western Indians who would say “Jigness’s wife laa-oo-s(loves) me a lot and she has flow-less (flawless) skin” :)

Northern India has peculiar articulations as they love to ‘tamper the temperature’. They would say ‘Delhi has very high tamp-rature and they swat(sweat) like pigs!’

The South has some royal distortions of consonants itself. The man himself is flip-flopped…. YEM YAY YEN! (MAN).

Thankfully, the Central India has spared English and they seek refuge in Hindi.

All of the citations above are my own experiences and I have tried to correct the speaker but to minimal avail as I said- Old habits die hard.

Then come the urban educated who think they speak correct English but are oscillating between the American and British English. I fell prey to this too. Watching English movies has totally ruined my understanding of the English that I learnt in my school days. I am unsure most of the times when I pronounce a word . Let’s say for example the word ‘leisure’. You can either call it lee-zhur(American) or ley-zhur(British). Recently my friend corrected me on the pronunciation of the word ‘Nazi’ which should be correctly pronounced as ‘Naatzi’. Similarly you have the Peetza (Pizza). The British ruled India for two centuries and left us their language. My primary school English teacher had aptly described this as a ‘Horse Language’.

There are certain other words which great orators would use with utter poise like
‘Epi-toam(epitome) of kindness’. Folks I cannot control any further and I have to correct you here. It’s pronounced Epi-tuh-me. Another word which has been ringing in my mind is Duplex. Just to sound chic people call it “Dew-play” which is 200 % wrong. It is to be pronounced ‘Dew-plex’ .Phew! what a perplex! Heard of penchant? You can pronounce it pen-chunt or po(nasal)-shaw(nasal)… How on earth can a person remember so many variants of a word? Well that’s what the English seers are for.

I think if I do not stop here, I will go on and on. If you think I mispronounced any word above ;) do stop by and help me learn.