Myself: Paatti... adhu "iskool" illa... school... sollu pakkalaam.
Paatti : Adhu enna mo po
A typical conversation in my childhood, every time after my granny utters "iskool" instead of 'school'.
One cannot blame her, for she was a typical countryside, fifth standard drop out with no inkling of English alphabets. But I felt that there was absolutely no necessity to use English words, when she was not comfortable with them.
Later on, it became my favorite past time to observe her funny pronunciations. "
ispoon" (spoon),
"shentre" (centre),
"shambu" (shampoo),
"shoab" (soap),
"pashtu" (paste),
"bilt" (belt),
"aeroplaan" (aeroplane),
"shite" (side),
"bridge" (fridge),
"pan" (fan) and the list goes on. The worst of them all was "
joindu" (joint), and she would use it when she wants my mom to mix milk stored in two different vessels.
She was not coming out with new words after some time, and my fun stopped there until I reached my college. It was there that I realised that even well-educated people (people with Post graduate degrees) were clumsy in their accent.
There were people who would say "
buplic". It is not the case, where people say "tamil" and "malai" because of their inability to say "tamizh" and "mazhai". When the whole world around them pronounced the word as "public", I would wonder if they never realised their mistake.
Anyhow I had some fun again observing them. There was Lecturer who taught us Digital Electronics. She was pathetic. Would you ever accept words like "
Tann" (10), "
Toll" (12), "
purogram" (program), "
eqol" (equal), "
thres hold" (threshold), "
iz a" (this is a) at a university level.
There was another guy in our class, who gave us the term "
workshof fant". If you can decipher it, you can as well find out what the topic means. I am very excited after purchasing it last week.
P.S. There are many, who inspite of their entire schooling in Tamil medium have grown up to speak good English. And there are a few who do not bother to correct themselves.
