WORDSPEAK
A wide range of concerns
By Anand
THE issues that the readers had with "How Sikhs became Seeks", "Wordspeak", that appeared on August 7, has warranted this follow-up. Here are some e-mails that represent a wide variety of concerns and questions raised by readers about the word Sikh being pronounced as "seek".
Among a number of e-mails echoing my sentiments was Meera Jagannathan's grumble about how she had on many occasions "correct[ed] my American professors on mispronouncing words like `Buddha', `Karma', `Mantra' and scores of other South Asian words. Many people persist in mispronouncing out of sheer carelessness laced with arrogance and I give up after a while. I suspect if Indian linguists and language specialists don't protest, many of these words will eventually get morphed into new sounds, losing their meaning on the way."
What's the joke?
Just a few minutes after reading her e-mail, I read — was some unseen hand nudging me? — about a joke making the rounds in Britain in the wake of the recent London bombings: A bearded, Asian male, wearing a zipped-up heavy jacket inappropriate for the weather, enters a crowded compartment of the London Underground. Everyone shrinks nervously away from him. The man flings open his jacket dramatically, revealing a T-shirt with the legend: Don't freak, I'm a Sikh.
I'm afraid I didn't get the joke. For me, it doesn't rhyme.
Peggy Mohan was one of those who took issue with my "lumping the Indic /kh/ with the Hebrew-Yiddish-Scottish /ch/." Her reason: The Indic /kh/ consists of a "stop consonant" plus an [h]. It is an aspirated [k]. The Hebrew-Yiddish /ch/ is a fricative, a continuant (like [s]). There is no [k] at all in it.
Lack of finesse
Ms. Mohan is absolutely correct. The two main points of the columnist's defense are: In the first column, the linguistic terms "dorsal" and "accommodation" and their explanation were included with some trepidation and after considerable thought, only because their use seemed essential for making the point. Had terms such as fricative (also called a spirant, a consonant made when two vocal organs come so close together that the air moving between them produces audible friction ([f], [z]), and continuant (a speech sound made with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract (/l/, /e/, /f/) been used to describe the fine difference that exists between the various /kh/ sounds, the column would have read like a tedious monograph on the complexities of phonology.
And still wouldn't have served the purpose. The truth is that in North America, common speech — of those who might come from Hebrew-Yiddish backgrounds included — lacks the finesse described by Ms Mohan. Unless, of course, someone is a first-generation immigrant from a West Asian country. The majority of people go merrily around saying chutzpahs and challahs in various shades of /kh/, as reader Jagannathan said, out of sheer carelessness laced with arrogance. Henry Higgins, the Cockney-bashing professor of "My Fair Lady", the Broadway adaptation of Shaw's "Pygmalion", had moaned, "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" Maybe we need a modern-day Higgins who, instead of chastising common folk for dropping their h's, instructs them how to use the short rather than the long vowel in Sikh. Therefore, with a conspiratorial wink to the musical's lyricist Alan Jay Lerner:
[But] use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Why can't the Anglo-Saxons,
Why can't the Anglo-Saxons learn to speak?
And, please notice, it rhymes!
Siddhartha Saran from Lucknow was one of many who cited instances of public figures such as "Mr. George Fernandes, who can speak chaste Hindi, pronouncing `Sikhs' as /Si:ks/ in parliament house on August 10. Till the time comes when such leaders correct their pronunciation, we should not blame anyone outside our country for their wrong pronunciation."
Jaidip Singh was typical of readers whose sensibilities were hurt by the remark, "Shauna Baldwin Singh ... whose eulogy of Sikh customs and lifestyle in her novel What the Body Remembers turned many readers off", that this columnist made. "Presumably you conducted a poll," Mr. Singh wrote, "to determine whether or not readers liked this book. One wonders though if there is some unwritten law against eulogising Sikh customs (and lifestyle)."
Broad opinion
Your humble columnist, Mr. Singh, is a member of two book clubs in Canada. Several members of these two clubs belong also to other books clubs in the U.S. and in Britain. The columnist's remark about the aforesaid author was more a reflection of the opinion of the members of these several clubs than his own. These very members, incidentally, liked Monika Ali's novel Brick Lane, but complained that her use of the Bangladeshi-type broken English in letters from one character to another came in the way of their fully enjoying the novel.
This columnist wondered, though, why so few of all those who apparently felt strongly about their religion so as to be offended by the "eulogy" reference found no fault with the corruption of the word Sikh into seek!
E-mail the author at anand@journalist.com
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