How can we retool ourselves in dealing with international media?
9th April 2008 by Bish Mukherjee, ABC
Is this English? How can we retool ourselves in dealing with international media?
By Bish Mukherjee ABC
Do you know any of the following words that are found in the dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Cambridge Encyclopedia and others?
Adda: innocuous meeting with friends where you let your hair down, informal conversation; now used in media to mean hiding places for terrorists as in police weeds out suspected criminals from their addas
Bhagwan: God, the Lord; media use relates also to self-proclaimed gods like Bhagwan Rajneesh and other transcendental meditation gurus
Bhakti: faith, respect, worship
Bhajan: devotional song traditionally sung in the temples but today it is big business and they even have Bhajan concerts; Bhajan albums are big commercial propositions
Badmash: naughty as in criminal naughty
Chota: small, tiny; media usage is often linked to criminals like Chota Rajan, Chota Shakeel and the like
Dharma: religion; as in dharma yudh, that is, religious war
Dharna: Demonstration as in a strike or protest
Dhoti: cloth draped around the waist and legs popularized by Mahatma Gandhi
Garam Masala: hot spices either whole or in powder or paste form comprising of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves etc; media uses it to describe a hot and emerging scene; made famous by the recent Bollywood movie that portrays a hotchpotch of bungled relationships between leading actors and actresses
Izzat: honour or dignity often meaning virginity in women and used in the media in the context of rape, for instance “looting” of Tina’s izzat
Shabash: Well done, an appreciative pat on the back for a job done to requirement, used extensively by ethnic media
Tamasha: a show as in a circus or street rope trick accompanied with singing and dancing; media uses it to describe a chaotic scene
Until ten years ago, USA had the most number of people speaking English. Today India is the world’s largest English speaking nation. With a population of 1.3 billion, India has more people who speak the so-called dynamic variety of English than any country in the world.
Why dynamic? It is because Indian English is very graphic and communicative and this helps in quick visualization and comprehension. The phenomenal growth has been dictated by the astounding growth of the information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries. India’s BPO market is US$1 trillion plus. The Oxford dictionary itself has more than 700 Indian words that many media managers have either never heard of or don’t know the derivative meaning or media usage of.
Indian English is already been seen as a linguistic superpower. The sooner we accept it and adapt to the media usage of some of these brand new impactful words the better it will be for communicators. Do we have some catching up to do? You bet.