The Hindu Business Line : A classical language has a comical side too

TAMIL is to be declared a classical language, the first one to be in that category. A promise kept, they say, of what was agreed in the political agenda. Queerly, more languages could be included under the category if there were any proposals and if they met with the criteria.

If you're trying to lobby for your language's entry into the select `classical' club, there are four yardsticks to get the tag. These include high antiquity of its early texts with a recorded history of at least a thousand years, body of ancient literature or texts that is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, literary tradition that is original and not borrowed from another speech community, and the language and literature should be distinct from modern. An unwritten criterion is that the party lobbying for the language is in a winning combo.

The site www.wordiq.com informs that the judgement of a language as `classical' is a judgement of its literature, not the language itself. "No language is inherently more `classical' or `ancient' than another in terms of phonology or grammar." So, that should avert disputes in the name of language. According to George L. Hart's criteria, cited in the site, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Tamil, classical Chinese, classical Arabic, Persian and Hebrew are `classical' and that's very heartening indeed for the millions of Tamil speakers.

True, Tamil has a lot of wisdom tucked in literature of thousands of years in age. For instance, in a topic titled `the pleasures of temporary variance' - which is not about standard costing - Thiruvalluvar observed more than 2000 years ago that dislike adds delight to love, and a hearty embrace thereafter will add delight to dislike. I guess that applies to political alliances too. Elsewhere, he would counsel: "Although the king be utterly ignorant, it is the duty of the minister to give him sound advice." By extension, therefore, when the ministers are ignorant, it is the duty of bureaucrats to advise. There is a pang, however, to send a language into classical-dom, as much as in selecting an expert of yesteryears for conferring a lifetime award. Be that as it may, it is not as if ancient Tamil is being spoken in Tamil Nadu. One can, however, attempt such an exercise more to amuse than to communicate. Thus, the lingo of the day may not find a place in any dictionary, except on Web pages.

One of the first admonitions that an outsider would get from auto-rickshaw drivers, after aborted bargaining of fares, is alppam, to mean cheap or kanjoos. Don't discount those chaps as doing bandha or showing pilim because they mean business, mean, that is, not mere show-off. Further, to abase is to steal, allva means cheat, and asathal is kallakal, but that is something causing a flutter. When shopping on pavements, only bekus or mangas (that is, fools) and kenais (idiots) take things at face value, because dumeel and peela, meaning lies of various hues, abound. Take dil, lifted from Hindi, and you can have dhool time, a.k.a. super! City lingo is a jujubi (easy) if you enjoy, and you can always entertain pettai machis with words that you've mugged up from classical Tamil dictionary. Well, that's what most national politicians do at the beginning of their speeches to attract applause; that is not so much an indication of support to the party as in appreciation of the comical pronunciation of a classical word.

E&OE@thehindu.co.in

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A classical language has a comical side too

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