The Hindu Business Line : Minting new words and phrases

A vibrant language puts on new glitter and mints new words and phrases to suit the context and the times. English is pre-eminent in this respect. Without any pretensions and presumptions, it lends itself for a variety of uses in the hands, or rather the mouths, of people belonging to various cultures round the world.

Although it may be spoken in many countries, the forms, enunciation and accents it assumes may be bewilderingly different.

In India, we speak many forms of English. You may be startled to be told by your friend in Bengal that he had not yet eaten his launch, while people of other States may find the inflexion, intonation and usages in Tamil Nadu equally unintelligible. All over India these days, even persons proficient in English have made commonplace expressions such as ‘more simpler’, more cleaner’ ‘most easiest’..

If you travel in a subway train in New York, you will never be able to make out the announcements in his own brand of English made by the driver (or engineer in American parlance) over the public address system for the information of passengers.

It is pointless to enquire which form of English is the most appealing, because each form has its own charm, and it would be cruel to put any language in a uniform strait-jacket.

That does not mean that we should not cultivate the language and acquire a good command over the vocabulary and use it in a sophisticated fashion.

Effective and intelligible communication is the secret of leadership in any field and it is always best to keep the ear fine-tuned to the unique traits of the language.

In the last decade or so, there has been a spontaneous growth of a number of English words and phrases which pop up in conversations or writings at the drop of a hat. The strange beauty of this development is that as and when new ones are minted, the old ones go out of circulation. Some of these are Americanisms.

Nowadays it is certainly taken to be more fashionable to say ‘Up until’, or ‘when the push comes to the shove’, or, ‘between a rock and a hard place’ rather than their time-honoured royal equivalents (of you know what!)

Assets or acquisitions?

Up until a few years ago, there was not a seminar, meeting or even a casual chat in which the words such as ‘paradigm shift’, ‘holistic’, ‘syndrome’ and ‘strategic’ did not occur.

Likewise, ‘architecture’ became, and is perhaps even now, a hot favourite, to denote a holistic picture of a set-up (‘financial architecture’).

Along with the elegant some ugly words also cropped up. ‘Disincentive’, ‘actionising’ and ‘operationalising’ readily come to mind. You may have your own pets of such bizarre words.

Within the last five to 10 years, there has been a veritable explosion of fancy (or fancied) words. ‘Right now’ and ‘at the end of the day’ are prime examples. Within a couple of minutes of striking a conversation with anyone, man, woman or child, you are bound to hear those words.

As an old timer, I wince and bristle at words which, I am sure, enrich the language, but I am not sure, in what way! ‘Robust” has wormed its way in the place of strong (I think), and ‘ground zero’ has acquired a glamour of its own signifying perhaps the scene of happening.

One has to be a downright prig to ask, ‘What is your opinion?’ instead of ‘What is your take?’ ‘Taking a call’ has also come into vogue in a big way.

Percentile, basis points, brownie points, back to back, nuanced, seamless and inclusive are all latter day acquisitions but whether they are also assets, I have my own doubts.

B. S. RAGHAVAN