Day 13: Create your own language
“No — that’s not frying. That’s just cooking or sautéing.”
“Yes it is — this is frying.”
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Multiply this back and forth by about ten, and you’ve got the conversation between two of our teammates — one from urban India, educated in more ‘formal’ schools, with English as a primary language, and the other from rural Bihar, educated in local government schools, whose primary language was Hindi or a local language similar to Hindi. The word in question, “fry,” was being used in two different ways; in the Hindi spoken in rural Bihar, “fry karna” has come to mean to sauté in light oil, whereas in the urban setting, more oil would be required in order for it to be called “frying.” A question of oil.
And like oil, language is slippery and hard to grasp; in whose hands is it? Who owns it? Who has the power to define words and to create language?
My own story with language has been a journey through the worlds of formal and informal systems of language. I have a natural connection with words; I find them musical and magical, each filled with a world of images and sounds far beyond the one we are in as the word is used. From the time I could speak, I created my own words. As far as I know, the first word I created was “umpees,” which means poop. It’s still in use in the Sharma household today.
But as I got older, I became less and less likely to create new words or to use language in creative ways. It’s not that I stopped thinking of them; I continued to think of funny combinations of words or new words all together. But I stopped sharing them; whenever I did, people would say I was weird.
Why? Because they weren’t “real” words. But what’s that mean? Who has the power to determine whether it’s real or not?
Well, at that time, my English teachers and good, ol’ Merrian Webster. We are taught that there are clear rules for what is “right” and “wrong” in language; we’re taught “correct” grammar and we’re tested on spellings.
I accepted this as a way of thinking; there are rules and they should be followed. Seeing or hearing them broken was like nails on a chalkboard — I had to speak up and make it stop.
Even in Hindi, I used to try and correct (in my own broken Hindi at the time) friends whose subject-verb gender agreements weren’t up to snuff with what I had read in books. Or I would google the definition of a word to seek to validate an argument I was making about a particular concept. I felt happy when I was “right.”
But who does this conception of language benefit? And who does it harm? It benefits those who are privileged enough to go to the places where such things are taught, but it harms those who aren’t; they are excluded on the basis of how they speak and write immediately.
But on what basis, beyond the “experts?” How is poop any realer than umpees? Both are two syllables combined together to form a particular meaning.
The seemingly strongest argument for some kind of standardization of language would be that if I say “umpees,” only a few people will understand me, whereas over a billion people may understand poop. But that’s the point; we have an intimate relationship with all of the words we use. And, generally, more culturally specific the word, the more intimate the relationship.
For example, when I write umpees, I think of the cold, white tile floor and bath tub of the upstairs bathroom in my old house; I remember admiring how the yard wore a coat of red and yellow leaves during the fall from that bathroom window; and, most importantly, I remember the love I felt for my mom at that time, as she fed me, cleaned me, and cared for me. All of these memories and emotions are embedded in those two syllables. When I use the word with my family, even though it’s for an action that many consider dirty, it is meaningful; but if I say “I’m going to take a poop,” then it’s all vulgarity without the emotional history.
Just because we use words to communicate, doesn’t mean that we must become constrained by them. On the contrary, similar to how different chemicals can be combined to create new compounds, the words we have now can be used to make new words as well.
But this unlearning and new perspective was only possible by leaving the land of Google and dictionaries for an environment, where language is more dynamic; where people understand that they have the liberty and permission to create new words; where “fry” can be appropriated to mean something similar, yet different.
Today, if you visit our university, you’ll hear us speaking in a unique blend of Hindi, English, Bengali, Surjapuri, Bhojpuri, Maithali, Spanish, Tamil, and newly invented words. It’s quite possible that no two sentences spoken on our campus are ever exactly the same. We butcher the formal rules and speak sentences backwards, throwing in words from other languages like sprinkles on a celebratory cake.
Perhaps all of this is weird. Perhaps we can’t write a book that someone in American Samoa or Canada will understand. But this is our language. We own it. We love it. And no one can take it away from us.
