Influx of Kannada into the English language.

Ice in a glass of water melts and adds to the volume of water, water takes in the temperature of the ice and becomes colder than its normal temperature. When the English came to India they got with them their language and culture; our culture might have been stringent and withstood the test of time, but our language has not. The adaptable lot that we are, we accommodated their language to such an extent that some words of the regional languages were very conveniently ignored in everyday vocabulary. “dinapatrike” became the newspaper, “lekhani” became the pen and as time “samaya” went by our language became blighted.

Most Indian languages have been modified to use English in everyday vocabulary. The upward trend of such an influx has been so high that today; most of us in the urban scenario can’t even think in our mother tongue as easily as we think in English [or rather forced to do so in our schools. And no! I am not from the Kannada Rakshana Vedike.] Water takes lesser time to melt ice than a fridge does to make ice. It did not take long for English to penetrate the language and dominate it.

Kannada has been one of the most widely affected language to such an influx, the reason to such a change cannot be pin pointed to a single factor. It’s a language that we are speaking about and a language does not stand on it own, associates like culture and tradition are factors too. So blame the whole lot who did not take care of it when they had to.

Sitting in a happening coffee shop today I hear “en maga? What is happening? How are you doing?” and I know the reversible reaction is not so difficult after all. It will take just a little effort, a step at a time. This ‘step at a time’ is the most important aspect of the influx of the regional language into English. Starting with slang and ending with a bang.

One thing English has not managed to do to any Indian language is, take away the accent. This essentially creates the Indian English dialect. The sweet essence of a regional language. If not for a few learned, very few have un-accented English.[remember the sweet language in R.K. Narayan's writing??] The accent is much more predominant in the south, than in the northern part of the country. [A pleasant one at that]. When two languages come together there is a third one that comes about, like our very popular hinglish. Reversible reaction remember? But Kannada is yet to get the kanglish fame to its name. The influx of Kannada into the English language is not as rapid as the one with Hindi or Tamil. Though Kannada was found to be the third oldest language in India, its usage is limited to homes in the state, which is the reason that the flow of the language into English is getting hampered. Kannada being derived from Sanskrit, which is considered as ‘the mother of all languages’ can be associated with several English words that have Indian origin. This includes, mavanakai-mango; thola-dhol; kobbari- copra; teega- teak; mungusi- mangoose; among these only thola and mungusi stand out to be words directly derived form kannada, the others have other south Indian languages associated with them.

As mentioned earlier, Indian languages gave its essence to the English language. In today’s context slang is what is giving Kannada the opportunity to impregnate the vocabulary of the English speaking gumpu. The trend can also be associated partly to the privately owned FM radio channel in the city. It became the cool thing in the city and what the RJ’s said, and how they talked became a trend. Kannada was used sparingly, but was used; this made it cool, because the language was used on radio. No complaints there. At least it was being used; its five years since, and the same radio channel had to face consequences on its anniversary celebrations for not using more of Kannada in their programmers. Politics apart, today some of us use sakkat, maga, swopla, maadi, jaang, guru, sishya, kayi more often than we did some years back for the fear of being in the bullied or laughed at by friends. Even at a work place, the course of language change alternates between Kannada and English regularly, but it is predominantly English, with a couple of kannada words here and there. Today, using Kannada in the course of speech is no longer derogatory. This has in turn helped the usage of Kannada while speaking. Kannadiga’s themselves have come out of the shell from being a shy, submissive lot to being adamant and firm in using their language. The trend though low is causing a high rise in the use of Kannada words in spoken English, though not in the written form. Movies have also been facilitators of this process, though not really effective, or significant in bringing about a change they have in their way contributed to the macchu, chacchu vocabulary very effectively. On par with this effect, is the language of raw abuses in Kannada that we come up with when we get into anger spouts inspite of being the prim and proper selves that we are otherwise.

Slang is not the best way to penetrate a language, but it is one of the easiest and the most common way that a language takes different shape. This is not the case only with the youth, but a whole cross section of the society that accepts this kind of language. It is the infantile stage of KANGLISH an English dialect, to accompany hinglish and tanglish. Though the ice melts quit fast, the ice takes a little longer to cool the full glass of water; the time that kannada will take to diffuse into English will take longer, but when it does it is going to make the language cool. The analogy might not really seem very accurate to some, but water being one of the most essential substance in our lives, as essential as a language, I could not think of a more appropriate comparison. The cooling part of Kannada might take longer than that of ice and water, but it is possible. It would only take an effort from a few, especially the youth for a very significant change to happen. But like Malcolm Muggeridge, a British writer, journalist, once jokingly said ‘The last Englishman would be an Indian.’

Shruthi K. Narayan.