Mrs.
Lakshmi Jeganathan, who once claimed (and rightly so) that she taught me my ‘A,
B, C’ (the letters pronounced with ‘correct’ enunciation of course), continues
to teach me English, 41 years after I first attended her ‘Spoken English’ class
somewhere off Charles Circus, Colombo 3.
Her son, Pradeep, my brother’s classmate and a fellow member of our
school’s junior chess team in 1978 and 1979, told me about four or five years
ago that he’s amazed that those who were so terrorized by his very strict
mother that they quit after a few years nevertheless sent their children to her
(to be terrorized, he didn’t have to say).
Pradeep is
correct. I am an example. I couldn’t
take it. I just didn’t have the patience
and probably some minimum level of comprehension to do what it would have taken
to have a smooth ride to language competence.
She did teach me my ‘A, B, C’ and I will always say without hesitation
that Mrs. Jeganathan, Aunty Lakshmi to her students, is the main reason that I
like literature and why, after much dabbling on all kinds of spheres, I ended
up writing in English for a living. And
yes, I take my children to her and am happy that they are made of sterner stuff
than their father. Aunty Lakshmi is not
a terrorist. She’s just extra strict, and that’s because she is a dedicated
teacher and like all good teachers would blame herself if her students did not
acquire the language skills that would in later life give them the confidence
to live and work in a snooty world.
She
teaches me, still. The other day, as I
waited until my daughter’s class was over, I heard her tell someone ‘there is
no such thing as “in between”; it’s “between”, and “in between” is a
“Ceylonism”.’ I don’t want to get into a
debate about language standards and relevant politics, but it made perfect
sense to me. If it’s all about communication and being coherent, then there’s
every reason to drop redundancies.
There’s a
new word waiting for all of us, every day.
It can be on a hoarding, a newspaper advertisement, in a news report, a
political commentary, the admonishment of a superior, the complaint of a
subordinate, or the question of a child.
It can be a Sinhala or Tamil word. It could be an English word. We encounter such words all the time but we
don’t have eyes to see, ears to hear or the mind to take note.
Life is
not about learning new words, this is true, but each time we add something to
our vocabulary, we become better communicators. We also enhance our
understanding of things and processes for words have histories and they have
futures too. They also have multiple
uses and in the lips, tongue, hard or soft palette, teeth ridge and of course
fingertip of the alert and creative user, they become lethal, not because each
word is sharp and therefore an instrument but that they are tender and made for
love.
Knowing
words, their meanings and applications, amounts to arming oneself with a
shield. It is harder to hoodwink with
word those who know word. And when you
know words, word-players find it harder to trip you. I believe also that the more words you know,
the better you become at reading between words and lines, and most importantly,
better at reading silences.
Aunty
Lakshmi taught me many words. She also
taught me how important pronunciation is. One might interpret this as a
salutation of what I’ve at times referred to as ‘Snooty English’, but it’s
something else. Quite apart from giving
confidence, those who are crisp in articulation, I find, are almost always more
effective communicators and are heard better.
I remember
numerous exercises designed to make sure that children get their endings right,
including the recitation of poetry specifically composed to make them
articulate the sounds associated with the ‘d’ and ‘b’, figure out the
difference between how ‘v’ and ‘w’ are pronounced, and learn the correct
articulation of the different ‘o’ sounds.
Now, watching Aunty Lakshmi painstakingly (and even menacingly) drill
these things into children who are not from bi-lingual homes, I cannot help
thinking that someday, they will be spared the snootiness of people who think
‘proper’ pronunciation is somehow related to superior intellect.
Such
expertise can be used and abused, but we should not forget that knowing how to
say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and nothing much else doesn’t make for effective use, or
even effective abuse for that matter.
My late friend and benefactor Errol Alphonso once sent a word
my way: factoid. I hadn’t heard it
before. But it opened the door to
interesting exploration. Indeed, it provoked an article (‘Factoids, powerpuffpresentations and powerhuff pouting’ – see Sunday Lakbima News of May 15,
2011). Here’s the meaning:
‘An
invented fact, meaning something that is presented as true but which is in fact
nothing but a construct of the imagination, often deliberate and uttered with
intention to mislead. It is an invented
fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print.’
The world
is made of factoids, I suddenly realized. Well, I knew this, but didn’t know
the word for it. Those to introduce
words to us or, to be more precise, those who inject the idea of ‘word’, open multiple doors in our minds and hearts that
take us to fascinating universes of being and becoming. I’ve already thanked Errol.
Thank you
Aunty Lakshmi.
msenevira@gmail.com
*First published in the Daily News about three years ago.
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