Should I do it sep-separatu? The household help asked me in Kannada. She had never been to school, never learnt to speak English and was blissfully unaware that she had taken an English word and moulded it beautifully in Kannada word-formation rule of reduplication to ask me – Whether she should put the chopped vegetables in separate containers. (And my own free expression here would have been ‘chopped vegetables in separate separate containers’).
The lady in our office canteen would always tempt us with bisi-bisi bhajjis (hot-hot fries) which we would devour with hot-hot tea. And thank god for the go-to phrase for newcomers to the state, Kannada swalpa-swalpa gottu (little-little know).
A former teacher’s voice rings in my head: “In English one does not say small-small or big-big, that is the influence of our Indian tongues”, yeah, I hear you, but we all know how hard it is to shake off the very-very tight grip our primary language has over us.
During elections, the ministers campaign by going ghar-ghar (every house) and making the same promises baar-baar (time and again) while the prices rise roz-roz (on a daily basis) and the aam-aadmi has to save pai-pai (each and every paise). There is no escaping the redups!
Reduplication is a characteristic of most Indian languages and was one of the features that makes linguists call India a “Linguistic Area”. They serve many purposes from describing a manner in which something happens like – aste-aste kotha bolo “speak softly softly”, to describing something like – sil-sil katra – “cool cool breeze”.
They are very handy in expressing all kinds of sounds like khəʈ-khəʈ, kəl-kəl, ghɔsh-ghɔsh, and also how bright, shiny, sparkly something is – jhək-jhək, chəka-chək, etc.; linguists often call these Expressives, often onomatopoeic.
Coming back to the kitchen and it is time to cook rice or is it? My propah self is constantly at war with my Tamil friend who ‘puts rice’ every day.
“Why can’t you say ‘cook rice’ or ‘prepare rice’?” I ask. “What is there to cook in rice?”, I am told that If I were to say saadam samaikanum (cook rice) people would laugh. “In Tamil we say saadam veikkanum (put rice).”
Well, if you ask me I would prefer to elevate “cooking rice” to the status of the French cuisine. I try to think what I would say in the other languages and I realise that in Bangla I was used to hear bhaat boshabo “(I) will make the rice sit” and not so often, bhaat ranna korbo “(I) will cook rice”. So probably my friend is right, preparing rice does not deserve the status of cooking, sadly!
What is it about rice I wonder that it requires a special verb. boshabo is one and when it is ready to serve one says – bhaat baaɖaa or literally ‘rice grow’. It is only in this case that baaɖaa is used in the sense of serve. But then when it comes to verbs there are so often literally no literal translation possible in English. When your mother calls out to you the umpteenth time to come and have lunch you will rush to the table and say in Bangla – eshe gechi (have come have gone), I mean, have you come or are you gone? The same thing works in Hindi: aa gayaa/gayii.
This complex situation could land you into a predicament but fear not, the verbs have nicely distributed the task, so one of them carries the meaning while the other takes the burden of the grammatical information. So, if you are concerned about the meaning then look no further than the first verb.
You will now I hope not trip over – kheye phelechi “eaten thrown” (did you eat or throw?), uthe porechi “risen fallen” (did you rise or fall?).
A Verb + verb is just one kind of complex predicates (called compound verbs), the other one is noun/adjective + verb (called conjunctive verbs). Just like the verb+verb scenario it is the first element in the noun/adj + verb complex that carries the meaning. Thus, in Hindi we have – bhukh lagnaa “hunger to-strike”, saaf karnaa “clean to-do”.
One can see how productive these particular verbs are when they combine with English nouns in our day-to-day speech:
– woh mujhe like karti hay par main use hate karta huun (she likes me but I hate her)
– o amake lift dilo (s/he gave me a ride)
Honourable mention must be made of currently the most ubiquitous of these all without which our social media life could not be what it is — like dao, like dijiye, like pannunga please!
It is not unusual in India to find that words and linguistic structures from one language have become a part of the common parlance of another and have taken on a life of their own. In their new home they adapt themselves to the sounds of the native tongues and become indistinguishable. In the process they also pick up some additional semantic load. In Indore and Bhopal, I am told that ‘solution’ (not the problem-solving one, the other one) has become – sulechan.
In certain places in Tamil Nadu – Kerosene Oil has become Krishnoil. And ‘round’ has come to mean a small quantity.
rawundu enna vechikko – put a small drop of oil.
ekushé 