It is heartening to see some good response to my queries about Telugu
translations for English words. It is impossible for me to summarize my
thoughts in one screen-ful of words. "People in the know" know that I have been
laboring on this issue for the past thirty years. Let me give a brief summary,
particularly in view of some comments I have seen on the net.
English became so rich because it absorbed so many words from so many
languages. During the absorption process English internalized the concepts and
often the original meaning of the word went through a transformation. Even the
meanings of words like Guru and Pundit appeared to have been altered - ever so
slightly. When it came to "punditry" English anglicized the word; they did not
use "paandityam". If we can do that to English words, when we borrow a word
like "atom", I see no problem. Our problem comes because we borrow whole
phrases, sentences and the thought process itself. Instead of such whole-sale
borrowing, we may as well learn English, and learn it well. Except for that
lucky 2%, most of India does not know English well.
Another point. Why not Telugu, likewise, become rich by borrowing? When
English borrowed, it retained its Englishness and borrowed from almost ALL
world languages. When we talk about enriching Telugu, we "invade" one language
at a time. During the successive "invasions," we are losing what we have gained
in an earlier invasion. Case in point. We borrowed by the ton from Sanskrit
(most of our religious words are from Sanskrit). During the Islamic era, we
borrowed heavily from Persian (many administrative words). Now we are borrowing
from English (science, technology, commerce. etc.). Notice we rarely borrowed
words from music. Had we dropped our musical heritage the moment we heard a
western song, the story would have been different.
In any event, according to my dictionary, Daamasha means dividend. I am not
saying that the other answers are wrong. Our problem is more a lack of
enforcement of standards. Please look at some old issues of Telugu Jyothi where
I discussed this standardization issue at length.
V. Rao Vemuri