> teacher) talking about GODHULI. He wonders how one
> can explain this to the next generation. May be
> the next generation understands only the VahanaDhuli
> (suggest me a better name). I am trying to imply
> that the change in the language is automatic. The
Looking at other languages or even Telugu itself, aren't there
a lot of words whose etymology is obscure but whose usage is current/
GodhuLi could theoretically be one of them. Words may start as
descriptive expressions (samaasaas) but may then evolve into
symbolic names.
....
> Here : Q 1: Why should we create a new word ? Instead
> We can addopt the same word into our Lang !
> Q 2: If we got to intoduce a new word into the
> lang., what should be the criterion ? Who
> should be allowed to do that ?
I find that these questions are harder than I first imagined.
I'll attack them somewhat obliquely.
We all know the word for "Tomato" in Telugu--it is "TamaaTaa," a pretty
straightforward adaptation of a foreign word for a foreign object.
My grandmother used to call it "seema vankaayi", sometimes "rama-mulakkaayi".
Both the anyadEsyam "TamaaTa" and the samaasaas serve the same purpose--
to give a name to a new thing. But the samaasaas are providing some
additional hints about the way in which tomatoes came to the Godavari dist.
people, and what the tomato looked like to their eyes. I think that
makes the samaasaas a richer addition to Telugu than a straight import.
(aside: does "raama" mean something other than that God's name in Telugu?
I used to believe that raama chilaka had something to do with Sri Rama
but I can't imagine the connection between Rama and a tomato. Could it
be a distortion or the raa- prefix as in raa-yancha thus meaning a
classy-looking chilaka or mulakkaayi?)
I think that made-up sanskrit samaasaas that we find in Telugu medium science
books are also equally lacking in this richness. Sometimes this is
unavoidable, since there probably isn't time to introduce the concept to
the common folk first to see what they make of it. A lot of thee things
have only made-up Latin names anyway, since they were not even originally
familiar to the common folk of Europe. And the made-up Sanskrit names
(or Latin names) tell their own story--we can infer that these concepts
were not diffused into society but introduced in "catastrophic" fashion
through industrialized mass education.
I'll give one example from Telugu medium chemistry books which may be
interesting. There is a compound that some books called "mailu-tuttam"
and others called by its English name (I think it was Zinc sulphate,
or copper Sulphate, I'm not sure). I came to know later that mailu-tuttam
is also a Tamil word. There is a hint here that perhaps this compound
was known to south Indians earlier than the 20th century; maybe
C.P. Brown created the word, being more of a language purist and expert? Anyway
the possibilities are more intriguing than simply reading about
CuSO4 or whatever the compound may be.
I think I would like to see words created/imported by people who have a genuine
"ear" for the language. These could be either fluent common folk or
scholars who really understand Telugu word development and construction.
The ideal way (according to me) would be for people to encounter the
concpet in its pure/abstract form, e.g., being presented for the first
time with a tomato without being told its name and letting them develop
a name for the concept while using it. Even when the name is preented,
there is greater smoothness in the importation of the name when it
undergoes "naluguDu" on "uneducated" tongues. PALANA's postings of
toorpu dialect are full of import words from English, Urdu, Persian etc.
but the overal effect is smooth--it sounds like Telugu (maybe by this
I mean that a non-Telugu speaker wouldn't have any idea what was being
said, unlike the case when such a person hears the more educated Telugu
speakers.)
My conclusion is that probably some changes are "enriching", some are
merely utilitarian.
Bapa Rao