Semantics and the native influence of Malayalam on English and Literature

CWM 22 10 2021 Talk Global Educators Conference by Dr Koshy A

1. Semantics and the native influence of Malayalam on English By Dr Koshy AV for Creative Writing Media Age’s Global Educators Conference October 22 7 pm to 9 pm session.

2. Definition of semantics Semantics is the study of meaning from the linguistic point of view

3. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning. The following are a few examples of sentences spoken by native speakers of Malayalam using bilingual medium even in their colloquial speech. 1. Malayalam: “ Vendathu cheyyoo .” ( Trans: The needful, do) Indian English: “Please do the needful.” Standard English: “Please attend to this matter.” Thus we can see inversion comes in syntax and leads sometimes to change of the nuances and subtleties and shades of meaning in expression first and then in communication or how it is received by the hearer.

4. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning. Malayalam: “ Ningalude Marupadi Udan Pratheekshikkunnu ” (Literal Translation: Your reply, soonest, is expected. Indian English: “Your earliest response is requested.” Standard English: “I look forward to hearing from you soon.” Here we see how different the English language becomes in the hands of a non native speaker who adapts it to his or her purposes. S/he alters syntax knowing that is needed to get at the required meaning but the result is a shade of urgency is there in the translation into English which would be missing in the standard English variety.

5. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. The brain does not work in compartments. We don’t have an English compartment and a mother tongue compartment in it but there is an overlap as in set theory. This is to simplify it and see the brain as a two language system to begin/start with.

6. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. This is a picture that shows To an extent how our brain processes languages. It is not an accurate representation but a tidy, mathematical one. The red dots are Malayalam, English, Hindi etc. The blue dots are ones like computer language programming, chess, swimming, mathematics, cycling, photography, learning driving vehicles etc. It is not accurate but will do the job for now.

7. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. If the big red top on the left is Malayalam and the big red Dot on the right is English the rod connecting the two is Malayalam - English and English – Malayalam. There is a constant transfer or exchange going on.

8. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. This explains the attempt to literally translate sentences from the source language (MT) into the target language and not go for dynamic equivalence in syntax or meaning.

9. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. This creates a colourful variety of English or one can say even a dialect that is both Indian and Malayali. Malayalam: “ Njan Riju .” Indian English: “Myself Riju . (this is literal translation instead of “I am Riju .” Standard English would be: “My name is Riju . ” What happens here is a formation of not only a version of English slowly, a new version, one that has now been classified as Indian English but of variants in it, this one being uniquely Malayali, a new dialect forming, of Keralite English, or ‘Manglish’ to put it humorously, that can also lead to the rise of new or altered/ laytered meanings and perceptions of the self and others as well as even to new meanings, works of literature and writing and new horizons of thought and expression, communication and ways of understanding or receiving spoken and written language in terms of semantics.

10. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. Take this example. Malayalam: “Market avide aanu .” Indian/ Keralite English: “The Market is there.” Standard English: “That is the market.” The Malayali juggles with syntax to get meaning across but does not try to find the appropriate phrase in the original native speaker’s mind that he would use in place of what the Malayali is trying to say and so as a result adds to the language’s possibilities and richness, though initially it seems as if some of it is fumbling.

11. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. One last example and I go on to something else. This shows cultural interference. “Malayalam: “Innu raavile ” Indian English: “Today morning” Standard English: “This morning” Indians usually follow a literal translation (without change in the sentence structure) from native language to the target language (English). As the English language is flexible, it is changed by the speaker for convenience. The culture of the local language surely interferes with the target language in many aspects such as pronunciation (phonetics), vocabulary (word usage), syntax, grammar and semantics. Indianism refers to the way a sentence has been structured as if it was literally translated from an Indian language to English.” All the examples were taken and used by me from Influence of Mother Tongue and its Impact on Spoken English of Malayali Speakers Annie Thomas Assistant Professor of English, Prathap Nagar, Muttom . Kerala-683501 (https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2102485.pdf)

12. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. This is Arundhati Roy and the book she is holding in her hand is her first novel God of Small Things which won the Booker Prize in 1997. She is half a Malayali/Keralite from her mother’s side and her mother’s name was Mary. Her book shows us the increasing influence of Malayalam on the semantics of the English language.

13. Examples of how Mother tongue interference in Malayalam works in syntax and meaning/semantics. In God of Small Things (1997) a central character is called “ Velutha .” Velutha means white in Malayalam or fair ( Velathuthathu ) and the person spoken of is from the Dalit community looked down upon by the so-called upper caste community for, among other things, being black/dark or ‘ Irundathu ’ or ‘ Karuthathu .’ This ironic and symbolic usage of the word opens the novel into being both bilingual and also twists the colonial master’s expectations that we should understand their language into an equal playing field where they have to understand ours too to get at the meaning of the text. This also opens it out to the same challenge to other linguistic chauvinists or supremacists who claim their language is superior.

14. Raja Rao. Raja Rao was a Kannada writer who wrote in English. Like U R Ananthamoorthy who wrote Sansara . Here is an example from his famous novel Kanthapura of Kannada syntax on English, or him reimagining English to get the lilt and rhythm of the mother tongue and its complexity for the sake of meaning and culture. “And the police got nervous and they began to kick us in our backs and stomachs, and the crowd shouted 'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!' and someone took a kerosene tin and began to beat it, and someone took a cattle-bell and began to ring it, and they cried, 'With them, brothers, with them!' and they leaped and they ducked and they came down to lie beside us, and we shouted 'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” ―  Raja Rao,  Kanthapura (1938)

15. Raja Rao 2 We see in that quote the fact that the writer tries to mimic onomatopoeically the thought process of someone thinking in English but also someone who is tremendously influenced by the mother tongue in his narration and echoing the fact that something translated from the Indian mother tongue to English often become double its size in length and in speech or writing uses simple conjunctions like ‘and’ and anaphora to stitch sentences together to get at the emotion that is wanted.

16. Raja Rao 3 Here is another example from the same nove to illustrate this point that this is English that is Indian and also gradually forming semantically speaking dialects within it. “Then the wind comes so swift and dashing that it takes the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while the trees bleat and blubber. Then drops fall, big as the thumb … the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep in the monsoon rains. It churns and splashes, beats against the treetops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwards, it bucks back and spits forward and pours down upon the green, weak coffee leaves, thumping them down to the earth.” ―  Raja Rao,  Kanthapura Notice the use of the present tense and the use of local idiomatic phrases like bleat and blubber, big as the thumb, and the transference of juggling to air from leaves etc. This is fasincating !

17. Indian English in Tamil Nadu in the works of R K NARAYAN Indian English thus is developing its own versions and hybrids like Malayalam-English, Kannada-English, and Tamil-English. At the level of semantics this is in bringing in words from the mother tongue or other languages, or a bilingualism or trilingualism , in syntax to alter meanings to suit local contexts, in using local proverbs and idioms and folk tales as in Chinua Achebe and in symbols drawn from local environments etc. I will close with this example from R K Narayan’s famous Malgudi Days. “if you threw a stone into a gutter it would only spurt filth in your face.” ―  R.K. Narayan,  Malgudi Days (1942) This is an example of something purely introduced by Indian English or Tamil-English.

18. The End There are other examples like translations of VM Basheer into English by Asher which I could quote or VKN’s Malayalam that crosses over from English to Malayalam or translations of Thakazhi’s Chemmeen into English but I will stop here for now by saying all these varieties of English, Indian English, Indian English dialects, and bilingual texts or trilingual or multilingual ones show the influence of native languages on English in terms of semantics and can be studied in terms of: