[Reader-list] article on technical neologisms

[Ravikant]

I liked the following article, written by an expat computer engineer, for its 
refreshingly commonsensical approach to technospeak in a new language. I 
received it in my mail, so there is no url. Enjoy! 

ravikant
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How a Language grows
Agastya Kohli


I am no linguist. I have not studied the growth and development of a language. 
I am not an expert in the field. But I use languages. I grew up in an 
environment, where a language wasn't merely a subject you took in school. 
When you studied a language, you studied it well. So along with learning a 
couple of languages, I also learned the nature of languages. How they 
interact with each other, how they interact with the society, how they change 
over years, grow, develop, flourish, or alternatively, shrink, loose their 
shine, diminish, and eventually disappear. No, I didn't have a course in 
college on the topic, but one makes observations, and takes notes.


For example, I decided to study a little Spanish. Of course, the letter "j" is 
used extensively in Spanish, but is pronounced almost like an "h". 'Jesus' is 
"hay-soos", and Juan is "hu-aan". So when my teacher told me that the Spanish 
word for "a young man" is "haw-ven", it sounded like another foreign word to 
me. But then she wrote it on the board - Joven.


When you grow up in India, speaking Hindi all your life, it doesn't take much 
to make a Yamuna-Jamuna connection, and all of a sudden, Joven looked a lot 
like "yauvan" - Sanskrit for youth. Sure, a young man was called "haw-ven". I 
don't remember much else from that Spanish class, but I do remember joven. 


It didn't take a class in linguistics to make the Yamuna-Jamuna connection, or 
to make a Joven-Yauvan connection.  When you study a language, you study the 
nature of languages simultaneously. Many languages, both Indian and otherwise 
interchangeably use the sounds "ya" and "ja" (letters I, Y and J), "ra" and 
"la", "ka" and "ga". I have a German friend named Katja (pronounced Katya), 
and a Chinese friend who spells the word "are" as "ay - al - ee". No wonder 
"badariya" is just a derivative of "badaliya" in Hindi, and "bekaar" and 
"begaar" mean the same thing.


And in my opinion, that's how languages grow. Whatever is easier to say is 
what becomes the norm. The concept of "mukh-sukh" (mouth-comfort) makes a 
language add words as variants of themselves.


Its not just with sounds - its also with word meanings. A language has a word 
for a concept. Something similar rolls around, and the same word expands its 
meaning. 


They had these things called coaches - pulled around by horses. People could 
sit in them and go places. A number of years later, the horses have now been 
replaced by internal combustion engines. So what do they call a car in 
Spanish? A "coche". In English, the word "car" really comes from "carriage" - 
which is something that gets carried. So a word has a meaning, a related 
concept attaches itself to it, and the word adapts to accommodate the related 
concept. That's how languages grow. Sure some people called them automobiles, 
but a car is still a car in English - one horsepower, or two hundred.


Of course, my favorite - sticks of wood with cloth soaked in oil tied at one 
end. They would light the cloth on fire, hold the stick on the other end, and 
walk around with it in dark places. It worked as a source of light - they 
called it a "torch". Fast-forward a few hundred years, technology changes, 
now they have plastic tubes with batteries on one side and a bulb on the 
other. It's a source of light - and yes you're right - they called it a 
"torch". Of course, in America, they call them "flash lights". A different 
society saw a product, was inspired by a different way of looking at it, and 
added another word to the language. 


They tell me, that a language that doesn't grow - that doesn't change with 
time will eventually die. And I completely agree with them. But I am not sure 
I understand the definition of "grow" and "change with time". The way I see 
it, a language grows by innovation. When a people use a language, they come 
across something new that needs to be communicated; a word gets altered, 
adapted, changed, to communicate the new concept. 
We  - the community that works and plays with Hindi seems to work differently. 
We don't want the language to innovate. We want the language to borrow. A new 
concept comes along, usually with a word in English, and without thinking 
twice about how Hindi would express the same concept, we borrow the word. 
There are examples all over the place.


When Xerox first developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to use on a 
computer, they also developed a pointing device. It was an instrument 
connected to the computer that controlled an arrow like cursor on the screen. 
You moved the device, it moved the arrow, and by clicking the buttons you 
could provide input to the computer. The device was an oblong shaped half 
sphere, about 4 inches long, with a cable that ran to the back of the 
computer. To some creative mind, it looked like a small mouse with a long 
tail, so they called it a mouse. In Spanish, they call it a "ratos" (think 
rat). In Hindi, we can easily call it a "moosa" (Sanskrit for mouse). But its 
so much easier to just call it a "mouse" even in Hindi. Do we not have a word 
for the concept? Why do we need to borrow a completely foreign word for 
something that we already have a word for?


One afternoon, my two-year-old nephew was sitting in front of a computer, 
looking at the cursor - a solid block on the screen - blinking. On, off. On, 
off. He pointed at it, and said "titlee" (butterfly). And I thought to 
myself, if a cursor looks like a butterfly to a two year old, that is what we 
should call it in Hindi. Titlee. After all, why is a mouse acceptable, but 
not a much prettier butterfly.


I've always referred to my TV's remote control as "bandook" (gun). Sure, its 
not exactly the same thing - but its an expansion of a concept. If you can 
"aim-and-shoot" with a camera and a gun, how different is a remote control 
really?


Lets stick with computers and technology for a little while longer. Why is a 
window (as in Microsoft Windows) not called a "patt" in Hindi? Most of the 
time that's what it is - an information board, a "pop up screen". Why do we 
seem to use "website" as a word in Hindi? To me, it's a "parav/padav" 
(stopping point). Why is an Internet portal called a portal? Because it's a 
launching point from where a surfer can go in many different directions. May 
be we should call it a "chauraahaa" in Hindi.  


Lets go outside the world of hi-tech. Hindi newspapers always talk about which 
party has how many "seats" in the parliament. How come we don't use the word 
"baithak" for it? Since when is "metro" a Hindi word for a local train system 
in a city? It's not even a word in English! 


Doordarshan and Aakashvani of course have been abandoned as Hindi words for 
television and radio - they have simply become proper nouns - names of 
corporations, leaving us with nothing better than "Teevee" as a Hindi word.


How come we call the burning cloth version of a torch a "mashaal", but we call 
the battery-bulb version a "torch" in Hindi? We have a "gaari/gaadi" - as a 
moving vehicle. But for some reason, a car is just as much a Hindi word. Was 
this because Hindi needed to "change with the times"? Or is this something 
else?


Yes, a language must grow. If it doesn't, it perishes. But does a language 
grow because people who use it are creative and innovative with it? They 
think it, they speak it, they write it, and they use it? Or does it grow 
because they're too lazy to try to explain things to their readers in their 
own words, and find it much easier to simply borrow and replace? 


By simply borrowing words from another language, is Hindi growing? Or is it 
loosing its identity as the soul of over half of the population of the 
country, and becoming a language incapable of being the national 
communication channel of India? If most of the words in Hindi are not native, 
would it still remain and independent language? Would people read any 
literature written in it? Would there be any Nobel prizes for Hindi scholars? 
Or would they simply be ignored and described as a "mish-mash language that 
came about after the British invaded India"?


They might call me a purist, who doesn't want to see the language modernize 
itself. But I'll let them know - I coined the Hindi word for a remote 
control. It doesn't get any more modern than wirelessly influencing an 
electrical appliance. And, I coined the Hindi word for a cursor - sure I 
needed help from a two year old kid to come up with that one - but he did 
better than most professional Hindi journalists out there.



About the Author


Agastya Kohli, born Jan 31, 1975, and brought up in Delhi, moved to Chicago, 
IL for his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of 
Technology, roughly ten years ago. After a stay of four years in Chicago, and 
completion of the degree program, he moved to Dallas, TX and worked as a 
Network and Unix System Administrator for a little under 2 years. He then 
moved again to the greater Seattle, WA metro area, and has been working in 
the wireless telecom industry for the last 4 years in various capacities.