Prakash Per­sad

?Lan­guage is a liv­ing, grow­ing en­ti­ty. There is a con­tin­u­ous in­fu­sion of words to de­scribe new de­vices, sit­u­a­tions and con­cepts. Re­cent ones in­clude "iPad" and "palance" from tech­nol­o­gy and Car­ni­val, re­spec­tive­ly, em­a­nat­ing from the USA and Trinidad. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, a word may be im­port­ed from an­oth­er lan­guage and cul­ture and adapt­ed to a com­plete­ly new set­ting. The re­con­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the an­cient noun "gu­ru" from the Hin­du do­main to the mod­ern term "man­age­ment gu­ru" is but one ex­am­ple. This be­came pos­si­ble through the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion of the root con­cept and the skil­ful em­bed­ding of it in­to the man­age­ment sci­ences dis­course. The word "ho­n­ourable" is pro­nounced with a silent "h" and thus if we were to spell it as it is spo­ken, it would be­come "onourable." An­oth­er con­ven­tion is to use the apos­tro­phe sign as a mark of eli­sion, a com­mon ex­am­ple be­ing its use in the word "it's." If both con­ven­tions are ap­plied to the noun that de­scribes that hard, per­ma­nent and point­ed out­growth that can be found on the heads of goats, cows and pos­si­bly uni­corns, we ar­rive at the word 'orn.

In the inim­itable Tri­ni style, char­ac­terised by ram­bunc­tious, sug­ges­tive, bac­cha­na­lian and vivid im­agery, the word 'orn has been not on­ly ver­balised but al­so its mean­ing de­formed, by the force of lewd­ness, to ac­quire new ap­pli­ca­tion. This verb is used in both the tran­si­tive and in­tran­si­tive modes, and nei­ther sit­u­a­tion is con­sis­tent with ethics or moral­i­ty. The gen­er­al­i­sa­tion of the Tri­ni mean­ing of the verb "to 'orn" re­sults in "to break the trust up­on which a re­la­tion­ship is based or to be un­faith­ful in any re­la­tion­ship." Ho­n­our, on the oth­er hand, sym­bol­is­es trust­wor­thi­ness and faith­ful­ness. It would be rea­son­able to con­clude that an ho­n­ourable per­son can be trust­ed to be faith­ful to any re­la­tion­ship en­tered, be it mar­i­tal, in the work­place, in the ju­di­cia­ry, or in pol­i­tics. Re­fer­ring to such peo­ple as "your ho­n­our" or "the ho­n­ourable so and so" is quite in or­der for they would not be­tray our con­fi­dence by ly­ing and schem­ing.

The antonym of ho­n­ourable is 'orner­a­ble. The liar, schemer, ob­fus­ca­tor and shame­less eth­i­cal­ly hand­i­capped should thus be ad­dressed as "your 'orner" or "the 'orner­a­ble so and so." Bha­ji is quite a tasty dish con­sist­ing on­ly of spinach, be it of the dasheen bush or chu­rai va­ri­ety. Dasheen bush cooked with some ochroes, pump­kin and grat­ed co­conut jel­ly re­sults in a dif­fer­ent­ly tast­ing dish called callaloo. In a like man­ner Tri­nis have added to Stan­dard Eng­lish, main­ly through pro­nun­ci­a­tion and sheer ver­bal en­tre­pre­neur­ship, to gen­er­ate a lo­cal di­alect, Trinilese. In it, riv­ets be­come ribits, af­fi­davit be­comes af­fi­davis and box be­comes bax. The phe­nom­e­non of "drag-out­ness" is quite pro­nounced. Ravi be­comes Raa-vee where­as the cor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tion is the con­cate­na­tion of the two short syl­la­bles "Ra" and "vi." The tal­ent­ed Adri­an Barath made his IPL de­but a few days ago and was caught while try­ing to force the run rate, re­sult­ing in him not do­ing as well as he could. A Tri­ni watch­ing the match on tele­vi­sion was heard say­ing, "Doh mine dat, you made a good air­fort." Air­fort, in case there is any con­fu­sion, is Trinilese for ef­fort.

The drag-out phe­nom­e­non men­tioned above con­tains no mal­ice. But there is an­oth­er kind that has vi­cious­ness about it for the in­tent is to rag-up an­oth­er per­son. To rag-up is to de­mean through ver­bal­i­sa­tion. So it would not be sur­pris­ing if the word 'orner­a­ble is sub­ject­ed to this and be­comes the dragged-out to be pro­nounced "awe nah"–"no sah your awe-nah." The thing about di­alect is that it re­al­ly pro­vides an ef­fec­tive lan­guage for ac­cu­rate­ly de­scrib­ing events and sit­u­a­tions for it is de­rived from keen­ly in­tu­itive so­cial in­sight, un­bur­dened by the con­ser­v­a­tive­ly over­bear­ing re­stric­tions of for­mal gram­mar and the tom­fool­ery of po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ed­ness. When it is claimed that it takes near­ly a year to find five peo­ple suit­able to sit on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion cou­pled with the as­ton­ish­ing events stalk­ing the land, one is forced to con­clude that the ho­n­ourable thing for the so­ci­ety to do now is to start to weed out the 'orner­a­ble ones.

Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc