Note - This post contains snippets written in Devanagari script. Please ensure Unicode font is enabled for your browser.
‘Marathi’, ‘Engrathi’, ‘Marlish’ and ‘English’ are the four phases, in which the pupil would be present at any given context. ‘Marathi’ and ‘English’ are two clearly distinct languages, but not ‘Engrathi’ and ‘Marlish’. Let’s try to define these two pseudo-languages. Then let’s see how some examples would fall into one of the language buckets.
To bring generality, one can call ‘Marathi’ as ‘Source Language‘ , ‘Engrathi’ as ‘Language Step One‘ and ‘Marlish’ as ‘Langauge Step 2‘ and finally ‘English’ as ‘Target Language‘.
Marathi
Like any other language, Marathi has its own grammar and vocabulary. The meaningful words come from vocabulary whereas meaningful composition of words is guided by grammar. Out of these two primary constructs, grammar is more pervasive and versatile than vocabulary. This is especially true when we visit places across the World, such that vocabulary changes more for any given language than the grammar.
Engrathi
Language is driven by grammar of Marathi and vocabulary of English. At times, words from Marathi come to rescue in a situation. Vocabulary does not only mean isolated words, but phrases also which start bringing essence of expression from English into Marathi. For example in English phrase ‘cats-n-dogs’ is often used to describe heavy raining.
However to keep process really very simple, one may need two of the sub-steps of Engrathi – Submissive Engrathi and Aggressive Engrathi. In case of submissive Engrathi, nouns are used from English, at times adjectives and adverbs are used. In aggressive Engrathi, even pronouns and other constructs are introduced at much earlier stage. The grammar or the skeletal form is retained from Marathi. The resultant language might appear quite uncomfortable, in some cases positioning it almost illogical.
Marlish
Marlish is the next step. Following expression should make it simple.
English grammar + English vocabulary + Marathi vocabulary + Marathi grammar = Marlish
The terms are in descending order of their usage. It means, one should avoid as much Marathi grammar as one can, where as English grammar is required for conversation. At time, Marathi vocabulary is allowed sparingly to rescue the conversations.
English
Grammar and vocabulary both come from routine English. Essentially, the approach converges into the local dialect of English (e.g. Indian English) or intended dialect of English (e.g. American English). (Personally, I don’t like phrases ‘Indian English’ or ‘American English’ because they miscommunicate.)
My overall experience from conversations around me, tells me that everybody speaks either ‘Engrathi’ or ‘Marlish’. Very few people would be able to converse in ‘English, or even in ‘Marathi’ without using words from the other language. Apparently ridiculous, but fact of life. This is how Oxford has been forced time-to-time to include words from Indian languages into official English language reference. Similarly many of Marathi people don’t know Marathi-equivalents for several English words (for example, postal department, shirt, TV, etc). This means even teachers might not find themselves comfortable in dealing with such words, but they too are forced.
Examples
- मी ठीक आहे (Mee theek aahe) [ Marathi ]
- मी फाईन आहे! (Mee fine aahe!) [ Engrathi ]
- मला तुझा मिस्स्ड् कॉल कालच मिळाला. (Malaa tujhaa missed call kalach milaalaa) (Yesterday only I received your missed call) [ Engrathi ].
- फास्टर फेणे [ Engrathi ]
- I am thoda (थोडा = little) fine now [ Marlish ]
- He is asalee ( असली = real ) hero in life. [ Marlish ]
- Lavakarch ( लवकरच = soon ) he would be in the air ! [ Marlish ]
- I am fine now [ English ]
In routine conversations, there are in fact more examples from Engrathi and Marlish than Marathi itself. But where is ‘guided morphing’ here? Before one would question me here, let’s take an example – How a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. I would again, like to thank Mrs. Freya for suggesting this example. The translated (morphed) words are in bold face. The green and orange colored words have special significance. In order to facilitate transition from Engrathi to Marlish, we need to accomodate some changes so that the transition is easier. All of these changes preserve the meaning as well as Engrathi grammar (which is essentially Marathi grammar). Typically the verbs are moved from end of the sentence to an intermediate position. Green colored verb shows original position whereas the oranage color shows the new position. Note – After these changes, the kind of language that emerges out, is not very much uncommon. In fact, in daily conversion, one would observe mixing of such styles. The percentage varies because of several factors, discussion of those is beyond this post.
Marathi
(In Devanagari script) फुलपाखराच्या जीवनात चार अवस्था असतात - अंडी, अळी, कोष आणि फुलपाखरू. फुलपाखरांची अंडी झाडांच्या पानांवर घातली जातात. लवकरच त्या अंड्यांमधून अळ्या बाहेर पडतात. त्यांचे मुख्य अन्न या झाडांची पानेच असतात. तिसऱ्या अवस्थेत अळीभोवती एक आवरण तयार होते, त्या अवस्थेला कोष म्हणतात. चवथ्या अवस्थेत पूर्ण वाढ झालेले फुलपाखरू कोषामधून बाहेर पडते.
Engrathi
(In Devanagari script) बटरफ्लायच्या लाइफमध्ये फोर फेजेस् असतात – एग्, लार्व्हा, प्युपा ऍंड बटरफ्लाय. बटरफ्लायचे एग्ज ट्रीजच्या लीव्हजवर घातली जातात. व्हेरी सून त्या एग्जमधून लार्व्ही बाहेर पडतात. त्यांचे प्रायमरी फूड या ट्रीजचे लिव्हज् असतात. थर्ड फेजमध्ये, लार्व्हाभोवती वन कव्हर तयार होते, त्या फेजला प्युपा म्हणतात. फोर्थ फेजच्या एंडला ग्रोथ कंप्लीट झालेले बटरफ्लाय प्युपामधून बाहेर पडते.
(In English script) Butterfly च्या life मध्ये four phases असतात – Egg, Larva, Pupa and butterfly. Butterfly चे eggs trees च्या leaves वर घातली जातात. Very soon, त्या eggs मधून larvae बाहेर पडतात. त्यांचे primary food या Trees चे leaves असतात. Third phase मध्ये, larva भोवती one cover तयार होते. त्या phase ला pupa म्हणतात. Forth phase च्या end ला growth complete झालेले butterfly pupa मधून बाहेर पडते.
(Engrath to suit Marlish) Butterfly च्या life मध्ये असतात four phases - Egg, Larva, Pupa and butterfly. Butterfly चे eggs घातली जातात trees च्या leaves वर. Very soon, त्या eggsमधून larvae बाहेर पडतात. त्यांचे primary food असतात Trees चे leaves. Third phase मध्ये, larva भोवती तयार होते one cover. त्या phase ला म्हणतात pupa. Forth phase च्या end ला growth complete झालेले butterfly बाहेर पडते pupa मधून.
Marlish
Butterfly‘s life has four phases - Egg, Larva, Pupa and butterfly. Butterfly‘s eggs are laid on trees‘s leaves. Very soon, from these eggs, larvae come out. thier primary food is trees‘s leaves. Third phase मध्ये, larva around is created one cover. That phase is called pupa. Forth phase‘s end ला, growth complete झालेले butterfly comes out from pupa.
English
(With some more restructuring) Butterfly’s life has four phases – Egg, Larva, Pupa and butterfly. Butterfly’s eggs are laid on trees‘ leaves. Very soon, from these eggs, larvae come out. Thier primary food is trees‘ leaves. In third phase, around larva a cover is created. That phase is called pupa. At forth phase’s end, growth completed butterfly comes out from pupa.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Major General Shively for giving me an opportunity to participate in this CSR. I am thankful to Mrs. Freya who named this process, mentored as well as suggested nice example. I am thankful to Mr. A. D. Bhore who was my English tutor. And I am thankful to Mr. P. L. Deshpande (PuLa) as Engrathi and Marlish words I read in one of his books.
Summary
As can be seen, the language transitions can be guided through their respective grammars. The most interesting transition is from Engrathi to Marlish. More examples would follow in separate posts, so that various situations can be discussed in terms of these four transitions. I am interested in applying this method for various source and target langauges. For example, I would like to experiment with Marathi/English as source language and German/French as target language. Even to go a step further, I would like try with Japanese language, as it is very much different than Indo-European family of languages.
I believe that the method would be useful in building oral as well as written communication skills. Readers are requested to submit their feedback as comments.
(Concluded)
