In linguistics, expletives were never meant to show feelings or incite emotions. In fact, they were meaningless words meant to fill the syntactic vacancy of the sentence, contributing absolutely nothing to its meaning. It still holds true.
However, outside linguistics, the word is much more commonly used to refer to bad language or abuses. They are certainly not gentle on the ears, but if I were to believe what one of my acquaintances said, "expletives help break the prosaicness of the spoken language, especially the ones in hindi."
He went on to add, "Unlike the intellectually appealing english ones, the ones in hindi bring out raw emotions, are more creative, and hurt where it hurts the most. A tinge of a local dialect adds more spice." Like an expert, he gave certain examples. He recited some in english and then their hindi versions to highlight the difference between the two, and establish his fact. By the end of the conversation I was convinced that 'expletives' were certainly his forte.
On my way to work after the brief tete-a-tete, I was continuously mulling over what he had said, and was reciting some- from my limited vocabulary- in my subconscious mind. Well, the effort was worth it. I realised the difference in emotions between the english and hindi ones. But, the dialect thing was still eluding me. Not for very long though.
I happened to travel in a blueline bus on its way to central Delhi, and it was at a red light stoppage when I experienced it. As the light turned green, the driver, in a hurry, tried to move ahead. But was forced to apply the brakes as the car in front was too slow. And just to make matters worse, the light turned red again.
The conductor of the bus, a tall, well-built, young lad from outside Delhi, snapped at this moment. He got down and started reciting some really hi-fi expletives from his unusually long list. All this while when the bystanders on the road were condemning his act, I was focusing only on his dialect, and how it was making the nasty adjectives sound even more nastier.
Well, the morally offensive words did not go down well as far as the car owner and the other passengers were concerned. But, for someone who was looking for that distinguishing factor, they did provide some material to write on.
Days have passed..
10 years ago
2 comments:
... hmm! strong and valid observation. According to me, it applies not only to expletives you talked about but also to our day-to-day emotions and the best examples are some books in regional languages where translation doesn't capture the imagination of the writer. The best example which you could ever find are the books written by Gurudev (R N Tagore). Ask a Bengali who has read his Bangla version and the English one. He will tell the difference (even when there are no such expletives that shouldn't be used). Just for info: Gulzar, the famous writer and poet of Indian Film Industry, especially learnt Bengali in order to read R N Tagore in original.
I guess, we do loose a lot more than mere emotions in translations...
it was a good read.
who is this friend :O ??? mere se hi le liya hota itna gyan .... aur likha bhi expletives... mujhe dictionary dot com kholna pada.. gaali likhna tha :P ache se samjh aata :D
jokes apart, i think it has nothing to do with hindi or english but more to do with the language one coverse in. Expletives used in foriegn language won't have the same effect than that used in first language of a person.
and then there is ofcourse a small expression lost from the word while translating.
:) pujya
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