'Zhi' in trouble!

‘ZHI’ IN TROUBLE

There is this favourite American sport called the ‘Spelling Bee’. This event gets front page coverage and may have gone unnoticed in India –contrary to our image as a US obsessed country—but for one fact .Invariably an NRI wins the contest . Americans wring their hands over the inability of American white kids to spell words in the English language .But we in India go into raptures over our desis making it good in foreign lands .

‘ZHI’ IN TROUBLE

Now there is something very curious about Indians winning the contest. It is of course well known that Indian and Chinese kids and their parents take academics seriously unlike White Americans. What arouses the curiosity of people is this—more often than not it is an NRI kid of south Indian especially Tamil origin that wins the contest !

‘You madrassis are smart at many things apart from dosa making ’ say my friends from Delhi when they take a breather from making good natured fun of the same tribe.

But in the US a theory does the rounds every year after the results of the contest are out. The theory is as follows-Tamilians have such tongue twisting names for themselves and for places in Tamilnadu that they grow up with an innate talent for mastering impossible words and their spellings !

I myself have had lots of problems filling up forms in the US. Most forms there simply are not designed to accommodate my name KAVALGUDI RAJAGOPALAN RAVI .The computer simply splutters to a halt and displays an electronic version of a sarcastic laughter. My dear friend is Gobichettypalayam Soundararajaperumal Selvanayagam . Probably the longest name for a railway station in India may be –Sanguchakrapalayam .I guess that by the time the announcer at this station finishes saying the name of the place it is time for the train to leave, But if you can say Chatrapati Shivaji LAUPATAGAMINI VIRAMASTHAL…

Thus, the theory goes Tamilians have a natural talent for the spellings of rare and complicated words. But there is serious challenge to this theory by you guessed it right Tamilians in the US.

The counter argument goes that if we are to go by the tongue twisting names theory then it ought to be the people from Poland who ought to get the top prize. Ask Zbigniew Brezezenski .

That apart in recent weeks the Tamil penchant for hard to pronounce names has hit national headlines. I have noticed something amusing on TV.I also carried out a small experiment among my friends from outside Tamilnadu .The recorded question was

PLEASE PRONOUNCE THE NAME OF THE DMK RAJYA SABHA LADY MP WHO IS IN TROUBLE OVER THE 3 G SCAM

Not one passed the test. They simply could not get KANIMOZHI right .One guy tried so hard he had to be admitted to an ENT clinic to untangle his tongue.

They could not pronounce the name without the sound of’ R’.Some pronounced It Kanimozi . The sound is best written in English as ‘ZHI’ or’ ZH ‘ and is not to be found in any well known language other than Tamil.

My 13 year old niece has a flair for short story writing but prefers to use anglised names for the characters—Dick, Jenny, Catherine etc. As a true Indian I felt it was my duty to guide her to be Indian and write Indian. I threw a challenge—can she write a story with Tamil names ?I promised her a prize -- a trip to the US.

This is what she wrote quite casually and seemingly effortlessly.

Rajamanickam Gavundampalayam Pachaiyyappan told his girl friend Palavanthangal Kamalanayani Pushpavalli that he loved her. She responded that she cared for him too.They feared opposition from the two families—the Gavundampalayam Armuga Chettiar family and the Palavanthangal Hamsadhavani Chettiar family. So they eloped to Saranavanmuthupalayam and got married at the Sankatamochanavigneswarar temple ……

I invited her to an all expenses paid vacation at my home in Maryland where to her luck she got to participate in a local ‘Spelling Bee’ contest.

Guess how she fared in that contest ?

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM