Hi everyone.
I really have
been so busy with finishing my college and not deciding what to do with my life
and reading books and watching movies and watching TV series that I have almost
completely forgotten the fact that I own a blog and used to write interesting
things (or I so claim them to be) in it. I always happen to have a backup blog
post when I used to post a new blogpost back then, meaning that I always have
two posts being written at the same time. But the last post that I wrote and
posted wasn't quite in that scenario and I had no drafts for the next post.
What am I talking? You don't need to know all that. Or do you? I don't know
man. It's been a long time since I stopped writing and I honestly don't think
I'm talking any sense at this point. See, I do have a lot of stories in my life
in which I have been stupid, clever (by this I mean, less stupid), awesome,
scared, beaten the shit out of, mocked the hell out of and I could keep on
writing them but the sad thing is that you couldn't digest most of the stories
and I wouldn't want you to put your lives at risks by making you read all of
them. I think I am kind of doing it right now. Eh, what the hell? Sometimes you
gotta do what you gotta do.
So here's the
deal. I'm gonna start telling you what I really want to tell you in this blog.
Okies? Cool. I have this weird disorder that I have to constantly keep
correcting people of their mistakes. It was okay at first but as time went by,
it got worse. Even I am sick of it by now and I can't seem to control it
whatsoever. It has been in me from long back. Me and my mom had this habit of
finding mistakes in stuff. Like most of the time it was a misspelled English
word or a sentence in a public place/shop which made the meaning funny. This
was because my mom was an English teacher and she was bothered by those
mistakes. It is from her where I get my English genes and we both kind of
enjoyed doing it as they mostly brought out laughs. For example, in a lodge, it
was written "Mate" in the plug point where the mosquito mat was to be
plugged in. And it literally gave out the wrong meaning given the fact the we
were at a low priced lodge and it was "mate" that was written near
the bed. You get the point, right? But I was only 13 or something only then. I
honestly didn't know better of what that 'mate thing' meant but at that time I
was annoyed by the spelling mistake. And with things like these, I grew up.
I was like in
the sixth or seventh grade when these happened and I wasn't learning that much
English too. But by the time I finished my tenth public exams, I started to
watch English movies for the very first time. I think I might have mentioned
this earlier. My friends had suggested me to watch some animated movies. I
didn't now back then that there were animation studios and all. I was really
bad at the "behind the scenes" stuff. Later when I got to my senses,
I got to know that those movies were made my an animation studio called the
Pixar. And boy, Pixar is a great animation studio that has made and is making
pretty awesome movies. It was then when I got introduced to the world American
media. You know there is a lot of difference between a Tamizh movie and a
Hollywood movie. Unlike Tamizh movies Hollywood focuses more in terms of
script, acting and post production rather than choreographed dancing,
laws-defying stunt sequences and absurd comedy parts like the ones in the
Kollywood (yeah, like putting a K in Hollywood is enough). I apparently liked
English and this made me like the language even more. So, that is how I started
falling in love with English and later I took up book reading which made it
even more intense.
Like I said, the
spelling mistakes used to bother me a lot. With all the English stuff I was
going through, I clearly learned a lot of new words and learned to use them in
the proper context with the help of the movies that I watched, the books that I
read and later on, the TV series that I loved. You could simply categorize me
as a Grammar Nazi but that wouldn't quite fit into what I correct people of. I
had a lot of different thoughts. I am an atheist and I had different set of
beliefs. I thought the dating concept was a better way of selecting a partner
than the arranged marriages. And I thought women should be given equal rights
in ways of how they actually should be treated unlike how they are being
treated in India. Then I came to my senses and concluded that most Indian
movies were and are, to put it perfectly, non sense. And the critics are false
praising them. I started having different opinions on humor as I started
watching more and more TV series sitcoms and standup comedies. To be clear, I
started liking America more and more with all the American proliferation that
is happening around. That is where I learned the English. I could even say that
I have learned better English via the American show business than all of my 19
years worth of school and college education combined. And there is no
disagreeing with that.
Yeah, my brain
is kinda messed up with all of these running in my mind constantly. Movies,
Books, TV series, Dating, Humor, Culture etc. So, my set of thoughts and
ideologies changed completely. This made the correcting-people thing stronger.
Now that I have a totally mixture of thoughts inside me, my brain started being
a douche. It started to disagree with most people's opinions. I know this is
not a good thing but my brain consistently had counter arguments on how their
opinion is solely based on stupidity. Well, I don't say this out aloud. If I
had had done that, I most probably will be in jail right now. Anyways. I know
that everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But the thing is my brain
thinks that my set of opinions alone are right and has the urge to correct
people if their opinions are rubbish.
For example
1.
If a friend of mine says a word wrong, I'll be
there teaching him the proper pronunciation.
2.
If I see a
sign that has a wrong spelling, I need to tell it to someone that it is wrong.
3.
If someone on facebook make a spelling mistake in
his/her status, there I am astreisking in the comment section with the correct
spelling of the word.
4.
If a person sings a song with the wrong lyrics,
there I am telling him/her the correct lyrics.
5.
If someone talks about rituals in
marriage/funeral/baby-shower that make no sense, I have to know why they do it
and I will ask "Would it make a difference if you didn't do
it?"
6.
If someone shoots a video in the phone
vertically, there I am explaining to them on how the output would be on the
computer and they should shoot the video horizontally.
7.
If someone talks about the omnipotent, I probably
won't do anything. Because I know I can't have a rational argument with them.
This is how I turned into this corrector maniac. But I thought
this was it and I could control it. As I always say, universe has different
plans for us. I had a whole lot of correcting waiting for me when a new letter
was taught to me in the last year. I need to tell what this is exactly because
chances are that you may not know how to pronounce this letter also and even if
I told you how to do it right, you couldn't pronounce it right unless you
really tried. Worst case scenario, you would argue that you are telling it
right, even though you will be not. This is only for the Tamizh speaking
people, so if you are not of Tamizh origin, you can skip the fore coming
paragraphs but you can read if you wanna know what this fuss is all about.
There is a this letter in Tamizh language, in fact it is in the word Tamizh
itself. If you are one of the guys who is wondering why I have spelt Tamil with
a zh, I'm really sorry to break it to you. You can't say zha.
As surprising as
this might be, I, myself had no idea that this letter is pronounced different
until recently. I knew where to use the letter in dialect but by no chance did
I know how to pronounce. I worked so hard to make it work and finally have
mastered the art of saying zha. And the sad thing is that most people still
don't know how to do it. It is weird because I was one of those people who had
no clue as of how to say it and after learning it, it became way too hard for
me to ignore people who pronounce it in the wrong way.
Let me explain. There are three 'la's in
the Tamizh language namely,
1.
Fat la (Gundu la)
2. Stick la
3.
(Kuchchi la)
4.
Special la (Sirappu la or zha)
The special la (zha) isn't how you read this English la but it is
kinda much more deeper. That is why the spelling 'zha' is used to express it to
isolate it from the other two 'la's. When I was in my first year of college, I
didn't know of this zha thing and would pronounce all the three 'la's with the
same pronunciation. My college was in Chidambaram where people of that region
say zha more perfectly than anyone in the whole state. The month I joined in
the college was the end of the rainy reason and we would have to express a lot
of "I think it might rain today" or "It's raining" or
"Did you see that song with Tamannaah dancing in the rain?" The third
question was asked mostly by me. Tamannaah, right? Back to the story... The
word for rain in Tamizh is 'mazhai' is pronounced with the special la and word
'malai' is the one that has the fat la that gives out the meaning mountain.
Being the non-pronouncer of zha that I was, I would express the rains as
mountains making all my sentences into "It's mountaining" and
"it might mountain today". It doesn't mean the same in English but
you get the point, no? I was pronouncing it as malai instead of mazhai. So it
is pretty easy but since no one had taught me this earlier I couldn't say it as
I never knew that it existed.
The thing that
finally made me actually pronounce it properly was a guy named Vishal Dadlaani.
He is one of my favourite singers. He did a track with Anirudh in the movie
Vanakkam Chennai called "Oh Penne Pennne." He is from North India and
he says zha much better. I was actually surprised that he could tell it without
having to struggle. I don't know whether there is a letter for this zha is
Hindi or not but it was in him where I really learned the difference. Later I
came to know that there might be a special la in Hindi too. But I am not really
sure. If you are reading this and you speak fluent Hindi, let me know if such a
la exists in Hindi. After that, I heard the song "Pazhagikalaam" by
Aadhi. That is the only song that you need to hear to hear if you need to know
the difference in the pronunciation of the zha. Learning the zha wasn't just as
easy as I thought it would be. I literally had to be 'Zha conscious' all the
time and I was.
Every time a la is in a sentence my brain works so fast as to
where in the upper mouth should my tongue touch to make the right sound. I was
constantly aware of the Zha. See, the stick la is made by the tongue touching
the teeth and the skin adhering to it on the upper jaw at the same time. The
fat la is made by touching a little behind where the stick la requires to be
touched. And the special zha is made by folding the tongue and touching the
inner upper jaw skin with the top of the tongue. It kinda needs some working to
do to actually pronounce it right. I seriously don't know whether you've
understood or not. I don't know how exactly to express this in text. If
you meet me in person, we can dance around all day with this word. If you are
reading this and you already know how to say zha, you might understand what I
am trying to explain here. I personally was struggling a lot to get this right.
As I was always zha-conscious I get mixed up with the other two 'la's. I started
blabbering when my brain could not analyze what la to use when I am in the
middle of a sentence talking to someone. And after months of practice, here I
am writing a post on how I learnt it and how annoying I am about to get in the
coming months.
Yeah, it is a
complicated letter. When I correct this specific letter in people when they are
speaking, they one, try it for three or four times and say "screw it, I am
gonna stick with my set of las cause I don't care". Two, they don't see
the difference and say "Stop talking nonsense, okay?". Three, some
poeple actually get it right in the fifth try even though they have never
pronounced it before. I actually envy these guys. They learn so quickly whereas
I took a really long time to learn it. But they had someone to teach them in
what their tongues should do to make the right sounds whereas I learned on my
own. I don't do this to insult them or offend them or mock them because they
don't know the spelling/song lyrics/pronunciation, I do this because I don't want
them to be carrying the mistake to other places where people actually might see
it different. And also not to inherit the mistake gene to the next generation.
People don't quite like it if I do that and I turn out to be the annoying guy
who corrects people always. I thought I was alone and surprisingly, Ted Mosby
from How I met your mother and Ross Geller from F.R.I.E.N.D.S are the same as
I. In fact, I am exactly like them in most ways.
I am trying not
to do it and my self-control sometimes is overcome by my intuition. I can't
really blame myself for that. My mom scolds me when I correct her of the wrong
zha that she occasionally lets in the conversation. Then I finally realized
that I can keep this thing going but in a way that it does not annoy people in
anyway. Why I am saying this is that I deep inside know that I will never be
able to stop this weird thing. So, I should learn to use it in a less annoying
way. You know, in a polite kind of way. I don't know when such a day is gonna
come. All I can say for now is "Fingers Crossed". Anyhow, I made you
sit through all this and I am happy because now you know my struggle. Well, it
was really nice getting this out of my chest. Thanks again for reading.
Regards,
Guhan.
Guhan.
