Be proud of your accent

Now the above topic is an old cliché, which has been abused to no extent. However, yours truly finds it pretty amusing to use it in his blog again. Well the incidents that made me write on this topic are equally amusing. Once we were having a discussion on the latest gossip in Bollywood. I pronounce Bolly in Bollywood with a vertical O, like in Hole or Toll, because of my Mallu (Malayali / Keralite) roots, while the experts with a Doctorate in English in our midst pronounce it with a lateral ‘Auh’ like in Ball, hence Ballywood. So, the moment I said Bóllywood, my friend laughs her heart out and quips “You have such a Mallu accent”. Though the quip about Mallu accent is always offered in good humour, the undertone of ridicule and sarcasm therein is evident only if you are born in the land of the Ko-Ko-nut (Coconut) trees. Well, that was that. However, a couple of days later the same group meets up with the addition of a French guy who was visiting. The bloke was describing his happy weekend in Goa and goes “Hadz ziz wonderfool time. Lots of beerz on the bitch”. Though it took me a couple of seconds to realise that the guy intended to convey that he had a lot of beers on the beach, my English professori friend was crooning about how sexy his accent is. Sexy!! Really? The dork can’t put a sentence together, for chrissakes! So what makes his half baked English sexy while my more-so-fully-baked English (with the exception of the ignominious “O”) deserving of a belly-roll?

Is it the innate habit of patronising anything and everything that comes from across the border or a sense of inadequacy within? Either ways, the result is the same. Accent bashing! For a Gujarati - Coke is always Cock, for a person from Andhra or Telangana - Worst is Warasttt, for a Tamilian - Raw is Raa. But this difference in pronunciations lends its roots to the excess of spoken languages in India. There are 22 scheduled languages according to the Constitution. In addition there are other 1600 languages, some of which originated outside India. To add to the variety, each language is spoken in various dialects in the 29 different states in the country. We are one of the few people of the world who can boast of such diversity in the first place. Hence, a slight skew in pronunciation deserves a pardon! Even if you go global, for the Japanese – Free size is Furii Saizu, for the Americans – Sheikh is Sheeekh, for the Thai – friend is flend, for the Russians – alcohol is alkagol.

Coming back to the land of the Kokonut trees, the next time you decide to poke at me about my Oh-so-Mallu-accent, I will stuff your mouth with banana chibs and pack you off to my ungel in the gelf! Non-mallus, please read chibs = chips, ungel = uncle, gelf = gulf (predominantly Dubai but does not exclude the other Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and some other places in the Gelf!

As to what I find sexy? Penelope Cruz swearing at Jack Sparrow at the top of her voice in Spanish in the last scene of that movie Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides ;)