What is this blog?

"Words and sounds carry histories with them. Not only their own histories, but those of people who have uttered those words."- Me aka Yash.
I pay attention to people speaking. Their choice of words, their choice of pronunciation. And whenever I do hear something which I do not use, I feel obliged to attribute this different choice of words or sounds to history.

This blog is a linguistic record of my world, the sounds I hear and the letters I read, from all the languages I come across.

PS: I am a high school student, and not a linguist, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

Saturday 23 February 2013

What do 'I' call myself?


UPDATE: 26th October, 2013
Everyone,

I have been researching a little more and I have found out that my hypothesis about the origins of "main" might not be exactly correct. If I find out the exact origins, I will let you know. But I am pretty sure about the origins of "hum".


ORIGINAL POST:

I have a friend, with whom I frequently have arguments about whether my Hindi is 'correct' or hers (Both she and I are native Hindi speakers, but as with a lot of school students in India, I use a fair amount of English with most of my friends). I put 'correct' in inverted commas because despite what your grammar teachers might tell you, I believe that language is in a constant stage of evolution and correctness is defined by the will of the majority of the speakers. Our arguments are more for the sake of fun.

Without drifting off to another topic, which will occupy its own blog post in the future, I'll come back to the original problem: what do 'I' call myself. The problem is that in standard written Hindi, the word for I (which I deem 'correct') is 'मैं' ( pronounced mɛː/mæ: *with a tilde over æ/ɛ, which I am unable to type*]). However, a lot of speakers (which includes this friend) use हम (həm) for I, which in standard Hindi would actually mean the plural i.e. 'we'. That was the observation. But my self-assigned task was not to simply observe, but to account. My question was 'Why the 'मैं'/'हम' argument ?'

However, the answer to the question did not come from Hindi, but instead from Persian and Sanskrit. For readers not familiar with the relation Hindi has with these two languages: Sanskrit is the mother of Hindi, along with that of various other North Indian languages; Persian has provided Hindi (and Urdu) with a lot of vocabulary during Islamic rule in India.

While I was learning (read: trying to learn) Persian, I came across the Persian word for I: من (mæ*with tilde*), which is pronounced almost the same as the Hindi 'मैं'. Considering the fact that a lot of Hindi vocabulary was derived from Persian, it was not unlikely that this was borrowed as well. Especially when we consider the Sanskrit word for I, 'अहम् ' (əhəm), which looks nothing like 'मैं'. On the other hand, हम (həm) and 'अहम् ' (əhəm) only differ in that the Hindi form has lost the initial ə. Could it be that Persian gives me my favourite 'मैं' and Sanskrit gives my friend her favourite 'हम'?

To answer that, we need to look at more than Standard Hindi, and a little bit at Indian geography. For people not familiar with Indian geography, an Indian map would come in handy at this point of time. Most of North India speaks languages derived from Sanskrit. I will specifically be looking at the belt stretching from Punjab to Bihar, because I am most familiar with languages from there. Punjabi uses ਮੈਂ ( mɛː*with tilde*). Bhojpuri, which is spoken in Bihar, and is often classified as an eastern dialect of Hindi uses 'हम'. Punjab is at the north-western border of India. Bihar lies on the east. Speakers of Hindi raised in Delhi are more likely to use 'मैं', while those is Lucknow are likely to use 'हम'. Lucknow and Delhi are closer to each other than Punjab and Bihar are, but Lucknow lies in the region which is associated with the Awadhi dialect of Hindi, which was the standard Hindi dialect for quite sometime before it was replaced by the Delhi Hindi dialect Khariboli. This explains why now the standard Hindi I is मैं.

So far so good. But we still haven't answered our question. Why do people in Delhi and Punjab use मैं, while those in Lucknow and Bihar use हम? I think it has got to do with the fact that Delhi and Punjab are towards the west of India, more closer to Persian speaking regions, and places where Islamic and Persian culture reached before it reached Bihar and Lucknow. Thus the western languages adopted the new 'I', the eastern ones stuck to the Sanskrit-derived 'I'. There seems to be a line running somewhere through the middle of Uttar Pradesh, which divides the languages spoken in this belt into two. The western ones share some features, the eastern ones share some features. The मैं/हम distinction is only one such feature. I might discuss other such features in future posts.

Now, to my original two characters of the story. My friend and I. My friend was raised in Kolkata, in West Bengal. Even though Bengal lies outside the Hindi speaking zone, there is a significant Hindi speaking population here. The Hindi in Kolkata is influenced by the one in the neighbouring state of Bihar, which we have identified as a 'हम' state. Hence, she uses हम. I, on the other hand, have been raised in various places, two of which, Jamshedpur and Kolkata, are very much 'हम'cities. Yet, my mother was raised in western Uttar Pradesh which is very clearly a 'मैं' region. Moreover, since I have been raised in different cities, I tended to pick up the language taught in schools rather than the one acquired locally. Hence I am a 'मैं' person.

So that's me signing off after my first post, which I am particularly pleased with, and which I will definitely ask my 'हम' friend to read, who will definitely ignore my request. Hopefully, I was at least able to captivate your interest for you to read my future posts.

Yash

16 comments:

  1. Very well explained the origin of I & Mai. I throughly enjoyed reading this blog. Hope you will explain many more words and sounds carrying Indian history.This blog has enlightened my understanding about our cultural diversity and history.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey,
      It seems like you read my blog and enjoyed it. You could consider clicking on the 'Join this site' button on the right corner of the blog to subscribe to my blog using your Google account, so you receive updates about my new posts. I would really appreciate that.

      Delete
  2. Great way to explain what is seemed to be a through argument all over India. I liked it very much too.

    Regards, Akshat (mai speaker)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey,
      It seems like you read my blog and enjoyed it. You could consider clicking on the 'Join this site' button on the right corner of the blog to subscribe to my blog using your Google account, so you receive updates about my new posts. I would really appreciate that.

      Delete
  3. It actually captivated my interest, much to my surprise. I never really thought about the cause for the difference, however your statement to the logic behind it makes me wonder about the the extent of the influence of the language in our culture.
    It is written in a very bewitching manner.
    Regards,
    मैं

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know it's kinda pointless asking but :
      Hey,
      It seems like you read my blog and enjoyed it. You could consider clicking on the 'Join this site' button on the right corner of the blog to subscribe to my blog using your Google account, so you receive updates about my new posts. I would really appreciate that.

      Delete
  4. Would love reading more such posts. Linguistics interest me too. My email is knrpadma@yahoo.com and do keep me posted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey,
      It seems like you read my blog and enjoyed it. You could consider clicking on the 'Join this site' button on the right corner of the blog to subscribe to my blog using your Google account, so you receive updates about my new posts. I would really appreciate that.

      Delete
  5. A suggestion: Next time you can add relevant pictures or infographics to illustrate your concept or idea. For example, you can add a Map in this post. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for that advice.
    I'll keep it in mind from the next time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. very interesting read Yash ...one has not really given it a thought ...keep writing :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey,
      It seems like you read my blog and enjoyed it. You could consider clicking on the 'Join this site' button on the right corner of the blog to subscribe to my blog using your Google account, so you receive updates about my new posts. I would really appreciate that.

      Delete
  8. Thank you for all your valuable comments.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nice work....
    HUM speaker :P

    ReplyDelete