Work smart,Play Hard.

It is startling how different words, sometimes even of practical and ubiquitous usage, get totally mutilated when people start using them after just hearing it phonetically from someone else, either in a face to face conversation, on the TV or just on the radio. They fail to inquire about the word's meaning, its pronunciation, variations and usage, either totally out of pure ignorance, lack of a source of insightful information, or an egoistic attitude emanating from a feeling of a false pride of "only I know it".

Some of the words, i would try to list them here, that have been phonetically distorted and circulated like an epidemic, so much so that they are on the verge of being stamped as authentic.

Another confounding fact is, besides the wrong pronunciation, the incorrect association of the language to which the word concerned rightly belongs to.

So I'll try to compile a short list of such words.

1. Khud kushi - This is the Urdu word for suicide, derived from Farsi. khud means self and kushi means "to kill/killing". Now comes the distortions - khud khushi (khushi means happiness!), khud kashi (kashi is again Farsi, derived from kash - meaning to pull/to suck once, eg: have a "kash" of cigarette).

2. Sanam - The most widely used word in Bollywood songs. It is an Arabic word and part of Urdu vocabulary, since Urdu has elements of Farsi, Arabic, Turkish and Hindi. Sanam means an Idol, mainly an Idol of a god. Since such an idol is worshiped, hence it is used in Urdu and Arabic poetry to give the feeling of deep love and immense devotion to a beloved. Sanam DOES NOT mean a beloved person - as it is generally perceived from Bollywood songs. Most of the Bollywood songs use exquisite pure Urdu lyrics, rhythm and poetry but they are stamped as "Hindi songs". India suffers from a bewildering politics that prides upon propagating a profound stupidity that Hindi is for Hindus and Urdu is the language of Muslims, the language of Pakistan, hence - the language of enemies!
"Hindi Hindu Hindustan" used to be the slogan of a political party.

3. Here comes a rather technical one, yet very common - Valve. In the language of the truck drivers, mechanics and your neighbourhood tyre pressure service guy - valve slowly became waalve...waalf...waal...and finally "baal". May be since in Bengali language V is pronounced as B. Vikram is Bikram. So when the air pressure in my scooter often gets too low too quickly - the mechanic says "baal change hoga".

4. I noticed another problem with the die-hard speakers of Hindi, that their pronunciations tend to be very course and unrefined, even of the sounds that are a part of the Hindi set of letters. Like the most common ones are Z, it is mutilated to J, so I become Jaki from Zaki. Zabardast(Awesome) becomes jabardast and zordaar(powerful) becomes jordaar, finally Zero is Jero! The sound of "sh" looses its elegance with Hindi speakers and reduces to "s", like shaam(evening) becomes saam and even the Hindi word shabd(word) becomes sabd. Illusion is transformed to illuzan, Deflection becomes deflecson!... Jero Deflecson! ... Dissertayson!

5. Aada barsay! - The proper word is "Adaab arz hay" - its an Urdu greeting for roughly "hello". Its not at all like aada barsay! "barsay" means "rain down", please nothing is raining down!
© Zaki Khan