From: bkannan@ha06.eng.ua.edu (Balaji Kannan)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Subject: Re:Linguistic Barrier ?
Date: 24 Jul 1992 00:37:40 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu



Hmm.... One of my pet topics!!


RANGANATHA RAO GURURAJ writes:

>Vanakkam.

>I was chatting with my Pak pal last night and an interseting aspect
>came up. He was saying that Japanese and Germans have made rapid
>strides because their language had science in them. 
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

      IMO, this is sheer Nonsense! [At least,this sentence-construct
      makes me think so. What next? Japanese and Germans had brains
      in them ?]
    


>                                               They need not have
>to switch over from their national language to English to learn
>science at higher levels like Postgraduation, Research and so on.



    While it is true that the Japs have Scientific Education in their
    own tongue, they  have been adept at hacking away English 
    words and "Japanesing" them.

   **************************************************************
    
    The Japanese are particular masters at the art of seizing a
    foreign word and alternately beating it and aerating it until
    it sounds something like a native product. Thus the "sumato" 
    (smart) and "nyuu ritchi" (newly rich) Japanese person seasons
    his or her conversation with "upatodatu" expressions like "gurama
    foto" (glamour photo), "hai-kurasu" (high class), "kyapitaru gein" 
    (capital gain), and "rushawa"(rush hour). "Sebiro", for a suit
    of clothes, looks convincingly native until you realize that it 
    is a corruption of Savile Row, the London Street where the finest 
    suits are made. Occasionally the borrowed words grow. Productivity
    was stretched and mauled until it emerged as "purodakuchibuchi",
    which, despite its gretaer length, sits more comfortably on the
    Japanese tongue. But for the most part the Japanese use the
    same sort of ingenuity miniaturizing English words as they do in
    miniaturizing televisions and video cameras. So,modern girl comes
    as "moga", word-processor becomes "wa-pro", mass communications
    becomes "masu-komi", and commercial is brusquely truncated into 
    a short, sharp "cm"."No-pan", short for no-panties, is a description 
    for bottomless waitresses, while the English words touch and game
    have been fused to make "tatchi geimu", a euphemism for sexual
    petting. 

    .............

    The most relentless borrowers of English words have been the
    Japanese. The number of English words current in Japanese has
    been estimated to be as high as 20,000. It has been said not
    altogether wryly, that if the Japanese were required to pay a
    license fee for every word they used, the American trade 
    deficit would vanish. A count of Western words,mostly English,
    used in Japanese in 1964 put the proportion at just under 10
    percent. It would almost certainly be much higher now.
 
    ***************************************************************
 
    The same is true of Scientific terms that had to flow Eastward.
    At the same time, the Japs have made their own contributions
    to Science [terms too] and the English have not shied away from
    borrowing them. More so in Manufacturing,[Japs being the undisputed
    Masters today]  which they have revolutionized and from whom
    the West have a lot to borrow.   [Although it is said that
    the real management/manufacturing Gurus are in the U.S. Ironically,
    it is the Japs and not the Americans that listen to these American Gurus
    and the American companies eventually learn  from the Japs]."Kanban" 
    and "Poka-Yoke" [for eg.] are the two of the more popular Japanese 
    catch-words used in the manufacturing industry today.
    
    
>I told him that we do have masters in science in Tamil medium of
>education. I do not know if PhDs exist in Science subjects with
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Tamil as the medium of instruction.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

                   Not to my knowledge too.

>Even if not, i dont strongly believe that Hindi, if it's made the common
>language of the country can cope with science. Moreover transition will

            What is the relation between Hindi and Science that
            one cannot find in other Indian languages?
            What makes you believe,faintly though,that Hindi should be
            made the common language?

    [Incidentally, I learn that not more than 16% of the Indian population
     speak any one language. Mind you, I said speak.]

>take ages. Most importantly research in Medics for example is
>done primarily in US and UK. .....There are points like this..

>I request your views on the above.

>Mikka nandri

>R Gururaj

       Scientific Research is carried out with  vigor in 
       all developed countries. Maybe,the amount US spends on
       Scientific Research is just way ahead of the rest. Two
       thirds of all Scientific papers are published in English.
       BTW,

       *********************************************************
       Even in France, the most-determinedly non-English speaking
       nation in the world, the war against English has largely
       been lost. In early 1989, the Pasteur Institute announced 
       that henceforth it would publish its famed medical review 
       only in English because too few people were reading it in 
       French.
 
       ............

       The French also recognize the global importance of English.
       In 1988, the elite Ecole Centrale de Paris, one of the 
       countries top engineering academies, made it a requirement
       of Graduation that students be able to speak and write
       fluent English, even if they have no intention of ever
       leaving France.
       *********************************************************

       In India, if ever Scientific Education is imparted in the local
       language, English should still be made compulsory, rather than
       going for a National language [Hindi]. A national language is
       something that should evolve [see U.S., English is still not the
       National language] rather than being forced on an unwillimg popul-
       ation. But the bozos at the Center never realize this,just as the local
       bozos don't realize that one SHOULD NOT,by force, prevent people
       from learning any language that they deem it fit to learn. Just
       as with English, most people learn a language not beacuse it
       gives them pleasure to please Monoglots, but because they need to
       function in this world at large.
     
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>"Thalai nimirndhu nillada" - "Amrutanjan irukka?"


       Balaji Kannan


 P.S. Examples of other countries were given not so much to suggest that we
      should blindly ape them as to suggest that it would be worthwile to
      learn some important lessons from the experiences of the successful,
      after putting them to debate. I hope,this time it is not Selvakumar
      that pounces on me :-) :-)


 P.P.S. Some of the facts and  asterisked material were culled from
        Bill Bryson's book, THE MOTHER TONGUE.