Vocabulary

Vocabulary is an interesting thing. I mean, words having fixed meanings throughout their entire life. I wish, we can just have some fixed tenures for the words. Once in a couple of decades or centuries, we must change the meanings of words - just to make things interesting. Most of us in Gudalur speaking different languages speak a kichdi kind of language, which is neither Tamil nor Malayalam. And, if you add the adivasi languages also into the pot, you get one really terrific mixture.


Once upon a time, we young boys took vocabulary very seriously. When I was preparing for my MBA exams. Having studied English as a special subject and having been taught English with Tamil instructions, it was a totally alien language for most of my friends. But, the MBA exams insisted that we must be good in English vocabulary and there were solid 5 marks for that. While analytical ability and all those mathematical questions were fine for us, we could not answer even one of the five questions under the vocabulary section : When we took the question papers of the last 10 years!! (It is a different matter that I may not be able to answer most of those questions even now, though I am considered a reasonably good management professional...)

So, we were memorising every day twenty to thirty words. Reading the dictionary every day morning was a ritual for us. It was the smallest possible dictionary we could get hold off. But, even then, after 2 months of solid work, we had not completed even the first alphabet A. So, we gave up. The important management lesson we learnt that day. "Leave things that we cannot change. See if your efforts result in proportionate successes" etc.

Today, I am quite comfortable with English. Most often, I am thinking in English and find it difficult to translate many thoughts into Tamil etc. Missing reading in Tamil. Especially writing. But, those initial struggles to learn English vocabulary is still fresh in my mind. Whenever I happen to meet any of those school mates with whom I did 'combined study', the first thing we talk about is our vocabulary trials...


I can identify with this Francis...