If you don’t know French, the name Champs-Élysées can be quite a head-scratcher (correct pronunciation here). Thing is, if you plan to study abroad, you’ll find yourself dealing with ‘unpronounceable’ names on a daily basis. Botching the name of a place or thing is less likely to give offense, but what about people’s names?
There’s a simple solution. When possible, just ask people politely what they prefer to be called, and whether you’re pronouncing it correctly. When you stop and think about it, most names are not actually unpronounceable, when someone tells us how to say them.
If it’s your name that’s being butchered, don’t get mad – respond patiently, and keep your sense of humor handy. One of my friends in the US had the surname Ramasubramanian. Imagine that you are European or American or Australian, and have no idea which vowel sounds to use when you see this spelling, or which syllable to emphasize. It’s like being at sea without a compass. I made this rebus for my friend to print and post on her office door – RAM, a sub, rum, onion:
As a class instructor at a US university, I came across Chinese, Korean and East European names all the time. On one occasion, I confused a Chinese student’s name and surname. I asked him after class whether I had said his name correctly, and he politely pointed out my error. The thing is, if I hadn’t asked him, he might never have corrected me, and I’d have continued to say his name wrong. Lesson learned: take the initiative to get it right.
After that, I did a little research on Chinese names, and found that patterns vary, as they do in India. Some people include their father’s name in their name, some have two-word names while others have three-word names, some people use the standardized Pinyin transliteration while others don’t, and some simply use an English name. So for example, if your birth name is Chan Kong-sang, you might go by the name Jackie Chan.
In academia, one meets people from around the world. Figuring out how to pronounce people’s names is an ongoing challenge, not a temporary phase. It’s not a tiresome chore if you look on the brighter side. ‘Unpronounceable’ names can be great ice-breakers at gatherings. They can teach us to put a brake on our cultural assumptions about others, and help open our eyes to the world.
Got a funny story to share about an ‘unpronounceable’ name? Leave a comment below, or write to us at editor@braingainmag.com!
This week kicked off with the first of three sessions of the Knowledge@Wharton High School (KWHS) summer program. As we speak, 23 students are at the Wharton School in Philadelphia. Another 76 will head there for two more sessions, to be held in June and July. That got us wondering about all the possible meanings of the name Philadelphia.
Above: Philadelphia skyline – view from South Street Bridge (photo by Jordan Staub, used under CC BY 2.0 licence)
Founded in 1682, Philadelphia is perhaps the most historic city in the US – home of the country’s first library (1731), first hospital (1751), and first medical school (the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School, founded 1765). It was the country’s capital from 1790 to 1800. It was also an early industrial hub, and home to the first US stock exchange (1790) and first business school (1881 – Wharton, of course). It’s also the birthplace of the US Marine Corps, and was a prime destination for the Great Migration (1910-1970), or the movement of some 6 million African-Americans from the rural South to urban areas in the North and Midwest (African-Americans now make up more than 40% of the city’s population).
Above: The ‘Love Statue’ in JFK Plaza is one of Philadelphia’s best known landmarks. The fountain is dyed pink in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month (photo by nakashi, used under CC BY 2.0 licence)
But what kind of name is Philadelphia? How did the city get it? In Greek, phileo means ‘love’, and adelphos means ‘brother’. So Philadelphia means ‘brotherly love’. The city’s founder, William Penn, was an English Quaker, and knew firsthand what religious persecution was like. He wanted his city to be one where all people could worship freely.
Today, the city’s name is associated worldwide with a famous brand of cream cheese. But the cheese is not from Philadelphia – it was invented in New York, and named ‘Philadelphia’ after the city renowned for the quality of its food.
Above: Philadelphia’s reputation for quality helped brand this New York cream cheese. These boxes are for sale in Lima, Peru (photo by David Berkowitz, used under CC BY 2.0 licence)
The term ‘Philadelphia lawyer’ once meant a competent and expert lawyer. But in a litigious country like the US, where lawyers are popular but not well-loved, the term now carries a negative connotation, and refers to shrewd lawyers who exploit technicalities.
The city also lends its name to an abnormality – the ‘Philadelphia chromosome’ – found in patients suffering from leukemia, because the lab where it was first noted is in this city.
Before William Penn founded his city, though, there were other Philadelphias. Among the most ancient of them was the Turkish city that is now known as Alaşehir. The New Testament Book of Revelation mentions it as one of the seven churches of Asia.
What is today Amman, the capital of Jordan, was also once known as Philadelphia. The site of one of the largest ancient settlements in western Asia, which goes back to 7,250 BCE, it was previously known as ‘Ain Ghazal and Rabbath Ammon. In the wake of the conquest by Alexander the Great, the area was heavily influenced by Greek culture. Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian ruler of Egypt, occupied and rebuilt Amman, and named it Philadelphia after himself.
There are Philadelphias around the world, including in Germany, South Africa, and the UK. There are about a dozen Philadelphias in the US itself.
Check out this video of a song that The Boss wrote for the 1993 film Philadelphia. It was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia.
And we leave you with this delightful 2012 photo of a young visitor to the White House, named Jacob Philadelphia, who wondered if US President Barack Obama’s hair felt the same as his own.
Above: Little Jacob Philadelphia asked if US President Barack Obama’s hair felt like his own, to which Obama replied, “Touch it, dude!”(photo by Pete Souza for the White House)
Whenever we speak with someone whose native language or culture is different from ours, we are essentially translating. Good translation requires much more than a vocabulary – it takes a nuanced understanding of both language and culture. Japanese, for instance, has different verbs for the same action, and using a less respectful verb in a context that requires a more respectful one could be considered insulting. In the book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! the late Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman recounted his attempt to learn Japanese: “Three or four different words for one idea, because when I’m doing it, it’s miserable; when you’re doing it, it’s elegant.”
Recently, BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes found that his English words had upset North Koreans who spoke English, because English is not the same language everywhere. Wingfield-Hayes was in Pyongyang, covering the visit of some Nobel laureates. After the assignment, he was waiting to catch his flight out, when he was suddenly whisked off to a hotel where a group of officials accused him of the “serious crime” of “defaming” North Korea. As evidence, they cited articles he had written. In one, for example, he had referred to a “grim-faced” customs officer “barking” questions at him. Later he wrote, “They had taken ‘grim-faced’ to mean ‘ugly’, and the use of the word ‘barks’ as an indication that I thought they [Korean people] sounded like dogs.” Wingfield-Hayes was detained and interrogated for 10 hours, and then expelled. If that sounds bad, well, it could have been worse.
Translation goof-ups are part of the experience of studying abroad, though of course they generally lead to only amusement, and not interrogation. Here are some common things we Indians say that sound odd to English-speakers in other parts of the world.
Be online: In American or British English, this means someone is using the internet. In India, many people say “please be online” when they want you to not hang up the phone. When someone is “on the line”, they’re connected to you by phone. For instance, you might take a call and then pass on the phone to your friend saying, “Jon is on the line, and wants to ask you something”.
Chewing my brain/eating my head: In some cultures, this behavior is associated with zombies. In India, it’s often a literal translation of a Hindi expression which means that someone is pestering or nagging you.
Put up: In India, we often say “Where do you put up?” when we want to know where someone lives. But in the US or UK, “put up” means “tolerate” (as in “We have no choice but to put up with our obnoxious neighbor”). “Put up” can also mean to move something to a higher position (your hands, your hair, a poster), to stage something (play, show), to deposit or stake (money for investment), or to stay for a very short time (a night in a hotel). If you want to know where someone’s home is, just ask where they live!
Tissue: In cultures that use paper for a lot of things, specific words refer to specific types of paper. In India, we use “tissue” as a catch-all. In the US, “tissue” is toilet paper (supermarkets often coyly call this “bath tissue”) or the Kleenex that you need when you have a runny nose. The thin, crinkly paper used to line gift boxes is “tissue paper”. The roll of thicker paper used to wipe the kitchen counter is “paper towels”. The folded squares of paper stacked on tables in diners and cafes are “paper napkins”.
Above: A shop in Haridwar (photo by Chris Conway & Hilleary Osheroff, used under CC BY 2.0 licence)
STD: In India, this refers to a phone service that lets you bypass an operator when calling from one city to another. (Yes, there was a time when we could not make calls directly in India, because they were very expensive, and the phone company feared that people would run up bills they couldn’t pay.) We still refer to long-distance calling as “STD”. But in the US and some other countries, “STD” stands for “sexually transmitted disease”. When you’re setting up your new home as an international student, you’re probably better off not asking anyone how you can get STD.
Got a funny translation story to share? Leave a comment below, or mail us at editor@braingainmag.com!
Writing is a curious job. Everyone who is literate can write. And everyone who can read has an opinion on it. So how can you tell the really good stuff even if doesn’t make the top spot on NYT bestseller list? And how can you improve your writing? These are important questions.
Because, as with any creative field, writing isn’t just about the madness of inspiration, it also has a method.
So we found five guidelines for you to follow, which are guaranteed to take your work to the next level. Read more below.
1) “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”George Orwell
This is from Orwell’s famous essay on “Politics and Language”, where he laid the law on good writing. Using the active voice is a basic rule of writing, cited by everyone from Strunk and White, to your friendly English teacher.
Consider “Sonya ate seven shrimp for lunch” vs “At lunch, seven shrimp were eaten by Sonya.”
The first phrase is shorter and simpler. We know what Sonya likes to eat, and how much. The second phrase suggests that the shrimp had more of a choice in being eaten. We think that’s pretty unlikely.
2) “Go in fear of abstractions.” Ezra Pound
Pound was a poet. An imagist poet at that. But his dictum applies to all styles of writing.
Consider “There wasn’t much noise” vs “It was quiet as an empty house on a hill”. The second phrase brings out the meaning with greater clarity and beauty. Also, the reader is more likely to remember it.
You might think this is all too literary. But when it comes to reports, isn’t citing studies and statistical data, that much better? Pound would think so too.
So go in fear of abstraction, make your writing concrete.
3) “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”Kurt Vonnegut
A prolificwriter well known for his conversational style, Vonnegut taught creative writing at Harvard and City University, New York.
Imagining or defining the reader of your poem/essay/story/blog can help you fix many elements of your writing – from subject, tone, and style.
For example, if you write for grandmoms, will you use slang? Or talk about spiked leather jackets? Or PewDiePie? Hmmm.
4) “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” William Faulkner
You sweat and cry over one page for a week and think you’ve come up with something decent. Then it starts to bother you that maybe the backstory of Leela’s heirloom hairpin isn’t needed in her interview scene.
Or that talking about the Tethys sea is not strictly relevant to your essay on the Australian sheep industry.
No matter how well you researched the subject, or how invested you are in the backstory, you must get rid of all the excess baggage and serve the writing. One way to do this is take a break and step away. Ask yourself – is it necessary? If not, wield that backspace.
5) “Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.” Margaret Atwood
No, really. Get out and stretch. Walk. Exercise that back and those fingers. Your brain needs all the oxygen. And taking a break is the best way to look at your work with fresh eyes. That’s what helps you to spot the typos and the tautology.
So go on, practice that cobra pose.
Which rules do you swear by, if any? Drop us a line below.
Sometimes, students who are getting ready to go abroad to study have apprehensions about using words to describe race or ethnicity that may offend someone. Here’s a rough guide to talking about race.
What is race?
There is no scientific basis for race. No DNA defines black, white, or any other people. Some populations share certain genetic characteristics, but no traits are exclusive.
You may have read the recent news about a flight that got delayed when a woman passenger became suspicious of a fellow passenger who was dark, had curly hair and a foreign accent, and was silently scribbling a strange code on a notepad. She alerted the authorities, who interrogated the man and were embarrassed to learn that he was no terrorist, but a distinguished Italian economist from an Ivy League university, and that his ‘secret terrorist code’ was actually mathematical calculations. This incident reveals not only the woman’s ignorance, but also the fact that our perceptions of race do not reflect reality.
So if race is not real, why worry about it?
Race may not be ‘real’ in scientific terms, but racism is a reality. Racism exists when one group dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another, based on differences it considers hereditary and unalterable. It doesn’t matter whether you are a racist or not – if you live in modern society, you suffer and/or benefit from racism.
Racism is a recent development, if you consider that modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. Inclusiveness and diversity make a society more stable and prosperous, as Spain learned after expelling the Jews (along with their skills and capital) in 1492.
In his famous speech titled “The Other America”, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described racism as “a myth of the superior and the inferior race… the false and tragic notion that… one particular race is responsible for all of the progress, all of the insights … [and] another… is totally depraved, innately impure, and innately inferior. In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide… If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him; if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist… It is not the assertion that certain people are behind culturally or otherwise because of environmental conditions. It is the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior.”
Some historians say racism did not cause slavery, but rather, it was the other way around: racism served to justify slavery. With European colonial expansion, which began five centuries ago, skin colour increasingly became the justification to dehumanize dark-skinned people.
British India was no exception. As famines devastated India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eyewitnesses described train wagons and warehouses loaded with foodgrains bound for foreign markets. Meanwhile, the government obsessed over welfare cheaters, and made starving people work to earn relief. One relief camp recorded 3,000 deaths in four days. The government’s explanation? To give one example, it claimed that Gujaratis were a “soft” race, “unused to privation” and “seldom worked at all”.
Racism was and is a global problem. We can’t make it go away any time soon, but we can become more aware about how we perceive and speak about our own and others’ history.
Which terms are respectful?
Black people: “African-American” is a respectful and historically accurate term for the most part. “Black” is not rude or insulting in American English. You may notice Dr. King used the word “Negro” in the 1950s and ’60s, but that word is considered outdated now. The other N-word is not acceptable in any conversation, unless you are Black and speaking to another Black person in a certain context. If you’re even remotely unsure about its appropriateness, that’s a sure sign that you have no business uttering it!
Asians: In the US, “Asian” generally means East Asian – Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese. Southeast Asians are from the region that stretches from Myanmar to the Philippines. South Asians are from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and all the countries in between. Words such as ‘Jap’, ‘Chink’ and ‘Paki’ are serious no-no’s – your peers will not judge you kindly if you use these words, which are dripping with prejudice.
Middle Eastern people: Middle East is a Eurocentric term; many prefer to call the region West Asia. Calling someone ‘Jewish’ is better than calling them ‘a Jew’ – another word loaded with prejudice. Obviously, not all the people of this region are Arabs, nor are they all Muslim, so avoid making assumptions.
Indigenous people: Keep in mind that it may not be possible to tell by someone’s name or appearance whether or not they belong to a Native American, aboriginal, or First Nations group.
People of colour: Do not say “coloured people”. That implies that there are two kinds of people in the world: white people and others. “Others” are, obviously, very diverse. “Coloured people” was a term used in apartheid South Africa, where racism defined the state. Today, “person of colour” is acceptable, but “coloured person” is not.
If you don’t need to know someone’s ethnicity or race, don’t discuss it unless they bring it up first. And then, if you really need to, just ask directly and respectfully.
The bottom line? Respect
As Jamaican musician Bob Marley – whose 35th death anniversary falls on Wednesday – sang (quoting Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie’s speech at the United Nations in 1963):
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior
And another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance
Than the colour of his eyes
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all
Without regard to race
Until that day
The dream of lasting peace and world citizenship
And the rule of international morality
Will remain but a fleeting illusion
To be pursued but never attained.
Last Monday, we argued about how language rules aren’t just for fools.
This week we are going to look at 5 mistakes which are common and contrary to rules of good English usage. Language rules work like traffic rules – a combination of widespread practice and good sense. But common as these 5 errors might be, they definitely do not make sense. Read on to find out what they are and how you can avoid them.
I Could Care Less instead of I Couldn’t Care Less
Decide please. Could you care less? Could you be more care free about said situation or entity? If not, and you’ve hit your rock bottom of caring, it means that you couldn’t care less. So once you’ve made up your mind, just pick the right phrase to use. Also: I couldn’t give a damn or I give a damn. It used to be a really strong curse because of its Christian connotations. Now, though, the word is fairly run of the mill. However, we have never been able to evaluate the worth of damn. Is it worth giving or not? What do you think?
Irregardless
Please. Just don’t. It’s regardless. When regard is already lacking, what’s the ir doing there? Just hanging about being pally? Lose it.
Reply back/ Revert back/ Respond back
Notice that the words reply, revert and respond begin with a re-prefix. The prefix, according to dictionary definitions, is attached to words that English borrowed from Latin. It has two main meanings – one is, again and again (as in repetition), the other implies a turning back (think reverse & respond). So if a word already includes the sense of turning back, adding a back for extra measure doesn’t work, does it? If your name is Anna, and someone calls you Anna-Anna, it’s redundant (again a re- word). So, think twice before adding a back to a word that begins with a re-, and then don’t.
Goes versus Says
We know you can be in motion and communication at the same time. Hence the mobile phone. But, it’s still not a great idea to use the verbs interchangeably. Did you really mean for Andrew to walk off when he was supposed to answer a question?Why not just use says for says? It’s the same number of characters as goes.
Who versus Whom This is a hard one to figure for most people. The solution is simple when you remove the jargon. Who can be answered by he or she, and whom by him or her. Problem solved.
What about your own pet peeves? Or, better still, errors you can’t keep yourself from committing? Do share in the comments section!
I love English. Even if I couldn’t tell you what the hell a dangling participle is, off the top of my head. Asked to define a split infinitive, I can only cite the Star Trek motto. Say orientated instead of oriented, however, and you will make me wince. But, if you were to say orientated in the middle of telling how you became a Harvard Lecturer in Planetary Sciences, I wouldn’t interrupt only to correct you.
Because of the number of years (we won’t say how many), that English and I have been trying to get along, I’m somewhat sensitive to its shapes (Is it verse? Is it prose? No, it’s spoken word!), its structures (which Lewis Carroll had no mind to mind), and its sounds (lead vs. lead, onomatopoeias). And maybe because of sheer habit, I find these elements both fun and useful.
But, imagine English to be an axis around which the world revolves. In the Arctic north, there are people who dread the freezing winds of grammar, the white expanses of syntax and spellings, the thin ice sheet that is pronunciation. In the Antarctic, we have the tribe called the grammar Nazis. They destroy people who misuse apostrophes, and hunt those who don’t know the difference between their, there and they’re. Their weapon of choice is sarcasm made very visible on social media.
Both these perspectives seem slightly off to me. Why treat English as merely a barren expanse of land, rather than an equatorial jungle, where you can constantly discover new species of flora and fauna? Nearly 5400 words are created every year – some are stolen from other languages, some new words are just consistent mistakes (nadder, napron, numpire became adder, apron, umpire), and some are simply invented (swagger, fragrance, nerd). A couple of decades ago, starting a sentence with and or but was unacceptable. Not anymore. What we all need to remember is that languages evolve. And if the language evolves, how can grammar stay behind?
However, I am not making an argument for chaos. If everyone chose to write and speak exactly how they pleased, the world would come to an end in less than the time it takes to spell Jabberwocky. Language is like a game and needs its rules – like grammar, syntax and spelling. These are bridges which help make language, and the larger world, meaningful.
And while it might be ok, someday, to use the word literally figuratively, it is not this day.
Recently, a friend who is a professor of Italian language and culture expressed her frustration that an English-language textbook had translated “ricotta” as “cream cheese”. I remarked that it was like Indian cookbooks wrongly translating “paneer” as “cottage cheese”. She said that this was different because the author was a scholar of Italian cinema, and was referring to a film segment called “La Ricotta”, by the well-known director Pier Paolo Pasolini. So the author should definitely have known better.
Above: Ricotta (photo by fugzu, used under CC BY 2.0 licence)
That got me thinking. Presumably because of the hot climate in India, we do not have much of a cheese culture, and most of us have no reason to be cheese experts. But if we were to live in a culture where cheese is a big deal, it’s worth thinking about what we would lose if we insisted on drawing cultural parallels or equivalents where none exist. We might miss out on some of the diversity we encounter, and that would make our world a smaller than it needs to be. We would be losing out on the education that living in another culture gives us.
So, continuing with our cheese example, there simply aren’t enough types of cheese in Indian food for us to find counterparts for European cheeses. It would be a bit like trying to find French or Swiss equivalents for textile traditions such as Kanjeevaram, kinkhaab, Sambalpuri ikat, sozni, ajrakh, and so on – there just aren’t any parallels there.
So, Europe has hundreds of types of cheese, and they are eaten daily. They can be classified on the basis of whether they’re hard or soft, which animal’s milk they’re made from, whether they’re aged or fresh, and so on.
So what’s the difference between paneer and cottage cheese? Paneer is a solid cheese, usually made by adding a few drops of lime juice to hot cow or buffalo milk and draining out the whey (the liquid part after the milk has coagulated). Cottage cheese is a bit similar – but only a bit. The whey is usually not drained out completely, so the cheese is semi-solid.
Above: Paneer, and below, cottage cheese (photos by VirtualWolf and FASTILY, used under CC licence)
Having grown up using the words “paneer” and “cottage cheese” interchangeably, I found out the hard way that I couldn’t substitute one for the other when cooking. As a recently-arrived international student in the US, I bought some cottage cheese at the local supermarket. The opaque, sealed container gave me no clue about the consistency of the contents. Back in my kitchen, I had my paalak all washed and chopped, ready for cooking. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box of cottage cheese and found it full of mush!
And so I learned to stop trying to interpret everything in familiar terms. Sometimes you just have to deal with other cultures in and on their own terms. And as a reward, you get to discover every kind of delicious.
Above: Cream cheese frosting on a cupcake (photo by Ken’s Oven, shared under CC BY 2.0 licence)
All words are sounds. And some sounds are words – oink, quack, neigh, pow, bam, biff. A sound-word is called an onomatopoeia (on-uh-mat-uh-pee-uh). Like great yoghurt, olives and moody gods, the term is Greek.
A lot of this linguistic phenomenon imitates nature – the call of animals and birds, the cry of babies, and sounds we make involuntarily – sneezes, laughter, even farts. Onomatopoeias are imitations. Because they reproduce sounds it is easy to presume that they are universal. That cows moo as cats meow and dogs bow-wow. And everyone can be led to believe that their imitation is the most authentic one. If that were true, onomatopoeias would be universal.
But are onomatopoeias the same across languages? No.
We forget that our mother tongues condition not only how we imitate and share sounds, but also how we listen to them. So a native English speaker will hear a cockerel differently from a Hindi speaker, who, in turn, will hear it differently from a Russian speaker. That said, the word for the bird’s call will likely be an onomatopoeia in all languages.
So while onomatopoeias exist in all languages, cows don’t moo in all languages. Neither do we universally go atchoo when we sneeze. This means you are allowed to go hapsu if you are Turkish. Bless you, if you do.
Also, because it is the internet, let us take cats for an example. The humble housecat, which meows in English, meos in Vietnamese, says yaong in Korean, and nyan in Japanese! And they don’t even have an excuse for being so obtuse, unlike the frog, which varies its sound according to species (ribbid, croak, etc).
(Check out illustrator James Chapman’s quirky work on international onomatopoeias here.)
Language is our way of trying to capture our environment. Naturally, each individual might be given to think his or her way is the best, the truest way of retelling the world’s story. Linguistic phenomenon like onomatopoeias are a good example of that exercise. We think we’ve got it sorted. And then we come upon nyan-cats.
We sometimes talk about globalization as if it happened because of two decades of economic liberalization in India. In fact, it has been going on for thousands of years.
In the 4th century BCE (Before Common Era), some of what is now India was part of an empire ruled by a former pupil of the Greek philosopher Aristotle – yes, you guessed it – Alexander the Great.
Above: Coins of the Indo-Greek emperor Menander I were in use in Bharuch, Gujarat, in the 1st century (image used under CC BY-SA 3.0 license)
Around that time, southern India, which was ruled by the Chera, Chola and Pandyan dynasties, also traded extensively with the Roman empire and Southeast Asia. A Greek-language periplus, a kind of navigator’s log, written sometime in the 1st century CE, described many centers of trade in the Indian subcontinent, including Barygaza (Bharuch, Gujarat), Ozene (Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh), and Muziris (a port near Kochi, Kerala).
Exports from the Indian subcontinent included precious stones, pearls, Chinese silk, pepper, and bay leaves (the Sanskrit tamalpatram became malabathron in Greek). Imports included gold, silver, wine (Italian was preferred, according to the periplus), fine cloth, copper, tin, and lead.
Above: Ancient Roman gold coins excavated in Pudukottai, Tamil Nadu. The one on the left is of Caligula, who ruled from 37 to 41 of the Common Era. The other two are of Nero, who ruled from 54 to 68 CE. (Photo by Uploadalt, used under CC BY-SA 3.0 license)
Trade continued and expanded over the centuries. After Europeans conquered the Americas in the 16th century, many species of plants and animals crossed over from Asia and Europe to the Americas, and vice versa. This “Columbian Exchange” is why India has potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, tuberoses (rajnigandha), papayas, custard apples, guavas, and pineapples, among other things. The humble chikoo, called sapota in Hindi, is actually the tzapotl of the Aztecs of Mexico.
Most American species were introduced in India by the Portuguese. Among them was that “quintessentially Indian” ingredient, the chilli, native to Mexico. Indians adapted the chilli quickly, because its hot taste was similar to pepper. But potatoes and tomatoes gradually became part of Indian cooking only after the British taught their cooks how to use them.
In the late 18th century, the potato was exotic enough to be a gift from a diplomat. Governor-general Warren Hastings received a basket of potatoes as a present, and considered it an occasion to invite other officials over to dinner to share it.
Above: The extremely hot bhoot-jolokia, a chilli variant from Assam and Manipur (photo by Asit K. Ghosh, used under CC BY-SA 3.0 license).
So if you’re planning a Southeast Asian vacation this summer, or even just a vada-pao snack this afternoon, remember that you’re continuing a historic process that is more than 2,000 years old!
By: Uma Asher
PS – Previous Word Nerd posts are here. Got a Word Nerd idea to share? Share your thoughts in the comments, or tweet to @braingainmag!
