Our ‘In’s’ and ‘Out’s’ in the English language

by S. N. Arseculeratne

The English language has spread world-wide like the pandemic of Covid. In Sri Lanka the English language has become our lingua franca.

We vintage colonials, use English in conversations at home but when my friends cross-swords with me, they use Sinhala occasionally which is more expressive. We Lankan locals have expressive repartees, “Ado” for look here, “Bambuwa” for nonsense, “yako”’ for you devil, and “tho”, “thopi” and “pissa” for inccorrigibles. And bravo, the Oxford English Dictionary has now included the Sinhala word ‘Aiyo’, so why not enrich the English language with these other words also? Though English is often our Lingua domestica, it continues to plague me. Here’s why.

At a recent party, the comperè invited “men and their spouses” for a game. Look, the plural of mouse is not mouses but mice, so why shouldn’t he have asked men and their spice to join? That’s more spicy and s-exciting. Many from Portugal are Portuguese but one chap should be a Portugoose, as with goose and geese, but not so, why? I like being outspoken, but I cannot be inspoken. The pragmatic Americans who invented the atomic bomb also made reparations to the English language. They dispensed with unnecessary prefixes that fix me, but we in school were taught English-English which had these prefixes. I was driving behind a petrol bowser which admitted being ‘Highly Inflammable’. Being a literal man, taking it as English-English, I lit my pipe but my passenger threw it out of the window. He was an American to whom petrol is flammable, and in America I wouldn’t have lost my pipe.

Cricket is thoroughly English, but we former British colonials won the Cricket World Cup in the 1990s. We spend five days in the hot sun (when is the sun not hot?) playing it, and when an American wanted to know what this game is all about, he was told by his English friend: “You see, you have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man who’s in the side that’s in, goes out and when he’s out, he comes in, and bats until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s been out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not out’s, that’s the end of the game”. Having won a World Cup in cricket we Lankans are not bowled-out by that explanation but the pragmatic Americans called it a day as they found English cricket is confusing and settled for baseball instead; all’s well as it lasts only a few hours. But we intrepid Lankans still play cricket and not our traditional game of gudu.

There are other hiccups in the English language; these relate to the prefixes ‘ex’ and ‘in’; We have an exhaust but no inhaust. Amogst other former colonials, the Malaysians are reasonable people and so, despite their British colonialism, they have simplified English with exhaust and term it egzos; Ice cream, to them has become simply aiskrim. Other outlandish folk also use English as when a Thai lab-lady told me, on seeing me enjoying music “Buchy, you are so enjoyable”. I dared not relate that to my wife.

And we simple ex-colonials are sometimes just as blunt; a restaurant in Kandy has the name “Eat me“, and another advertises its ware as being of “Purity, quality and tasty”. But when a grocery store in Kandy advertised that it sells “Cow Pee” my wife asked me whether they also sell “Bull shit“. There are other quandaries. There are in-things but not out-things. I have met insufferable people but never a sufferable one. We then have in-laws and sometimes they are outlaws.

Kids find this in-out matter amusing, with the following story. Two skunks that are known to stink, In and Out went out for a walk. In got lost but Out located him. When asked how he did it, he replied “In stinked”; it could also have been because of Out’s instinct. Animals display instinct but seldom outstinct; species sometimes get biologically extinct. The only animal that displays out-stinks are skunks. The remedy for this in-out imbroglio is what we had in junior school, Practical English, but I think this has now disappeared from school curricula; it should be restored. I’ll stop wearing decrepit clothes and shoes and wear only crepit ones but shops do not sell crepit footwear. I prefer to doctrinate folk to be good, not merely indoctrinate them. So it’s no wonder that some wise guy said that the English language takes the cake for blatant inconsistency, and I’ll vote for him for the Pulitzer Prize for Archaeo-Linguistics. The late Professor S. R. Kottegoda, who was the Founding President of the Society for the restoration of the Lost Positives in the English language, would have been happy to read this, but the old bard at Stratford-upon-Avon might not have been amused.

Humour is what keeps me going. As a youth I enjoyed reading Stephen Leacock, James Thurber, Damon Runyon, Bill Bryson, PG Wodehouse, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his son, and our own Tarzie Vitachchi of yesteryear, and last Sunday, I read an ad for the fare in a guest house “up-country” (note-we have no down country but only low country). “Newly Tourist Hotel, Working distance from the city, beautiful cold, mist windy, Buffet and Ala Cart“.

However insufferable English-English is, and despite these hiccups in I will not use a sufferable lingo such as Urdu or Esperanto, I’ll continue to hiccup in Singlish, the local dialect of the Queen’s English. However we Lankans are claimed to be high on English literacy scale, and our debt to papa Shakespeare must be acknowledged. And now that our word “Aiyo is in the Oxford English Dictionary, I might be permitted to greet the old Bard Bill Shakespeare with another common Sinhala word “Ado” and say to Bill patting him on his back, “Ado Bill, Sinhala is now in the world’s English”.

Despite our massacre of the English language, we owe a huge debt to old Bill Shakespeare the father of the language. He is so great, several compatriots claim him to be of their own kind. Many articles have appeared on him, but I want to know who Shakespeare really was. He is so famous that diverse people claim him as their own. The Sinhalese think he was Shakes Perra of Bambalapitiya, the Burghers think he was Shakes Pereira a Burgher from Kotahena, those of Portuguese origin think he was Shakes Fereira from Lisbon, the Tamils think he was Shekar Periar from Killinochchi, the Muslims swear that he was Sheik Shapir from Kattankudy, The hiccups in our use of English could have originated from the diverse ancestry of the olde Bard. But Ann Hathaway had the last word and hath her way; she knew that he was really an Englshman from Stratford Upon Avon, and she married him as women always have the last word. But dear reader, you can have it As you like it, as Bill himself wrote as the title of as his play.

Bill was a great writer and philosopher who wrote All the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players. And as we age we get sans eyes, sans ears, sans hair and sans everything. So naturally I was scared about my being sans hair but my barber reassured me that being a thinker I am bald in front; sexy people are bald behind and people who think they are sexy are totally bald which I am not. My optimist doctor reassured me that my eyes are OK, as I can see through people, and with both eyes through one keyhole.