The Flowing River
By Prof. Dr. Satish Rohra
A friend of mine came across the Hindi word 'tassavur' in a Sindhi poem and wrote to me saying that in the present context; wouldn't it be more appropriate to replace the word ‘tassavur’ by 'kalpana'? A large hue and cry was raised over another issue of using the Gujarati word 'otto' in the book Sindhi Baal Bodh, published by Sindhology, and the interesting fact about it was that the protest did not come from Gujarat but from readers in America, claiming that though we appreciate the book, but we cannot accept the word 'otto' being mentioned in it, as it is not a word of the Sindhi vocabulary !!
In another incident, a close acquaintance wrote to me that the word 'daimiyat' used in one of my articles was not acceptable to him as a reader, because it was not a part of the Sindhi dictionary and that i've tried to make a fusion of words and corrupt our language.
In reply to all these allegations, I wish to tell my friends that the word 'sindhyat' being used by almost every speaker of the Sindhi language is also not a part of the Sindhi dictionary (The Sindhi English Dictionary by Permanand Mewaram) so much so that the newly published book on Kutchi culture, entitled 'Kutch tuhinji sunanpa' (Kutch, your identity), uses a newly-coined word 'kutchiyat'!!
All these instances are testimonials to the fact that any living language is subject to changes, i.e. on one hand so many words may become outdated and obsolete and on the other, many more may find a place in its vocabulary which simply means that 'kalpana' can be accommodated with 'tassavur' and 'otto' can be incorporated to suggest the local meaning. Not only will 'daimiyat' and 'sindhiyat' find acceptance but even words like 'rashtriyakaran' and 'kaumikaran' will also become a part and parcel.
In fact, every language is like a flowing river, wherein usages and expressions of other languages flow in and get assimilated to its main current with the flow of the river, so that they become one with the flowing waters.