Gurajada Apparao

“ No one can maintain that the diffusion of knowledge in Europe has suffered since Latin has ceased to be the common language of the educated. The fact that an Englishman or a Frenchman to-day addresses himself intelligibly to millions of his countrymen where before he could only be understood by an elite of scholars, scattered over Europe more than compensates for any extra labour involved in translating works of science for the benefit of the foreign readers. ”

“ In the present constitution of society, among the enlightened nations of Europe and America, the forces conservative of the general purity of language have attained a development and energy to which only a distant approach was made under the most favourable circumstances in ancient times. The conscious and reflective users of speech, the instructed and cultivated, the writers of their thoughts, have become everywhere a class powerful in numbers as well as dominant in influence. Education, no longer confined to the upper layer, more or less pervades the whole mass of the people. ”

“ A highly classical style and an archaic diction, which remove the work from the comprehension of the vulgar, are regarded as merits in an Egyptian writer. The possession of a “fine style” is too often synonymous with being unintelligible to all except the most educated readers. Language and not matter becomes the all- important. Egyptian literature, in short, is intended for the few, and its use as a means for spreading knowledge among the people is ignored. Not a book, not a newspaper article is published which is not an effort for all, excepting an educated minority to understand. ”

“ They seem to think that the only condition which a literary language need fulfil is intelligibility. They think that intelligible prose can be written in the Kavya dialect if it is divested of learned Sanskrit and very obsolete Telugu. They forget that it is not easy, to reproduce an archaic dialect in composition, and that few writers have succeeded in writing fairly intelligible prose in the Kavya dialect with correctness or with elegance. ”

“ So long as a language is alive, it is constantly changing, so that the grammar and rhetoric of living language can never be absolutely fixed. It is only when the language has ceased to be spoken — has become as we say, a dead language — that fixed rules can be framed which every one who undertakes to write it must observe. ”

“ I do not suppose that the masses, or the people can have any partiality for an archaic and artificial literary dialect. Nor in fact, have the English educated laymen who constitute themselves knight-effants to fight the battle of old literary Telugu, shown any marked partiality for it.
No doubt, some memorials advocating the exclusive use of literary Telugu in literature and in schools were largely signed but there is little doubt that very few of the signatories understand the questions at issue. Such educational problems can be solved only by expert educationists and scholars. ”

“ Literary cultivation of Modern Telugu necessitates a study of it, and the study of a refined living vernacular has great cultural value.
“Command of a noble vernacular involves the most valuable discipline and culture that a man is capable of receiving. It conditions all other discipline and culture. Reference is not now made to its scientific study, to its history and phonology, its lexical and grammatical elements; what is meant rather is the man’s growing up in the language, so to speak, and using it for all the purposes of his mental life.” ”

“ What would the world not have lost if the Romance languages had never been deemed worthy of becoming vehicles of literary expression? Men of letters would doubtless, have continued to attain a certain celebrity, according to the purity of their Latin, their mastery of Ciceronian eloquence, or their happiness of Horatian wit. Men like Scaliger and Salmasius would have set the standard of literary excellence. ”

“ A vulgarism and the corresponding standard or polite expression are equally grammatical each in its own sphere - if only they are in general use. But whenever usage is not fixed - whenever we hesitate between different ways of expression, or have to find a new way of expression then grammar comes in, and helps us to decide which expression is most in accordance with the genius of the language, least ambiguous, most concise, or in any other way better fitted to express what is required. ”

“ The orderly development of languages is a long exploded myth. Does Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu seriously mean that the forced and chaotic changes to which the poetic dialect was subjected within the last 50 years in a misdirected attempt to force it into a modern prose mould, can be honored with the name of orderly development? Thank God! the poetic dialect is intact in the works of the early poets, and the so-called “orderly development” has benefitted only an illegitimate false personation, the Neo-Kavya or Pseudo-Kavya dialect. ”

“ Every dialect which is made the subject of literary culture is liable to the fate of the Latin; aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final over throw, in language as in politics; the needs and interests of the many are more important than those of the few, and must in the end prevail. ”

“ WORDS NOT IN GOOD USE
“Every language contains a large stock of words that are not in good prose use. Among these may be mentioned archaisms or obsolete words” (Vide Gardiner, Kitredge and Arnold Manual of Composition and Rhetoric, p 347 and 349)
“Good Use is the use, or general practice at, present of good writers and speakers--the best if we could find them. From this definition it follows, that you should put yourself in the way of hearing and reading good speakers and writers in order to become familiar with their general practice. ”

“ Sandhi cannot certainly act as a bar to intelligibility in the case of readers who can understand Mr. V. Venkataraya Sastry’s archaic Telugu and learned Sanskrit with which his prose abounds.
145. It is unjust, however, to class Mr. V. Venkataraya Sastry, as Mr. K.V. Lakshmana Row has done, with the crowd of writers whose writings carry the hallmark of incoffectness and bad art. To him the diction of the poetic dialect has living associations and when his imagination is touched, much of the drops and his sentences move with the rhythm of the masters. ”

“ Knowledge of good usage can be acquired only by associating in life with the best speakers or in literature with the best writers .... Neither the grammar nor the vocabulary of one age is precisely the grammar or vocabulary of another. The language of a later period may not vary much from the language of an earlier one, but will vary somewhat. ”

“ For a language to contain many foreign words is evidence that the nation which speaks it has had an eventful history, that it has exchanged ideas and commodities with the other nations of the world. Purity of language on the contrary, is a sign that it is a nation without a history, that it has led a dull and exclusive existence - the existence of a tribe of Esquimaux or Central African Pygmies. ”

“ Poetic forms may be sparingly used in books intended for higher forms. But it should be borne in mind that the writing of books should not be entrusted to writers who have not cultivated literary art on Western lines. That a person has succeeded in securing appointment as pandit in a school or college does not augur sound scholarship or literary power. Good writers alone can decide which poetic forms can be used with effect in prose; but not writers wedded to the Kavya or the Neo-Kavya dialect whose literary sense has been trained to abhor spoken forms. ”

“ The literary dialect is very difficult to master. That is the reason why Telugus who have received the best Western culture are unable to cultivate composition in Telugu. They are afraid or committing blunders, and give up the attempt in despair. Spontaneous writing is out of the question, when one has to write a language which he has to learn from books and is in mortal dread of violating grammar or usage at every step. ”

“ The grammar of a language which is hardly written or not at all, fluctuates more than that of a language which has a large literature. But no language can exist as a medium for communicating thought unless it has fixed rules which make it understandable-that is, a grammar. ”

“ What the Sanskrit Hitopadesa or Chinnaya Sun said in ten words, Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu said in a hundred. Sound fascinated him, and he indulged in fantastic alliteration. Words were let in merely to fill long drawn alliterative schemes. Synonyms were piled up and unfamiliar words were marshalled to express the simplest ideas of a beast fable. Even the example of the Sanskrit original did not save Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu from the besetting sin of most prose writers in the kavya dialect, namely, the frequent use of long Sanskrit compounds. ”

“ When deviation from tradition is so far allowed as to utilize an archaic and artificial poetic dialect for purposes of modern prose, no justification in tradition need be sought to break the laws of sandhi in prose, provided of course that the breach of laws followed some definite and rational principles. ”

“ Says Lounsbury, “Language is no better and no worse than the men who speak it.” (page 184, History of the English language)
85. The character of slang and the vulgar is, in the first instance, determined by the speech-sense of polite society, from which it is imported into literature. As irony would have it, the Telugu poetic dialect contains a large number of low class forms which are considered vulgar in polite society. I need only instance one grammatical form widely cuffent in literature and low class dialects, which is condemned as improper in the polite society of the Circars. ”

“ Scholars are agreed that the Telugu of the East Coast districts is the standard. Currency, must therefore, be determined with reference to it. This does not, however, mean that important local variations of other districts should not receive recognition in literary composition. Such variations are not really a handicap but a distinct gain. “Unity in variety-this is life; unity without variety- this is death. Therefore dialects should be allowed to live.” ”

“ The difficulty of the poetic dialect has discouraged literary composition in the vernacular on the part of intelligent graduates, who dread violating rules of grammar at every step. They can write coffectly in Modern Telugu without fear of violating an imaginary and impossible standard which is fatal to all spontaneity. In Bengal and Bombay persons who have received the best English culture apply themselves assiduously to the cultivation of the vernaculars while the leaders of Madras are content with talking about the improvement of the vernaculars on wrong lines. ”

“ An educated writer’s choice falls upon archaisms less hackneyed than the amateur’s; he uses them, too, with more discretion, say, of once in three essays. The amateur indulges us with his whole repertoire in a single newspaper letter of twenty or thirty lines and - what is worse-cannot live up to the splendours of which he is so lavish; charmed with the discovery of some antique order of words, he selects a modern slang phrase to operate upon; he begins a sentence with ‘oft times,’ and ends it with a grammatical blunder ”

“ But, even if spoken Egyptian becomes the language of writing, what is to prevent your keeping up the Arabic of the Koran? In the village schools the children can still learn it by heart. In the other schools you can continue to teach it, as we teach classics in England. It has long been considered part of the accomplishments of an English gentleman to write verse and prose in correct Latin and Greek. You have much stronger reasons for making a sound knowledge of classical Arabic a necessary accomplishment of every educated Egyptian. ”

“ The only remedy which can bring about a real improvement in the mental development of the Egyptian nation is the adoption of the spoken language as the language of writing, and the creation of a vernacular literature. Such a change would be unfavourably received by the learned, the sheikhs, lawyers, and professional letter-writers, to whom the existence of the present written language is, or rather appears to be, an advantage. The arguments advanced against any such innovation are of the most various kinds. ”

“ To be kept free from lapses of consistency requires not only the literary spirit which can move at home in past habits of thought and phrase but the sound philological knowledge which can separate the strata of usage peculiar to the different ages and follow the analogies of form, derivation, and the like, characteristic of each period. ”

“ A study of Modern Telugu will prove the best training for a proper study of the language of the poets. A scientific study of Telugu can begin only with the spoken vernacular, and without such a study, a study of the poetic dialect would continue to be irrational and blind. ”

“ Those who have wondered at the sterile results of Vernacular education in those countries will, perhaps, not be surprised when they realize the handicap imposed by a traditional written idiom which is no longer the spoken language of the country. ”

“ True Linguistic conservatism consists in establishing an educated and virtuous democracy, in enlisting the whole community, by a means of thorough and pervading education, in the proper and healthy preservation of the accepted usages of correct speech and then in letting whatever change must and will come, take its course. ”

“ The denial of a polite standard speech is an important article of faith of the Old school. The SubCommittee opine that, “the proposal of some that the dialects of the Krishna and Godavari districts be imposed as standard language on the other parts of the Telugu Country is unsound in principle and will prove most mischievous in practice”. The majority of the Sub-Committee have thus cut the ground from under their own feet. Under the circumstances, they had no right to discuss current forms or to undertake the classification required by the second resolution. ”

“ Literature is no longer confined to a cult; and mass education which is one of the greatest blessings of British rule has necessitated the creation of a modern prose in Telugu.
87. If so, from English analogy which is the dialect indicated as most suitable for modern prose? This question admits of but one answer — the polite spoken dialect. A highly artificial and archaic poetic dialect is altogether unsuitable for modern prose. (When speaking of a modern prose, I exclude emotional or imaginative prose which in the matter of diction, partakes of the character of poetry) . ”