Several words that have entered common parlance - such as kosher, chutzpah, spiel, kvetch, glitch, etc. have their origins in Yiddish / German vernacular, and I acknowledge the contribution of Yiddish / German and other Americanisms in general, to the growth of the English language. However, there's this tendency among some people to liberally garnish their lexicon with expressions like 'oy vey' and 'shoel' borrowed from the colloquial NYC vocabulary, which I find a bit irksome, because one has to look up these words just to understand what is being said (which may not be much, after all). Other than Yiddish, there're also colloquialisms from Hispanic dialects, African-American slang and corporate cliches (all very different worlds), some of which just constitute bad English (e.g., the word 'dwelve', which was the topic of an earlier post), that such folks like to throw around. And on the other side of the Atlantic, there's the tendency to casually slip in classy-sounding French expressions - e.g., soi-disant, for self-styled.
This is particularly true, I've observed, with certain categories of Indians: Indians writing in English, Indians living in the US or UK and Indians from India who mingle with Indians of the former categories or who travel frequently. I guess there's a certain kind of cool associated with this - a certain kind of with-it-ness which these people like to feel as they mouth such words, relishing the way they roll off their tongues, announcing their arrival in (or belonging to) the world that matters, when they could as well say what they want to say in plain English. It is the same tendency that causes some of us to use big words and bombastic language, sometimes even at the risk of malapropism. In short, these are just pretensions designed to display sophistication, and I give them a wide berth eventually, having overcome the initial irritation. Of course, in humourous writing, a lot of this is done in jest and contributes to the risibility of the piece, and that's a different thing.
So in a lighter moment today, after having come upon the word 'schlocky' in something I was reading, I composed the following sentence, which is contrived in order to make a point: A schlemiel and a schnook schmoozed as they schlepped their schlocky stuff around, while a passing schmuck turned up his schnoz at their schmutzy schmutter. Go figure!
To aspiring Indian writers in English, a word of advice: nice shtick if you can make it stick, but its not literature. When you're writing, keep it as simple as possible. Focus on the art more than on the craft. By all means indulge in the rich beauty of the language as a means to express yourself, but lay off the affectations, don't show off your vocabulary. Its a fine line but in the discerning eyes of a mature reader, you drop a couple of notches with every instance of pretentiousness. Shalom!
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