BENGALURU: An innocuous tweet by Karnataka Sahitya Academy award winner and distinguished journalist Sugata Srinivasaraju a fortnight ago urging the operator of the Bengaluru airport to use the right term in Kannada for the word `Elevator’ has blown into a language controversy now after the word was literally rewritten in Kannada.
On December 14, Srinivasaraju tweeted thus: “Elevator @BlrAirport has been translated into Kannada as `yerili theru’ meaning a chariot that goes up and down! When did a chariot go up and down? It moved forward not even backward. Perhaps something more accurate should be found. Or should simply write `lift’ in Kannada, a word that has been in use even among Kannada monolinguals? Why be stubborn and coin a contrived, fancy, inaccurate term!’
Following this, Bangalore International Airport Limited replaced yerili theru with Elevator (literally in Kannada) on Tuesday (Dec 27) and tweeted, “Thank you for highlighting this to us, our operations team has reviewed and made the corrective changes.” Thanking the airport authorities, Srinivasaraju replied that this was less contrived compared to the earlier term. “This should work until we find a new, and better, and more acceptable term.”
The airport’s usage of an English term unleashed a volley of responses on Twitter. Chandavana tweeted: How can you change a Kananda word and replace it with English word Elevator? It is an insult to Kannada language. We request you to revert it back….” Ashok said, “Ridiculous move! Wrong assumption! Elevator is not a known word among non-English speaking Kannadigas.”
TNIE spoke to the author who was put off by the language chauvinism on display and the trolling being done online. “I come from a strong Kannada literary background. I had suggested liftu in the first place. There is a select group who constantly makes a language issue out of everything. An airport is a place frequented by people all over the world and not just Kannadigas,” he said.
BIAL had written Elevator in Hindi too. “There are words which do not have an exact Kannada equivalent,” he explained.
Languages can grow only by borrowing and evolving, for instance, the English as well as French languages, the author stressed.