Who is Taking Whom for a Ride?

I am a bit of a board reader. Mark the spelling. It is b-o-a-r-d, not b-o-r-e-d.

I have been an Indian Oil customer for a long time. I have no idea why. I always look for an Indian Oil bunk to buy petrol.

Recently, the advertisement boards in the regular Indian Oil bunk that I go to caught my eye, especially, the parts of the advertisement boards in kannaDa, or at least, what is supposed to be kannaDa.

Look at these pictures. When did for (ಫಾರ್) become kannaDa? One particular word ichidana (ಇಚಿದನ) was perplexing. That is a word that I had not come across. Kittel was consulted. The revered Reverend did not know it either. Then the bulb went on. The word is indhana - (ಇಂಧನ) - fuel!

Now who is the culprit here? The advertising agency? The translator the ad agency hired to get the English copy into kannaDa? The man who composed it on a computer for printing? On the whole, IOCL has been taken for a ride. What is the use of an advertisement if no one understands it? More so, no one CAN understand it.

Should I have second thoughts about continuing to be a loyal IOCL customer? I am still thinking. Not just because I do not like a language being mutilated like this. If a company has such scant respect for details . . .

I will mail the link to this post to the head honchos of Corporate Communications and Marketing of IOCL. I wonder what they will do.

Now "enjoy" the pictures below:

EkAMtate is a noun form of the noun EkAMta!


ಫಾರ್! That is a good one. jenuvin and aayil! Great!

ichidana!

Are they selling fuel and oil or are they selling a skin cream like Itchguard?

Now, what does that mean. Definitely not the kannaDa version of the English copy below it!

Blogging in Kannada

It continues to be a painful experience to blog in kannaDa.

I love blogging

I love Blogger and what it offers me.

But Blogger's kannaDa transliteration drives my crazy.

I have been using the transilteration used by baraha and it appears to me to be the most complete tool developed for writing in kannaDa. I do not understand why blaagar I mean blogger cannot just integrate baraha into it and make my life easier? Does anyone know how I could tell Blogger about this?

The silliest thing is that I can write kannaDa properly in kannaDa in blogger. That is the least one could expect. Is anyone from Blogger listening to this cry of frustration?

It used to amuse me no end that the spelling check of Blogger did not know blog, blogging and Blogger. Now it does! It still does not know Blogger's!

This gives me some hope.

Does anyone know how we can help Blogger do a better job of this?

I am waiting, hopefully not for Godot!

Attention to Detail

I came across a board while driving to Ramanagara from Bengaluru. On the way back, I stopped to photograph it. It is an advertisement for a college of management and there is a spelling error in the board.

My further comments are in kannaDa - Here.

Roll of Dishonour

Whenever I see bad advertisements with worse Kannada, I feel like starting a movement to rouse Kannadigas into some kind of action. Boycott that product or that company's products.

Apparently this does not work. I know of a case that did not work. The issue was far more serious than mauling of a language in advertisements. I refer to the Union Carbide and the Bhopal gas leak tragedy. Quite a few organisations tried to get people to boycott Union Carbide's products, the most visible of which was Eveready.

I am not surprised that it was a failure. As far as I know, that was the most powerful brand at that time and many small shops stocked no other brand. What a pity. I was committed to that boycott and adhered to it for years. Even today, when I buy batteries I look for other brands and if for some reason I buy Eveready, I feel guilty.

Now coming to the mauling of Kannada with impunity, and the recent trigger for writing about it now, was an ice cream advertisement from a company called GRB. It simply states, "Taste andre Taste". (Literally translated, it means: taste means taste, Well, what else can it mean? But what it means in idiomatic Kannada is that it is extremely tasty.)

Another trigger was the name of a restaurant written in Kannada. It is called Jhopdi. (For the denizens of Bengaluru: You can see this restaurant or at least its board in the same building as that of Hotel Chalukya) Below are pictures of how it has been written and how it should be.

The practice of using English words in "kannada" advertisements is not new. One of the worst trend setters was Spice - the cellular service provider. Their advertisement said, "simpallaagi sellyulaar aagi". Ughhhhh!

(Of course, Kannada is not the only language that they ruin. One of the earliest such murder I had seen was the appeal to the buyer to "unpeel" a packet of some biscuits. Unpeel? It is as difficult as filling toothpaste into a tube after having squeezed it out!)

Here is chance to make a roll of dishonour and rank them. Look out for mauling of Kannada and write to me and we will list them in descending order of the seriousness of the crime committed.

It could include examples like that abominable catch line of Radio Mirchi. Sakhat Hot Magaa. That line rewrites one of the definitions of democracy and uses it as a definition of itself: Of the morons, by the morons, for the morons?

sarigannaDa

A friend sent me this photograph with the comment that it was super.

For those who do not read Kannada, here are the transliteration and translation:

kAvEri nIru kuDiyuva munna kannaDa kali
karnATakada anna tinnuva modalu kannaDigara saMskriti kali

Before you drink Kaveri water, learn Kannada.
Before you eat "Kannada rice" (food from Karnataka) learn the culture of Karnataka.

The unfortunate part is that one can easily, and rightly I believe, find errors in the Kannada in the slogan itself.

It should have read:

kAvEriya nIrannu kuDiyuva munna kannaDavannu kali
karnATakada annava tinnuva modalu kannaDigara saMskritiyannu kali

Exercising poetic freedom, some parts could perhaps be dropped. Such parts are in italics above.

This opinion of mine is perhaps controversial. I am ready to let it go.

But below the solgan is a couplet which is just plain wrong. It reads:

Enu ninna ciMte
heLE nanna kAMte

what is your worry
do tell me dearie

The first word in the second line should read hELE, the capital E in the word symbolising the long vowel - like hey!

If we have such facility with and respect for our own language, what is the use of asking "outsiders" to learn our language and respect our culture?

There are many "kannaDa" advertisement hoardings written in English script! No one questions that and protests. That, to me, is sad . . .