Caste Away

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”/kʷʌnit̪əri aˑsəl/”, said the office boy to whoever he was speaking to on the phone – Marathi for “Someone will be there”.

Strangely, I’d heard the same two words being spoken by a visitor to our office a couple of days earlier. The only difference was, the visitor’s words sounded more like /koˑɳiˑt̪əriˑ əseˑl/.

The reason these two people pronounced the Marathi words ‘कोणीतरी असेल’ differently could be traced back to their social backgrounds. It so happened that the office boy belonged to the (historically) ‘lower caste’, and the visitor to the (historically) ‘higher caste’.

Marathi is pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on the speaker’s home region and social status. I’m somewhat familiar only with Puneri Marathi, as it’s not my mother tongue. But even within Puneri Marathi, there’s a noticeable difference between the pronunciation and vocabulary of speakers of different social strata.

Look at the following differences in the pronunciation of the same words between speakers of different social strata –

While the speech of the ‘higher caste’ is better reflected by standard Marathi spelling, we can also establish a few patterns between the speech of the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ castes –

eˑ –> jə

oˑ –> wʌ

æˑ –> jaˑ

ɔˑ –> waˑ

f –> pʰ

ə at the beginning of a word –> aˑ

p at the end of a word –> f

An interesting one is the pattern

CVCʱV –> CʱVCV

and its derivations

CVɦV –> CʱVV

and

VɦV –> ɦVV

Consider the pronunciation of बाहेर ‘outside’.

If C = consonant, and V = vowel, then

baˑɦeˑr (CVɦV) –> bʱaˑeˑr (CʱVV)

Here’s another example. Consider the word पुढे ‘ahead, forward’ –

puɽʱeˑ (CVCʱV) –> pʰuɽeˑ (CʱVCV)

And another one. Here’s the word आहे ‘is’ –

aˑɦeˑ (VɦV) –> ɦaˑeˑ (ɦVV)

Vocabulary, too, seems to vary depending on speaker background, as can be seen here –

Note to readers: It is not my implicit or explicit intention to categorise any social or demographic group as of a ‘high’ or ‘low’ status. These words (and their derivations) have deliberately been kept within quotes in the above text, where they refer only to a historical classification of social groups in Marathi-speaking areas and the rest of India. Follow the Wikipedia links to learn more about the Indian caste system.

Updated: 2010-02-13