Manoranjan Pegu’s Linguistic Misadventure

Manoranjan Pegu is trying to become a sonorous echo of the faint voices reflected from the distant mountain – which have no generative power of its own. As a result, he is presupposing so many things out of his ignorance, which are reflexive in his arguments. He has not overcome preliminary ideas, still being stuck with the introductory contents.

We think Manoranjan Pegu needs some introspection on the following points. For his benefit, we are pointing out some of his inadequacies that fall short of the discussions we had been so long engaged with, in the paragraphs cited below:

Youth of GenNext:

We often talk of progressive GenNext youth as the future of the Mishing society who will take the community and its language smoothly forward. Here, we always underline and stress upon the terms broad perspective, progressive outlook and looking forward attitude.

If Manoranjan Pegu does not fall himself within these parameters, he can not attach himself as “I am just one of those youth perhaps Mr. Peter Pegu is talking about”; it would merely be his self-appointment, a nom-de-plume. Regressive mindset, person in enclosed confinement, cave-man attitude and frog-in-a-well would not be a member of the innovative youth group we are imagining about.

Mising to Missing

Manoranjan Pegu does not believe Mising turns to missing. That is his problem – the Mishing community, as a whole, has nothing to do with one’s individual belief. He should keep personal belonging in his own pocket. For others, ‘mising’ and ‘missing’ are homophonous words with equal resonance, identical sonic frequency and uniform sound wave and as a result they are mutually exclusive.

Manoranjan Pegu is a hard nut to crack, even applied with somatic forces, who ‘maintains an argument that changing the spelling of Mising to Mishing’, that too without any convincing reason. The community is helpless to boil down such fruits to their edible form.

Mishing Diaspora

Outside of Assam, the Mishing identity does not ring a bell. Mishing population (students as well as employees and their families) in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and other metropolitan cities of the country is counted with microscopic minority and practicing their native culture tends to infinitesimally zero. In the environment, the traditional custom has been dumped as non-practicing culture, despite boasting ourselves with ‘rich and colorful Mishing culture’. It is a ground reality.

Apart from own Mishing circle, they live under the broad protection of the Assamese umbrella and tell their native neighbours accordingly. In the process they establish a presentable identity and find a friendly equation with them (never disclose as Missing/Mising tribe). Within the Mishing circle, it makes no difference whether ‘the name’ is spelt as Missing or Mishing or Miching or Mising; these words have similar sounds in Mishing tongue and ear. Same argument is applicable to the Delhi Mishing Students’ Union.

Moreover, they enjoy busy moments in the metropolitan life. So, as Manoranjan found, ‘Majority of the people still either does not know about the debate or is not interested in it.’

Whims and fancies

Construction of orthography of a language never comes out of one’s whims and fancies, nobody does it. Rather, it is constructed invariably out of expertness - after attaining knowledge and command over the language as per linguistic theories. That comes again after long pursuance of the nitty-gritty of its word structure etc. Linguistics is a highly technical subject altogether and a full course in post graduate studies. It is the systematic study of language, its sounds, structure, meaning and function.

Applied linguistics is the use of linguistic theory to address real-world problems such as language education and research in phonology etc. Prof. Tabu Tawid and Prof. Nahendra Pahdun have extensive studies on the subject. In equal measure, I have in-dept study on linguistics and phonetics more than ten years. Out of my long training and experience, I have re-modeled (adoption of alphabets according to the existing phoneme in our speeches) Mishing Language Orthographic System on rationalization concept and put through it for experts’ comments. Whole system has been well-formatted and coded into the different sections of a standard grammar.

Here, whims and fancies do not come; the sections of the grammar speak. If someone does not agree with contents of the section he should come out scholarly pointing the shortcomings or its technical snags. So far no one could challenge. Mishing Society of Mumbai has been gainfully using the technique since 1996 with great advantage.

Authoritarian or dictatorial

The subject I know, know it thoroughly. I speak firmly, confidently, authentically and obviously authoritatively. Knowledge is the power. That does not mean that I am an authoritarian or dictatorial. It is a false and baseless accusation. Such insipid argument should come in a fine and constructive debate.

Spelling of Tawid

According to the spelling technique mentioned above and adopted by Mishing Society of Mumbai under rationalization concept, the spelling of Tawid, Pahdun, Pateer, Mohrang, Leegang, Bahne-Kebang etc. have been accepted as orthographically correct.

Here we reiterate, it is not Peter Pegu’s whims and fancies, it is being constructed as per the rule of the grammar. No question of giving freehand to Peter Pegu, he has to stay within the framework of various sections of the orthographic grammar adopted by Mishing Society of Mumbai.

Spelling progression

Manoranjan Pegu has unnecessarily informs us about the changes of Mishing language spelling system, as if Mishing Society of Mumbai is far away from those developments. For his information we state that though MAK sees us with red-eyes, treats us as their linguistic rivalry and enemy, we tract the developments very closely from various reliable sources. Our ways of dealing with the situation is we continue to write and keep a strong pen: pen with sharp nib and overflowing ink.

Conclusion

It is good, as Manoranjan Pegu owns up, “This issue creates a great interest to me”. We wish him best of luck. Gain more knowledge on the subject and come out scholarly and strongly. Do not talk ‘hawa-hawa’. Little learning is dangerous thing.

But for us, this is the concluding correspondence with Mr. Manoranjan Pegu. No further written communiqué will be made with him henceforth - unless and until he comes back fresh with background knowledge on the subject.

This measure is being taken to dissociate with the people who beats around the bush without substance.

Mishing Renaissance is grateful to Mr.Peter Pegu for the above article..