Posts
IWOTY
2020
By
Gopinath Mavinkurve
As you would all know, each year dictionaries
and language societies across the globe have been announcing the Word of the
year annually for several years now.
Many of these words often would reflect the mood and times as
experienced by the western world and would not really represent us
Indians. I have been suggesting that we
ought to have an Indian Word of the Year from a reputed Indian language
publisher, but until then have filled in for this need for the past over 10
years now.
This year has been unique. The mood all over the world has converged
onto a single theme, regretfully though, due to the global impact of the
Pandemic. The choice has narrowed down as our minds have been wrapped around
how to deal with this menace humanity has faced only since the last pandemic in
1919. Understandably, words like
Pandemic [picked by Merriam Webster and Dictionary.com], Lockdown [picked by
Collins], Covid-19, Coronavirus, Outbreak, Quarantine, Unlock and such other
related words seem to be the obvious front-runners. Even the newly coined “Covidiot” [picked by
Macquarie Dictionary] to describe those not heeding to the requisite behavior
in public places such as wearing masks and social distancing has been in the
reckoning.
Oxford Dictionary has called the year 2020 as
the “Words of an Unprecedented Year” confessing that selecting a single word
would be an impossible task and would not do justice to what we experienced
this year. Shortlists have included
words like “Black Lives Matter”, “Megxit” and such other regional favorites
albeit, they can only be termed as “also ran” this year.
With this global backdrop, could we think of a
theme that captured Indian minds and come up with an Indian Word of the Year
2020 or “IWOTY 2020”? Indians have grappled with the outbreak just
as other countries and these words have been echoing across India even if we do
not really know their equivalents in Indian languages. However, India has experienced hostility of
our neighbors at the borders with the ‘dragon’ attempting overtures albeit
unsuccessfully. This has led to a
strong urge for national unity to ban Chinese goods and become
“AtmaNirbhar”. Our PM has articulated
this to mean being less dependent on other countries and playing a larger
global player in trade deals - and not cutting off trade relations with any
country. He has called for us being
“Vocal for Local” and urged us to buy Indian goods over imported alternatives
for our brethren to prosper.
“AtmaNirbhar” seems to be the clear choice for
being the Indian Word of the Year 2020!
