The teacher at the phonetics class back in my college, used to break words into syllables and sounds. Every word that had already been residing in the brain, for years, gets a new outlook, thus - for this is how we learn to pronounce right. For example, the word freight is pronounced phonetically like this: “fra” followed by the number eight … so it would be :
“fra-eight.” When you pronounce freight as “fright,” the meaning alters into “fear,” perhaps literally! That was a glimpse of my days of graduation in the field of Communicative English.
So these sounds find their way into the eardrums and the brain makes references with them to form meaning and sense. We register a lot in our heads, through sounds - even without the visual, we are able to second guess what’s coming. When the music turns melancholic in an audio piece, we can tell that it was perhaps a sad scene in the movie, with the sad tone being employed to depict melancholy.
Millennia before, Sanathana Dharma, had already derived the logic of speech and language - it’s madhyama, vaikhari roopa - meaning, the sound of the syllable before it’s uttered, followed by the uttered audible word in itself!
This logic of language and its very basis of understanding applies to a toddler too - they’ve been listening to the sounds of the mother, perhaps in an amplified effect, while staying afloat in the amniotic waters.
It’s been exactly a year since I got inked the first time, with the line from Lalitha Sahasranamam, bearing my little one’s name. A cousin told me, “when Niraamaya grows up someday, she’ll begin to identify her name through the tattoo on your hand, Usha.”
I smiled and thought perhaps that day is a bit far-fetched. However, just as I’d read books and newspapers to her, I’d also read all my tattoos to her. When the line bearing her name from Lalitha Sahasranamam is about to play, I consciously go to her and say - hey next you’ll hear your name…! I kept repeating this exercise unknowingly and unconsciously!
Coincidentally, one day she just pointed to the tattoo on my elbow, and looked at the TV screen when the line bearing her name came along! I was stumped, choked for a bit with tears of joy, not once did I realize that in exactly one year of me getting inked, the little one would get used to the written word and its sound so quickly! It’s truly Madhyama Vaikhari Roopa that’s doing the works. Now, it’s a regular for her to point to my tattoos and make me read them as though it were a book. It’s my quote-board after all.
After all, sound is the first association, vocabulary is built on this basis. I am deeply thankful for the Phonetics and the Sahasranamam, both playing foundation for my ability to train and communicate.
Shri Maathre Namaha.❤️
The line from Lalitha Sahasranamam is:
Niraamaya Niralamba Swathmarama Shruthihi!
