How words live and die

English is my fourth language—rather four and a half. I grew up in Kolkata and learned the primary language of eastern India and Bangladesh, spoken by 600 million people, Bengali.

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I learned it well; my school teacher would consult me on grammar and construction. I regularly visited my aunt in central India and learned the language which is now the most spoken language of the world, Hindi. It helped that she was studying Hindi for her master's degree; I consumed her texts voraciously. Then I turned to the classical language from which both of these were derived, Sanskrit. I translated Kalidasa who wrote in 100 BCE. Those were my main language pursuits, but, because of my growing interest in Buddhism, I quickly picked up Pali, the language in which Buddha taught and all Buddhist texts are written. And then, as I was about to join college, I decided to learn English.

Perhaps because of this convoluted approach to English, I can't help noticing its twists and turns that seem to escape some friends' attention. I guess many of them think of a language as a large body of words, rules and literature that remains about the same. I think of it rather as a sinuous river that snakes its way through strange terrains and changes its look unpredictably and mysteriously. That is why words suddenly emerge, become current, lose acceptance and die out. Linguists possibly have complex explanations for these remarkable changes. I can only marvel and wonder.