Eeesh!

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In our University town of Vizagh in AP in the 1950s it was a fashion for sick home-owners to sport this placard on their front gates:

"If you have nothing else to do, please don't do it here"

But as you are well aware, our Bloggers Anthem has the slogan:

...You may have little to say
Still you can say it here!

In his delightful Foreword to the latest Ishani booklet, Pratik quotes Lin Yutang:

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live"

So, it just happened that I woke up from my afternoon siesta with the word: "shibboleth" whirling in my mind for absolutely no reason at all. This is a word which I never heard spoken but read a few times without a clue to its precise meaning.

So, I Googled for it and found this charming passage:

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In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the Jordan River back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. In order to identify and kill these refugees, the Gileadites put each refugee to a simple test:

	"Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say "Shibboleth" (שיבולת).' If anyone said, "Sibboleth" (סיבולת), because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion."

Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. Regional differences, level of expertise and computer coding techniques are several forms that shibboleths have taken. For example, during the Battle of the Bulge, American soldiers used knowledge of baseball to determine if others were fellow Americans or if they were German infiltrators in American uniform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth ..

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I think Bengalis can use the shibboleth: "Eeesh!" to distinguish the East from the West Bengalis:

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"E is for Eeesh. This is a very common Bengali exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali, especially Bengali women, use eeesh 10, 089 times every year.."

http://mypaisworth.blogspot.com/2008/07/fast-forward-shalom-bong-thank-you-maam.html

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Most Sanskrit-based Indian languages like Bengali and Telugu have 3 letters in their alphabet for "s":

The first one has no English equivalent to my little knowledge; the second as in "shoe" and the last one as in "soul".

Most cultivated Bengalis pronounce most of the three in the middle "shoe" style and look down upon anyone pronouncing all the three as in the last "soul" style..."Eees!".

Correct me if I am wrong.

My own name "Sastry" has unfortunately 2 of the damned thing; the first is the first Sanskrit "s", and the second the last "s".

Most Bengalis at IIT KGP pronounced it as "Shastri"; my own East Bengali Guru SDM and an Ex-Director also used to spell it that way... No harm!

I gave my son, who spent his first 24 years in Bengal, the name "Sreenivas Shreenath". Literally, the first "S" in his name is the first "s" of Sanskrit, the second "s" the last Sanskrit "s" and the third "S" is again the first "s" of Sanskrit (confusion enough!).

Somehow I was inclined to spell the last "s" as "Sh" simply because he would be living in Bengal for a good while.

With a vengeance, for reasons known only to him, he gave a Bengali name to his daughter: "Ishani"; and spelled it that way in her Birth Certificate and Passport.

I often ask our little Ishani: "What is your name?"; and prompt the answer: "Ishani".

Till now she used to smile and repeat: "Eee.." but couldn't get hold of the rest of her name.

Her mom, Sailaja (pronounced "Shoilaja" in Bengali), reports that today when asked for her name, one-year-old Ishani came up with:

"Eeesh!"

Hurray to Bengali Ladies and their: "Eeesh!" (today for the 10, 090 time)!

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