How many times does your answer to a question thrown at you in your day begin with “Aiyoh” or a variant of that? Or does the word creep into your day’s talk at some point? This expression is so widely used in that it is now in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) .
The OED has now included “Aiyoh” and “Aiyah” in its latest addition this September (the OED does four updates every year). The OED is and was the Bible of “correct English” for many children in the English-speaking world. It is widely regarded as the accepted authority and guide on the English language -- something you scamper to when in doubt.
Like many Indian words, this one is loaded and can mean many things depending on context and tone -- irritation, disgust, surprise, dismay, pain, lament, disappointment, with “aiyah” and “aiyoh” being interchangeable.
“I’m appalled at the inclusion of this word!” says Shailaja Vishwanath, former English teacher and currently freelance writer-editor.
“It is not English. At some level I understand they ( OED ) are adapting to regional usage. But at the level of a language, as a writer and editor, it hurts me deeply. I believe in purity of language for all its effect. I cannot accept these words in the OED , though I may use them in my everyday life within a context. But does their inclusion in OED validate it? I don’t know.... The OED included the laughing emoticon some time ago and it took me a long time to come around to accept that!”
The inclusion however, goes to show how universal language is -- the words are credited to Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of Chinese!
But variants are also there in Tamil, Sinhalese, and are widely used in many South East Asian countries, specially Singapore and Malaysia.
South Indians will agree it is a common word across the States here and if there has to be a depiction of a south Indian up north (specially in a Bollywood flick) you can bet “Aiyyo” is one of the first words to be used. There was also the Rani Mukherjee-Pritviraj starrer, Aiyyaa . There are enough movie songs with the word in it.
Author and veteran journalist Gita Aravamudan, however, dismisses this inclusion as “just hype”. “I think we have a vibrant language of our own in India drawn from different parts of the country and we don’t need an endorsement from others for our language. The OED is quite irrelevant now.”
