Words, spoken and written in the times of Corona
Ah, Korona kaaley! These times of corona, when completely new words, words with little currency before, or old words transformed with new meanings have come to define our lives.
Like many momentous events in history, the current pandemic has also enhanced the languages that we speak. English is nothing if not a language that has borrowed from colonized nations, invasions, world wars, civil wars (our own gave us a small arsenal of trilingual words over the 30 years), and now, the pandemic. Soon after the first outbreak in Wuhan, the medical world defined the disease with the highly technical Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCov). Then, thankfully it evolved into the much more user-friendly COVID-19, Coronavirus, and the far more commonly used Corona, that suits our Sinhala and Tamil syllable structures just fine. Informal spelling has offered the even simpler choice of korona with a “k”.
A quick Google search of “covid-related words” will throw up articles and glossaries compiled by dictionary makers (Merriam-Webster’s Guide to Coronavirus related words), universities (University of Pennsylvania has another delightful glossary), news agencies (BBC Worklife has an extensive linguistic analysis). Even IELTS the global language testing syndicate has a cram note on COVID related vocabulary.
International news tells us about anti-maskers and anti-mask protests. Even the largely US phenomenon of Karen took on a pandemic-related sheen when her intolerance of African-Americans extended to safety regulations, so now we have the anti-mask Karen. Of course, Karens of all genders and hues exist everywhere: no state is really free of their covidiots, even as we learned the incremental semantics of an outbreak that became an epidemic,and then a pandemic.
At home, the long lockdown was imposed as a curfew, a much more familiar experience. As it got extended, we waited for food and other essentials to come to us. And they soon did, in vegetable lorries, fish lorries, and coconut trucks. Online shopping and supermarket deliveries took off. Some banks even converted buses into mobile ATMs. It was not easy, but we did survive, even joking about korona kaaley vaasey and korona kaaley aaley (life and love in the times of Corona).
Isolation, self-isolation, quarantine and self-quarantine became verbs as well as nouns. Quarantine centres was coined as some countries, including ours, set up, and formalized the two weeks of quarantine.
Revealing our preference for long names in shortened forms in officialese, the new National Operation Centre for the Prevention of COVID- 19 Outbreak became the NOCPCO, an initialism nesting the acronym. We heard much more about our PHIs, our preferred abbreviation for Public Health Inspectors, who did contact tracing, quarantine checks and other important tasks. Multiword compounds appeared in headlines, one of the longest being triforces managed quarantine centres. News reports took on the familiar language of terrorism and crime: individuals suspected of corona, COVID suspects, suspected patients, detainees at Kandakadu, escapees from Kandakadu etc. Reporting guidelines were issued when the more hysterical reports became overtly racist.
Official documents like the daily update by the Health Promotion Bureau also show interesting coinages that reflect our local reality. Their categories include “Number of COVID-19 suspected patients” “confirmed and hospitalized” and “suspected and hospitalized.” To quarantining Sri Lankans, “home quarantine” is more specific than self-quarantine – it refers to the two week quarantine at home after the two weeks at a quarantine centre. More recently, luxury resorts emptied of tourists have become quarantine hotels for the more affluent, for paid quarantine.
Our frontline workers became our suwaviruwo (health heroes), but at times we also demonised COVID patients, disparaged colloquially as korona kaarayo.
The advent of teaching and working online brought a whole new set of words. Some were new, some took on new meaning, some were renewed by their frequent use. We had to get used to online teaching platforms, and globally, Zoom dominated WFH (work from home) and remote teaching technology, so we hosted Zoom meetings and Zoom classes. Some also discovered the joys of MS Teams and Google Classrooms. Teachers learnt to share screens and to send notes on Whatsapp. Data and connectivity took on new meaning, with photographs of keen students studying on rooftops to catch the signal.A bilingual 10-year-old, tired of his daily schedule of online learning, complained about his koro kalaas. Bored at home under lockdown, the pandemic became rona, the Rona, and even Ms Rona, giving it a troubling female identity.
Working from home in the new normal, it was wise to have a Zoom blouse or Zoom shirt at hand to slip on quickly when bosses called an unexpected online meeting. Webinars replaced all sorts of seminars and conferences, which you can attend from home, and interact in a limited way in the chat box. We learnt the etiquette of muting and unmuting after a few admonishes of “Please mute your mic!” when participants in, say, Washington DC heard the choon paan van in the background.
This year we had a lockdown New Year, a lockdown Easter, a lockdown Vesak, and a lockdown Ramadan, briefly making the pandemic something of a sombre equalizer. As more countries imposed lockdowns and airports continued to stay closed and we began to miss our migrant relatives, we held Zoom parties and Zoom family reunions to ease things a bit. Even a few Zoom weddings were experimented on, with guests joining in from all around the world. Some corporate tycoons, deprived of their clubs, met up for Zoom drinks. Zoom for the children of the pandemic might even lose its pre-COVID meaning.
When children went back to school after the Corona nivaaduwa, “Ko sanitizer?” asked a school prefect at the entrance of a school in Sri Jayawardenepura. If you hadn’t brought your own, you were directed to wash your hands at the new sinks with pedal-operated taps. In a boys’ school south of Colombo, your mask was a corona gotta, beautifully capturing the purpose and the pain of having to wear a face covering in these humid monsoonal months.
Elsewhere, security guards continue to check temperatures with forehead thermometers. Pedal operated hand washing stands also guard entrances, some even with pedal-operated soap dispensers. We continue to follow most safety precautions, as fears of community spread, require social distancing. Still, we’re not hoping for herd immunity like in some parts of the developed world, where a second wave continues to kill hundreds, while their bumptious leaders continue to coin their COVID-related euphemisms.
(The writer is a senior lecturer at the Department of English, University of Kelaniya)