TCV kids know that Chang is better. Chang is that wonderful beverage friends drink with each other and mothers brew for Losar in a warm corner of the bedroom and a lot of old blankets - a small packet of fermented anticipation. Choechang is a different drink altogether. It is something offered to guests and dieties. It is that special liquid you dip your finger in at prayer sessions. And it is something that only Lhasa was routinely drink.
So yes, this is the case for phelkey. It is my vernacular, the language I use and abuse, love and cherish - the system of communication most familiar and natural to the youth of my generation. But even though it is familiar and natural for most young Tibetans, I suspect that for a lot of us, there is a certain amount of guilt and embarrassment involved in using phelkey in various situations - in public speaking, speaking in the media or in conversation with older people or sheysa speakers. I feel that this is not only unwarranted but harmful.
For example, ICT in Washington D.C. organizes a TYLP every year (to train Tibetans etc). One segment of the program, the media training, includes a visit to the Tibetan recording studio at Radio Free Asia or Voice of America. The year I did TYLP, there were four of us in the recording studio. I remember some of the others being nervous because they were used to speaking phelkey or English -most of us had done all or significant parts of our growing up in America, and now we had to speak sheysa on the radio because we had been indoctrinated into thinking that sheysa is the only polite way to speak in public. Although my friends spoke very well, one or two of them did stutter with sheysa several times and ended up finishing their sentences in English. I gave up the battle for the war and decided to speak in phelkey; I didn't want to have to resort to English just because I feared sounding impolite in Tibetan. Because I wanted to speak pure Tibetan and ok, fine, because my brother told me to. And in fact, afterwards I was not embarrassed so much by my style of speaking as by the content - when asked the main difference between the celebration of Losar in India and America, I blurted out that the custom of grownups giving money to younger people was not really followed here and that kind of sucked.
The point is not that I speak without thinking, although that is certainly a valid one, but that many of us are brought up to speak phelkey and then taught to be embarrassed of speaking it. It is our very own form of linguistic self-flagellation. Phelkey is deemed inappropriate for use in many social spaces. The problem is that many Tibetan communities are situated in foreign land and exposed, inundated rather, with foreign language. My Tibetan friends and I have spent our adoslescence in the United States. The only Tibetan we hear is what we regularly speak to each other and at home, which is phelkey. Many of us are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with sheysa. My friends Tashi and Youdon, veteran members of the Boston Tibetan Dance Troupe, once introduced a song to a large Tibetan audience as "Dhi shey dhi ki tsen la..." I have heard several younger Tibetans say, "I can't speak Tibetan well." Not always but often enough, what they seem to mean is that they can't speak sheysa well. They do speak Tibetan fluently because they speak phelkey fluently.
Elevating sheysa is well and good and although I don't personally have much use for it, I know that Tibetans of all ages appreciate sheysa for enriching our language and culture. But I do wish that we would stop elevating it at the expense of phelkey and yes, even pangkey – the vernacular of my generation. Language is for the expression of all human thought and emotion and emotions like anger, hatred and disgust are as central to our lives as compassion and patience, especially in these increasingly modern and secular times. I once saw a TV series about this particular Lhasawa family. One scene especially struck me. During a virulent fight, one man said to another in the heat of passion, "When I say East, you respectfully-say West." Ngey ki shar labna, khey rang ki nub sungkyi dug. Ah yes, the words to strike me dead. What use is language if you won't employ it to curse properly?
Where are the novels written in contemporary Tibetan where Tibetans go to bars, fall in love, sell Buddhist statues for profit, argue over who gets to pay the bill and root for whichever country plays against China in the World Cup? We have use for both love and hate, elegance and violence. Phelkey and pangkey are essential parts of our linguistic technology and we must recognize that. For centuries, the Tibetan language has been used, impressively and meritoriously, for the dissemination of Buddha dharma. That is important, I know. But I speak Tibetan because I am Tibetan, not because I am Buddhist. I would rather read Oscar Wilde than the Prajnaparamita. The Dalai Lamas through the ages have authored brilliant and eloquent works of exposition and critique on the dharma and what do we remember? The love poems of H.H. Tsangyang Gyatso. The richness of our language relies as much on a filthy mouthed drunkard in the Barkhor as on a learned geshe, as much on a Drukpa Kunley as on a Jey Tsongkhapa.
Bhuchung Tsering la, of ICT and the Tibetan Review's "Of People and Places," compares sheysa and phelkey to pop and classical music. I think this is wonderfully appropriate- Amdokey, Khamkey, Lhasakey as likened to rock, classical, hip hop, country etc. A fan of one genre may dislike another, but no one genre has any particular claim to eminence.
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How did Lhasakey become so eminent anyhow? Is this perhaps the least bit discriminatory to Khamkey and Amdokey? If Lhasakey, sheysa, is so elegant and sophisticated, then by default Amdokey and Khamkey are seen as crude and violent. Our countrymen in Kham and Amdo hear often enough from the Chinese that they are unscientific and superstitious, backward and aggressive; they don't need us tsenjol Tibetans to heap scorn on their dialects.
I do understand the infatuation with sheysa for those of us who don't come from Lhasa and have thus adopted the Lhasawas' way of speaking. Like many of my friends point out, sheysa is soothing to the ear. Listening to its gentle tones, one might imagine that one can hear the soft sounds of the Kyichu submerged in the consonants. But does anyone find that there can be too much superfluity in sheysa? Consider the following statement, "Ngey kherang la sheybhar phulchog" which translates as "I will respectfully give you a respectful phonecall." Just as too much traffic can make travelling inefficient, so perhaps too much sheysa can make communication inefficient.
Consider also the following sounds Ah, Ma and La, and the difference between Ama and Amala. Ah and Ma are primal sounds - the first cries out of a baby's mouth. Some combination of Ah and Ma and variations thereof stand for "mother" in almost every language known to man. La, on the other hand, doesn't come as naturally - the tongue needs to be manipulated a good deal to produce La.
But let me move on. I don't really have anything against sheysa, especially when it is spoken to me! I mean, especially when it is spoken the way Lhasawas speak it - to everybody. Lhasawas seem to speak sheysa to everybody, mostly independent of the addressee's age, occupation, family background etc. I suspect that they spoke it even to the rogyapas, who were technically Lhasa's untouchables. This is not the case in exile, sadly. We use it as often to discriminate between people as to respect them. Sheysa for the Kalon but not for his secretary, sheysa for the school principal but not for the peon. I asked my good friend Wangchuk, a very respectable and respectful young man who grew up in Gangkyi, who he spoke sheysa to. He said, "Leykhung Leychey" - people
who work in offices. He then added, "...and older people." I think his instinctive reaction says a good deal about the sheysa culture in exile.
To be fair, almost everyone I asked said they spoke sheysa to older people. This is commendable but it did get me thinking about why we respect our elders so much. My theory is that because Tibetans are very devoted to the dharma, generally the older they are, the more time and energy they have devoted to Buddhist practice, and so they are kinder and purer and more deserving of respect. But the times grow increasingly secular. Tibetans are becoming increasingly modern and high tech and are able to devote less time to Buddhist practice. Growing older no longer necessarily means growing wiser. Some objects become antiques, others just become old. Some older Tibetans now are less touched by dharma and more by survival. Are they less deserving of sheysa?
I also wonder how much sheysa reinforces the young Tibetan's fear of the grownup. Most of my generation has studied in Tibetan schools in India and know how much of our respect for our teachers was tempered by fear. How much of that fear is compounded by a system of communication that can elevate one person over another? Especially in a society where the use of sheysa has taken on new meanings, and sheysa is implicitly demanded by older and authority figures.
Apart from these reflections, I have one rather strange and personal issue with sheysa. For me, affection is a key part of respect. (Perhaps because my respect now is willingly offered whereas before it was demanded of me. This does mean that I respect fewer people than I previously did, but it is a far stronger and healthier respect – like the faith of the practitioner who believes because of experience rather than hearsay.) Speaking sheysa then, which doesn't feel as natural as phelkey for me, to people I respect seems like shoving cold, hard space between us where none existed before. Thus, when I am speaking with older people I really respect, I often feel the laughable impulse -an
impulse I don't bother to entirely suppress- to speak absolute phelkey with them to do them honor and to show intimacy.
Not all of my reasons for liking phelkey are quite so high-minded, however. Consider my nickname "Gochen" (Big-head) which my brother and a few friends (shortly to be ex-friends) call me. "U-chen" just doesn't cut it. But perhaps you will find this high-minded; for me and for many of my generation, phelkey isn't street language or slang - it is our national language. It is Tibetan. And nobody should feel guilt and embarrassment in speaking Tibetan, any kind of Tibetan.
So let us remember that sheysa is simply a dialect after all. A very pretty dialect, I grant you, and one they speak in the heart of Tibet, but a dialect nonetheless. It is no more or less legitimate than Khamkey and Amdokey. Let us speak in phelkey or sheysa, Khamkey or Amdokey as we please, as long as we speak in Tibetan. And let us curse when we're angry, not in English or Hindi or Chinese, but in pangkey. |
