In Goa, people used to ask for the Konkani word Kando, although in North and East Goa, where Marathi is widely understood, it may become Kanda without comment. But vegetable vendors in Goa are increasingly becoming North Indian, and onions come naturally to them, although like all vendors they are smart at knowing what works with each customer. Such a slightly edgy play goes right down to Konkan, possibly reaching an apotheosis in Mangalore, where Kannada, Konkani, Tulu, Beri and Malayalam words are all substitutes.
Whatever the wording, you’ll probably find your onions. But such words can have dangerous consequences in some parts of the world. As in Ukraine, where the term Palynitsa is being used to identify Russian undercover agents. Russians like Putin undermined Ukrainian sovereignty by saying that the language was just a local dialect. But there are differences in pronunciation, and one of them is how to say palynitsa.
This is a shibboleth. We use that word now for an old idea that people still cling to, but its origins lie in a biblical story about a fight between two tribes. They came from similar backgrounds, so to tell them apart, one group asked suspected members of the other to say the Hebrew word for the head of a grain stalk. The asking group called it sibboleth, but another called sibboleth, and that tell-tale sibilant would result in the speaker being killed. The word meant something specific about a group, and then became an idea that made it difficult to leave a group of people, which gave its modern meaning.
Ukrainians need all possible help in their fight for survival, but it’s a sign of the demons that Putin has unleashed that Shibboleth is seeing a revival. They are a double-edged weapon, as the stories of their use can easily be co-opted by the narrative of Russian-speaking oppression that Putin has used to justify the invasion. And other examples of shiboleth use add to some disturbing history.
An early example came in the Peasant Rebellion in London in 1381. Rural men stormed the capital, especially targeting wealthy nobles and merchants. A group of Flemish merchants were forced to say the words ‘bread and cheese’, but when they responded with ‘case and brood’, their fate was sealed. Another example is said to have been used during the Sicilian Vespers rebellion against French rule. The cheeks were shibboleth because the French had difficulty pronouncing sisiri, the local word.
In 1937, the dictator of the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, which borders French-speaking Haiti, ordered the expulsion or murder of all Haitians living in the border areas of his country. Trujillo’s soldiers are said to have shown a sprig of parsley and asked what they were. Perezil, the Spanish word, was pronounced quite differently by French creole-speaking Haitians. There is some debate about whether this actually happened, but the massacre, which killed 12,000–20,000 people, is now called the Parsley Massacre.
Shiboleths don’t always have food names. Personal names, place names, common phrases and prayers have all been used to identify particular groups. During World War II, the Dutch used the city of Scheveningen to identify German occupiers who may have been trying to spy on the Dutch resistance, as the consonant groups are difficult for German speakers. In Sri Lanka, during riots against Tamils, for example in 1983, objects whose names began with ‘B’, such as Baladiya or Balti, were used to identify Tamils, which were ‘P’. used to.
But the foods often turn out to be shibboleth, for example in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 when Lebanese soldiers targeted Palestinians with tomatoes. In Lebanese Arabic it is Bandaura, but in Palestinian Arabic it is Bandaura. In 1988, when Armenians were attacked in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgit, a story was told that they were shown to have hazelnuts, fundukh in Azeri but pundukh in Armenian.
These stories explain why foods easily become shibboleth. They are familiar and local, yet people may have different ways of cooking and naming them, as food habits persist in communities. The food is familiar to everyone, including women and children who are often not spared in massacres. And with the horrific way in which the carnage unfolded, grabbing and carrying food items, it’s easy to show up and ask the ominous question: “What do you call that?” With so many divisions, dialects, and familiar foods in India, we can only hope that we will never see such deadly shiboleth used here again.
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