Proofreading a Bodo wall magazine: plural suffixes and Devanagari choices
At a higher secondary school in Kokrajhar, the Bodo department is proofreading twelve notices for the annual Bodo Day wall magazine. The student editorial team has flagged three lines. Line A, intended to mean 'The teachers will go first', reads 'सोलोंगिरिफोरा सिगांनो जाबाय'; the team wants to change सोलोंगिरिफोरा to सोलोंगिरिसोरा. Line B, intended to mean 'The flowers are beautiful', reads 'बिखासोरा मोजां'; the team wants to change बिखासोरा to बिखाफोरा. Line C, intended to mean 'a great teacher', reads 'वर’ सोलोंगिरि'; one editor wants to keep वर’ because it looks more literary, another wants बर’. The team has also proposed a blanket rule: replace every -फोर with -सोर because 'it sounds more respectful'. The magazine goes to print in two days, and the department head has asked you to adjudicate, not rewrite the notices. You have the department's style sheet, which says 'prefer current standard usage over Hindi-influenced spelling' but does not list every plural form.
1. Decide which of the two plural changes (Line A and Line B) to accept, and state the principle you would give the team. What exception, if any, should the team be warned about?
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Accept the change in Line A and reject it in Line B. The relevant contrast is human versus non-human, not respect. सोलोंगिरि denotes a person, so the human plural -सोर is the standard form: सोलोंगिरिसोर. बिखा denotes a flower, so it takes -फोर: बिखाफोर. The team's instinct in A is right for the wrong reason: it is not that -सोर is politer, but that the noun is human. In B the change would put a human plural on a non-human noun, which is the error. Warn the team not to over-apply the rule: some fixed expressions and compounds may have established forms recorded in the textbook or dictionary, so check before inventing a new plural. The principle to give students is: 'Ask what the noun refers to; then choose the plural suffix; do not choose by sound.' That gives them a decision procedure instead of a slogan about respect.
2. Line C: choose बर’ or वर’, and explain the Devanagari issue. What should the editor tell the student who says 'व looks more literary'?
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Keep बर’. The choice is between two Devanagari letters that stand for different Bodo consonants: ब is /b/ and व is /w/. बर’ 'great' begins with /b/, so वर’ misrepresents the pronunciation and, in a school magazine, teaches the wrong spelling. The editor who finds व 'more literary' is transferring a Hindi aesthetic into Bodo: in Hindi, व may look learned, but in Bodo orthography it is a distinct phoneme, not a decorative variant. Tell the student: 'We are not choosing the prettier letter; we are recording the sound.' If the department has a word list, add बर’ to it and mark वर’ as a misspelling. Do not, however, ban व everywhere: it is needed where /w/ is genuine. The correction is lexical, not a global letter ban, and that distinction should be stated in the style sheet.
3. The team proposes a blanket rule replacing every -फोर with -सोर. Accept or reject it? Give a counterexample and rewrite the rule so students can apply it.
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Reject the blanket rule. A rule that replaces every -फोर with -सोर would turn बिखाफोर into *बिखासोर and make the magazine systematically wrong on non-human nouns. The counterexample is already in Line B. A workable style-sheet entry is: 'Plural: -सोर with human nouns; -फोर with non-human nouns; where the prescribed textbook or a dictionary lists a lexicalized plural, follow that form and mark it as an exception.' Add a one-line test for student editors: 'Can the noun be referred to by a personal name or kinship term? If yes, try -सोर; if no, use -फोर.' The rule should also tell them what to do when they are unsure: leave the form unchanged, flag it, and ask the teacher rather than guessing from sound.