The second word means nothing on its own. It is a linguistic shrug that says ‘and whatever else comes with it’. This is one of the most quietly fascinating things that languages do.We must continue to speak; we must continue doing kathewathe, as we always do.
Hibban Showkat
During the last Ramadan, HendwendWendwend had taken the place of a running joke which kept my whole friend group entertained. When I did this echo-reduplication, my intention was primarily to TL;DR(too long; didn’t read)the long, long list of routine purchases. Or perhaps, subconsciously, I might have done it because I could not remember the name of other items in the list and trusted others to grasp everything “wendwend” implied as the nonsensical twin of the watermelon (hendwend).
Language doubles back on itself like this very often in Kashmir. You don’t have chai, you have chai-wai. No batte, it’s batte-watte. The second word means nothing on its own. This is what linguists term as echo-reduplication, where the second word is a deliberate, patterned distortion of the first. It’s a linguistic shrug that says “and whatever else comes with it.” It is one of the most quietly fascinating things that languages do, not just in Kashmiri. It appears in almost every language family on earth.
In English, you have words like “so so,” “bye bye,” or “chit chat.” Although this reduplication is quite different and, dare I say, quite bland. In Swahili, in Mandarin, in Turkish, in languages across the Pacific Islands, some form of this doubling exists. But in South Asia, echo reduplication is one of the defining features of what linguists call the South Asian Sprachbund, and particularly in Kashmiri, reduplication has a social life.
In Kashmiri, we often use reduplication when talking about tasks or telling stories. For instance, battewatte would not just mean rice but would include all the work connected to it or the work after it. Likewise, in narration, chai-wai becomes a way of skipping over small, routine details and getting on with the story. This echo reduplication makes a sentence feel less transactional and more human. When a Kashmiri says “gharre-varre,” it’s not to mention a house only, but also the warm cluster of home, family, and belonging that comes with it. There are many reasons that explain why reduplication exists in a language, but there is, perhaps, no consensus among linguists.
In Kashmiri, repetition carries a very rhythmic and almost musical quality, which makes absolute sense given how deeply rooted poetry and song are in Kashmiri cultural life. The tradition of the vakhs, the mystic verses of Lal Ded, runs through the language. Sound matters enormously in Kashmiri expression. So, one might say— and would not be entirely wrong— that this is why Kashmiris have developed the habit of reduplication. But language is complex, and even if languages do the same thing in different parts of the world, the causation can be entirely different.
Interestingly, the colonial British had one interesting logic related to reduplication. When they encountered South-Asian languages, they would often turn them into syllable-play. The reduplication that was otherwise used as a form of warmth and relational closeness was, in colonial mouths, a way of marking a language as lesser. If a language sounds like it repeats itself nonsensically, the reasoning went, it cannot be a serious language. And if a language is not serious, the people who speak it need not be taken seriously either. This is also perhaps why they took a sacred cry of Shia mourning, “Ya Hasan, Ya Hussain”, and made it sound like two English gentlemen, Hobson and Jobson, at a country fair. So, there are no rules-schmules for English, and the language just doubles back on itself because people find it fun.
Kashmir has existed at the intersection of such competing powers for much of its modern history. Its language and culture have faced pressures not only from colonial-era attitudes but from a long-standing political turmoil, too. If anyone mocks or mimics Kashmiri speech, including its reduplicative forms, they are often drawing from the same colonial well. The mockery of an accent, the imitation of the way a language sounds, has always been a tool of othering. Yet, the Kashmiri language has survived extraordinary historical pressure and absorbed influences from multiple directions while keeping a distinct sound world of its own. Perhaps, these influences may have a part to play in the reduplication process in Kashmiri. Regardless of what one thinks, regardless of what this process technically means, or regardless of what it carries, it is inherent to language and makes Kashmiris feel Kashmiri.
Thus, when one says “watte,” it may refer to a task that will follow “batte.” Or when one says “wai,” it may simply be to filter out useful information being discussed over chai, and when I say “wendwend,” it may be because I do not remember the other things that go with it. Whatever the reason may be, this is a feature of the Kashmiri language, and in all its beauty, it must continue. We must continue to speak; we must continue doing “kathewathe,” as we always do.
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