Z : Zebra / Jebra

My mother-in-law pronounces Z / Za as J / Ja. I always have fun with this fact, at her expense of course. When she comes to our place, I often ask her, what would she like to eat. And I wait for her to say Pijja (Pizza), for cheap laughs. Now she knows my routine, so she doesn't respond. She is one spoil sport.

In fact, every time I see a Zebra Crossing, I ask her to tell me what it is. Some times she obliges me, by blurting out Jebra crossing and I laugh out loud. But over the years, she has become conscious and thus Zindagi became Jeevan (Life) and Pizza became pata nahi (I don't know). My wife thinks I deliberately needle her. But she doesn't know, that such linguistic jokes have always been source of cheap laughs for me. I remember the time, when my younger brother had to write an essay on "My Mother" in school. In that essay, he was supposed to write one line that went like, "My mother runs the house very wisely" . Instead he wrote, "My mother runs in the house very wisely." For many years, I kept pulling his leg for this hilarious error. 

My own writing isn't that great. And when I read my old posts and mails, I cringe at the mistakes I had made. 

Coming back to my mother-in-law's pronunciation issue, let me give one clarification here. If a person, in India, has not learned Urdu or English, they will pronounce Z / Za as J / Ja. Because in Sanskrit and Hindi there is no letter Z / Za. 

Therefore I promise to my wife through this post today, that I will not crack jokes on her mother's pronunciation anymore. But that doesn't mean I will score her high on cooking. You can't have it all. Haha.