35 NOVEMBER - 2020 Odisha Review ISSN 0970-8669 Oxygen is an Odia word! Oh! What? One may think that the author has gone mad. The title would give you a hint about my hypothesis that is to identify a word as an Odia word. In other words, when I say something as this language word or that language word, what exactly I say and why, is something interesting to ponder. By reading the title, “Oxygen is an Odia word” with an exclamatory mark, one may be surprised; the linguists or the language speakers may give an unapproved look. Some scholars may reject it right away. The reason is obvious. Everyone knows that it is widely used in English and found in English. Etymologically, it is from the French oxygene, which was coined by the French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (from Greek oxys -means acid + French gene -means produces). I would not discuss about the discovery of ‘oxygen’, how Carl Wilhelm Scheele started the experiment and how Joseph Priestly did it and how Lavoisier mistakenly named it as oxygen. What has happened in case of this word is its practice as oxygen all over the world although what it means linguistically is not what it is in reality. It is a fact that this substance on earth is misnamed (American Heritage Dictionary, ahdictionary.com, 2017). The origin might be at fault, but what makes it to be accepted is its use over the years. What I have mentioned just now, could be considered as historical fact, but what I am going to put forth could be a synchronic one. In many Indian languages, this word has been provided with an equivalent: amlajaan/amlajaanaka. In Odia, my mother-tongue, it is “amlajaan”- which is mostly used in the standard written media. But oxygen is used more in the spoken form of Odia. You go to a hospital in Odisha; you will get oxygen not amlajaan. In day-to-day activities, people talk about the need of oxygen for someone who is hospitalized. It is interesting to find that both the words (oxygen and amlajaan) are in use in Odia in their respective contexts. I have already hinted above that amlajaan is more used in Odia text books, but not colloquially more. The point is how to categorize a word, whether English or Odia or Tamil or Hindi or Arabic. Should we only ascribe to the prescriptive notions or we should go by the native speaker’s usage while categorizing a particular word? My question is simple. Do the common people think about category whether it is Odia or English, when they communicate in day-to-day life ? They use words as those come to their minds. In this context, Nehru had rightly said in his speech that the ordinary man does not ask your opinion as to what he should call a bicycle. He calls it a bicycle and is done with it (Nehru, 1964). It is the linguists, language policy makers, scholars who distinguish between languages. If I say “Oxygen is an Odia Word” !! Aditya Kumar Panda