Forms of welcoming, thanking, and expressing good wishes in Gurung and English

Abstract

This research work entitled Forms of Welcoming, Thanking and Expressing Good Wishes in Gurung and English has been carried out to find out the forms of welcoming, thanking and expressing good wishes in Gurung and to compare and contrast them with those of the English language. The comparison was made on basis of the language forms used for respected people, family members, relatives, strangers, friends, mother, father, elder brother, sister and on the occasion of great festivals. The data were collected from 30 native speakers of Dhaksini Aarthare dialect of Gurung language. The informants were selected using purposive nonrandom sampling procedure from Manakamana VDC of Shyangja district. The data were collected with the help of questionnaire. The sources of data for English were collected from different books, thesis, dictionaries and articles. From the analysis and interpretation of collected data, it has been found that the forms for welcoming in Gurung language are 'mrulaichhyajalo', 'taanvandathebamantrilaichhyajalo', 'mru÷mrusyolaingihyularihylabamo'. Similarly the Gurung native speakers used 'chhyajalobarajyu/ baje' and 'chhyajalo/fyofulaapa÷aamma' to welcome their senior family member. Another finding is forms of thanking in Gurung language are 'āmma/mama kyivanibaprulibamonagyssajemo÷belelibakei chai tiya, mamalailibakeilagirgyasaje'.Similarly major similarities between Gurung and English in the use of language function are both languages have very formal and polite forms of welcoming to use with respected people. Likewise both of them use more formal forms of welcoming to their senior family member in comparison to juniors. Similarly the speakers of both languages use formal forms of welcoming to their unfamiliar friends in comparison to the familiar friends. Similarly the used use formal and polite form to express good wishes to their father who is going for a long journey. Some differences also found when both language native speakers used welcoming, thanking and expressing good wishes. Regarding welcoming to the stranger Gurung native speakers use the different form according to their age but English people usedthe same form with older and similar age. Likewise while expressing thank to their mother Gurung native speakers used the more polite form than English. Similarly while expressing thank to the elder sister English people used less polite than Gurung language.While expressing good wishes on the occasion of birthday and marriage anniversary English people used more formal and polite form than Gurung. Thisstudy has been subsumed in five different chapters. The first chapter is introductions. It includes the background, statements of the problem, objective of the study, research question, significance, delimitation and operational definition of the key terms. Second chapter deals with the theoretical literature, empirical literature, implications and conceptual frameworks. The third chapter deals with the methodology employed to conduct the study. The methods and procedure of the study incorporates the research design, population, sample and sampling strategy, study areas and tools, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedure and data analysis and interpretation procedure come under in third chapter. Analysis and interpretation of results are presented in forth chapter. The fifth chapter deals with the conclusion and recommendations. Some implications of the study in policy level practice level and further research are presented in this section. This chapter is followed by reference and appendices to make the study scientific, valid, reliable and authentic.