— Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter 4
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मैं तो बहुत थोड़े दिमाग़ वाला भालू हूँ, और लंबे-लंबे शब्द मुझे परेशान करते हैं।
What it means
Read the grammar of the second clause. Pooh does not say he fails to understand long words; he says long words Bother him — the words are the subject, doing the bothering. He reports an effect rather than confessing a defect, and Milne’s capital B gives that effect the standing of a proper noun.
Which makes the usual reading — sweet self-deprecation, or a dig at cleverness — a little too easy. The sentence opens with For I am, a formal and rather stately construction; Pooh renounces long words in a register more polished than the word that provoked him. And a request for plain speech is not a confession at all. It places a demand on the person doing the talking.
What it teaches you
When a term goes past you in a meeting, say so at the first use rather than the tenth — and say it the way Pooh does, as a fact about the word’s effect, not a verdict on your own intelligence. That word is slowing me down, can you put it another way costs nothing and transfers the work to where it belongs.
अर्थ और सीख
पू यह नहीं कहता कि वह शब्द समझ नहीं पाता — वह कहता है कि लंबे शब्द उसे परेशान करते हैं, यानी दोष शब्द पर डालता है, अपनी बुद्धि पर नहीं। यह विनम्र आत्म-निंदा कम और सरल भाषा की माँग ज़्यादा है, और वह माँग बोलने वाले पर ज़िम्मेदारी डालती है। सीख यह है कि कोई कठिन शब्द समझ न आए तो पहली ही बार कह दें, दस मिनट बाद नहीं।
Where it comes from
Pooh to Owl, who has just used the word ‘Crustimoney Proseedcake’. It is the standard Pooh move: an admission of limitation that turns out to be a more useful position than the expertise around it.
A caution for quoters — a great deal of what circulates as Pooh wisdom is not Milne. The exchange beginning ‘What day is it?’ ‘It’s today’ appears in neither of his Pooh books.
