Often many of us go through identity crisis.
What if that crisis involved how you spelled your words? What if some of these words included colour, honour, or neighbour? I am going to focus on the spelling of pajama, or is it pyjama? Writing this piece I kept my English (Canada) spell-check on and it definitely insists on pyjama to be the correct spelling of the word. But what if I felt pajama more?
I decided to ask people what they felt about the two different spelling of the words. I got some very different reactions. Most got excited about the concept of just getting into their pajamas, which is maybe one of the reasons pajamas dressing recently became acceptable in such magazines like Vogue, and a mention of a new luxury line from Piamita that looks so comfy to just get into. I guess with all the stresses that people have been going through lately; at least they can count on their clothing to relax them.
Yet, the spelling of pajamas still concerns me, and has become the center of a Facebook debate on where it comes from. Some were insistent that it comes from Farsi the Persian language, others insisted that it comes from the Hindi language, and therefore should be consistent with the British spelling, and not conform to the spelling of English (U.S.). Alex Weldon a friend of mine said, “It’s from Hindi, and really should be pronounced the way it’s written in British (with a long I sound as suggested by the Y: pai-jamas, not a short I and definitely not an A). We just got lazy with the pronunciation and then the Americans corrupted it even further.”
Oxford dictionary sort of agrees with Weldon, as far as pronunciation, but insists the word is derived from Urdu or Farsi. My Sister-in-Law Neshat Vafi also says it comes from the Persian words Paijama “pai” meaning leg and “jaima” meaning garment. However, if you look at the history of the Asian Empires this still does not satisfy the debate. All this talk continues to make me ask have we gotten lazy not just in our wearing of the garment but its spelling too? Friend, Vanessa Hasid shared, “I spelled it with the “Y” for a long time…now I use the other one because it’s easier to just spell it as it sounds! PA-JAMAS!”
I still like to spell it pajamas, simply because I think the letter “a” is so much prettier then the letter “y”. To me pajamas mean more than lazy. To me it’s the clothing of great thinkers, of lovers, of those that would rather enjoy life freed from layers of clothing on a cold winter’s night. To me it’s the clothing that parents put their children to sleep in, students study and get inspired in, activist strive in, artists dance in, and lovers often go to bed in. We wear them when we are our weakest, and we wear them when we are at our strongest. My dad just calls them his “PJ’s”.