Chennai: The state assembly saw a heated debate over the language and pronunciation of the members in the house, after one of the MLAs pointed out errors made state finance minister N Marie Wilson in his budget speech.Kadayanallur MLA T M Rajendran alleged that Wilson’s Tamil pronunciation had mistakes and that he excessively used English words in his speech. “As a Tamil enthusiast, I observed in his (Marie Wilson’s) speech that he had skipped many of the Tamil sentences. There were several grammatical errors too,’’ Rajendran said. Rajendran, who was from MDMK, but won on a DMK symbol, asked school education minister A Rajmohan to help Marie Wilson improve his language.School education minister A Rajmohan defended Marie Wilson, saying that there was nothing wrong in the finance minister’s speech and added that even leader of opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin was speaking in a plain and simple language. Speaker J C D Prabhakar said even Rajendran had used the English word budget in his speech and not the Tamil equivalent word.Marie Wilson responded, saying that he had been in the field of education for the past 25 to 30 years and had been conversing in English.“Earlier they were body shaming other and were insulting others based on caste and gender. Now they are insulting us over language,” Marie Wilson said.Citing the preachings in the Bible, Marie Wilson said though he might not be well-versed in Tamil language, Christianity had taught him several languages such as “love language, peace language and the language of kindness” and added that he can’t change his pronunciation for others.As Wilson sat in a huff, former DMK minister E V Velu said there was no need for finance minister to be angry and added that the Rajendran was a first-time MLA. Meanwhile, PWD minister Aadhav Arjuna said even former finance minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan faced a similar issue but the opposition parties didn’t raise objections.The speaker then clarified that MLAs can speak in Tamil and English. He also pointed out that late CM J Jayalalithaa allowed an MLA from Hosur to speak in Telugu in the assembly.
