Class 7 English Chapter 15: Rani Abbakka

A message about money

The story turns on a demand. An envoy arrives from the Portuguese Governor with a reminder. The annual tribute from Ullal is overdue, he says.

What a tribute is

Money that a weaker state pays to a stronger one that controls it. The chapter’s own word for such a state is vassal: a country controlled by a more powerful country, which has to pay when money is demanded.

Why Ullal was being asked

Because Ullal had been captured by the Portuguese, and the tribute followed from the capture. That is the first row of the chapter’s cause-and-effect table, and everything else in the story follows from it.

And what paying would admit

More than the money. Each payment agrees that the stronger power has the right to ask. That is why a refusal is a bigger act than simply keeping the sum. A kingdom that pays for twenty years has agreed twenty times over, and the twenty-first demand arrives looking like an ordinary bill.

The reply

She answers that Ullal is a sovereign country, that it pays no tribute to Portugal, and that it takes no orders from the Portuguese.

One word does the work

Sovereign. A sovereign country has a government with complete authority of its own. Say that word and the rest follows logically: a country with complete authority owes nobody a tribute and takes nobody’s orders.

So the argument is about status, not about a sum

The envoy is not refused a payment; he is told that the thing he came for does not exist. Those are very different refusals, and the second cannot be settled by haggling.

The threat

He tells her that she will regret her stand. That is where the extract ends, and the exercise asks whether he threatened her. He plainly did.

Her own side first

Her husband, Veera Narsimha, thought the stand a hasty decision - rash, which means acting without thinking about what will follow. He ordered soldiers to stop her when she said that they did not frighten her.

And the rajas

She called a meeting of rajas and asked for their support. They felt that they would be outmatched by the Portuguese army and the power behind it, and that judgement was not foolish; the Portuguese were the stronger side.

What that tells a reader

That the refusal was opposed by her allies before it was opposed by her enemy. A decision taken against advice is a different kind of decision from one taken with it, and the story makes sure a reader knows which this was.

Then the part most readers do not expect

Her first answer to the threat is not a battle. She has merchant ships built, makes a league with the Zamorin of Kozhikode, and establishes a hugely profitable trading relation with Arabia.

Why ships come before fighting

Because a kingdom that can sell its goods somewhere else no longer needs the permission of the power that controlled its trade. The tribute was an instrument of control, and a new trade route takes the instrument away. It is also the part of the story a reader is least likely to expect, and the part that explains how a small coast could hold out at all.

Defied, and not defeated

The sentence says she defied the Portuguese. To defy is to refuse to obey, and the word the exercise accepts in its place is disobeyed. Defeated would claim something the sentence does not say.

The attack on the fort

The last row of the table has her attacking the Portuguese fort in her turn. In her turn matters: the attack is an answer to something done to Ullal rather than an opening move.

Who stood with her

The people of Ullal and the soldiers. The chapter asks what their support shows about their minds, and the answer is that they were willing to risk a powerful enemy rather than go on paying one. Their support is worth more than it looks, too, because it came when her own household and the neighbouring rajas had both advised against the stand.

Three qualities, and two to reject

The extract shows her as bold, capable and determined: bold in the refusal, capable in the ships and the alliance, determined in going on without the rajas. Thoughtful and generous are the two the exercise offers to be refused; neither appears in those few lines.

And the riddle at the start

A queen who fought with a sword in her hand and her son tied to her back in cloth, and who died defending her motherland. The book puts it before the story so that a reader meets her as a figure already remembered.

Scenario:

Three pupils write up the extract in five sentences. Manish writes that the envoy asked for the tribute, that the queen refused, that he threatened her, that she built ships, and that she traded with Arabia. Nandini writes five sentences of praise: Rani Abbakka was brave, fearless, dauntless, patriotic and great. Omkar writes five sentences of a different kind. The envoy came as the messenger of a government. His demand assumed that Ullal was a vassal state. The queen’s reply used the word sovereign, and so denied the demand instead of refusing a sum. Her ships and her Arabian trade removed the Portuguese hold on her kingdom’s trade, and only then did any fighting follow. The teacher asks the class which account would survive being questioned.

Analysis:

Omkar’s, and the test is what each account can be asked. Manish has the events in the right order, and every sentence is true, so nothing in his account is wrong. But each sentence stops at the fact, so any question beyond what happened next leaves him with nothing: why the demand was made at all, why the reply denies rather than refuses, why ships instead of soldiers. Nandini has nothing to question in a different way. Brave, fearless and dauntless are three words for one thing, and patriotic and great would fit any figure in the unit, so her five sentences make one claim with no evidence under it. Omkar is questionable in the useful sense. Every one of his sentences could be argued with, which means every one of them says something: he names what the demand assumed, what the reply changed, and what the trade route took away. Notice that he never calls her brave. The boldness is visible in what she does, and a reader who is shown it does not need to be told.

Activity:

Rewrite any five-sentence account of an event so that each sentence says what something followed from, and use no adjective of praise.

Title:

Fill the chapter’s table yourself

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The rows you can fill with certainty are the ones the exercises state, and the ones you had to guess are the ones the drawn panels carried. A graphic story keeps a good deal of itself in its pictures.

Ullal is on the coast of what is now Karnataka, and its trade reached Arabia by sea rather than over land.

The Zamorin was the title of the ruler of Kozhikode, a port on the Malabar coast whose trade the Portuguese also wanted.

An envoy is somebody sent to carry a message on behalf of a government, so the words he brings are not his own.

The two words that decide the extract — A vassal pays; a sovereign decides — The envoy addresses a vassal state and expects a payment. The queen answers as a sovereign country, which owes none.

The order of her answer — Ships, league, trade, fort — Merchant ships built, an alliance with the Zamorin, the Arabian trade, and then the attack on the Portuguese fort.

Two ways of passing on what somebody said

The chapter takes two lines from the story and reports them. The first is a statement and the second an order, and they behave quite differently.

The first example

Rani Abbakka’s line in the story is this: "I will make them pay for this." Reported, it becomes: she would make them pay for that.

Three things moved

I became she, because the reporter is not the speaker. Will became would, because the reporting happens later. And this became that, because the reporter is not standing where she stood. Nothing else in the sentence had to change, and that is worth noticing: reporting is not rewriting.

The chapter’s own three headings

Time, which means the tense. Place, which means the adverbs of place. And person, which means the pronouns. Every change in reported speech is one of those three.

Time, in detail

A present tense becomes a past. A past becomes a past perfect. A present progressive becomes a past progressive, and a present perfect becomes a past perfect. A present modal such as will becomes a past modal: would.

The forms that do not move

A past perfect stays a past perfect. A past perfect progressive stays as it is. A past modal stays as it is too. There is nothing further back than a past perfect, so the step has already been taken.

Why pupils lose marks here

Because they shift everything twice, or nothing at all. The table is worth learning in two halves: four tenses that step back, and three forms that cannot. Learn it that way and the whole of the time rule fits on one line of a page, which is easier to carry into an examination than a grid.

Person

The speaker’s I becomes he or she. We becomes they. You, singular, becomes he or she; you, plural, becomes they. My becomes her or his, our becomes their, and me becomes her or him.

And the rule behind all of those

Look at the sentence from where the reporter stands. The pronouns are not changing arbitrarily; they are being recalculated from a new position.

Place and time words

Here becomes there. This becomes that, and these becomes those. Now becomes then, today becomes that day, tomorrow becomes the following day, yesterday becomes the day before, and next week becomes the following week.

The second example, which is the harder one

The merchants, speaking to the Arabians, say: "Visit us again, brother." Reported, that becomes: they told the Arabian brothers to come again.

Count what changed there

Said to became told. The word that does not appear at all. And visit became to visit, which is an infinitive.

Why a command behaves like that

Because an order is not a statement about the world; it is something aimed at a person. So the reporting verb has to name the person who was addressed, and the verb becomes an infinitive.

The family of orders

Told, for an order. Requested, for a please. Advised, for a suggestion. Instructed, for a direction given with authority. Each takes the same shape: a person, then an infinitive. The four differ only in how much authority the speaker had, which means choosing between them is a judgement about the original rather than a point of grammar.

A worked request

A teacher’s line is: "Please shut the windows before you go." Reported: the teacher requested the pupils to shut the windows before they went. Note requested, note the infinitive, and note that you go became they went.

The reporting verb is a choice

Said is always safe. Remarked, shared, told, requested, advised and instructed each add something about how the words were said, which is why the chapter gives six of them rather than one.

Turning a dialogue into a paragraph

Report each turn in order and join them with phrases that show who answered whom: the captain remarked that, and one of the players answered that, and the captain then advised the player to. Those joining phrases are doing the work the quotation marks used to do. Without them a reader cannot tell where one speaker stops and the next begins, and a reported paragraph with no joining phrases reads as though one person said everything.

One last check worth making

Read your reported sentence aloud and ask whether a listener could work out the original. If the tense, the pronouns and the place words have all been moved once, they will be able to.

Scenario:

Three pupils report the same two lines. The original was two turns of a dialogue. The captain spoke about needing to focus on their strategy. A player answered that he had ideas about improving it. Priya writes that the captain said we need to focus on our strategy and the player said I have some ideas. Qasim writes that the captain remarked that they needed to focus on their strategy, and that one of the players replied that he had some ideas on how they could improve it. Rehana writes that the captain told the player to focus on the strategy and the player told him about his ideas. The teacher marks Qasim full, Priya half and Rehana lower still.

Analysis:

Priya has changed the reporting verb and nothing else. Her sentence still contains we, our and I, and still has need and have in the present, so a reader cannot tell whether those are the captain’s words or hers. That is the commonest fault in this exercise, and it is why the chapter gives three headings rather than one. Qasim moves all three. The pronouns are recalculated from outside the team, so we becomes they and our becomes their; the tenses step back, so need becomes needed and can becomes could; and the reporting verbs name the manner, remarked and replied. Rehana’s problem is different and more interesting. She has reported two statements as if they were orders. The captain was not telling anybody to do anything in that line; he was saying what the team needed. Told the player to focus invents an instruction that nobody gave, and that is a change of meaning rather than a change of form.

Activity:

Take any six lines of dialogue from a story and report them, underlining every pronoun and tense you moved.

Title:

Report your partner, twice

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The statement takes longer to get right and the order is easier to get wrong. Most mistakes in the order are the word that creeping back in, and most in the statement are a pronoun left behind.

Reported speech is what a newspaper uses most of the time, because quoting every word of an interview would take a page.

The verb told needs a person after it, which is why said to the Arabians becomes told the Arabians.

A past perfect is already as far back as English tenses go, which is why reporting cannot move it.

What changes in reported speech — Time, Place, Person — The chapter’s own three headings: the tense steps back, here becomes there, and I becomes he or she.

Statement against command — That for a statement, TO for an order — Said that she would pay. Told them to visit again. A command has no that and takes an infinitive.

Written words, and spoken ones

Everything in this part of the chapter sits in the gap between the two. A letter that is written and not said. A word spelt against the rule. A syllable that takes more force than its neighbours.

The spelling tip

I before e, except after c. Believe, thief, achieve, society, shield and friend all obey it. Ceiling and perceive are the after-c case, so they take ei, and so do receive and deceive, which the chapter gives as its examples. Eight of the chapter’s eleven words are settled by that one line.

And the words that break it

Protein. Weight. There is no c anywhere near either of them, and both take ei. The tip does not cover them, and pretending it does will cost marks.

One more, and it is the chapter’s own

Seize. It is one of the four words the chapter starts this section from, it has no c, and it is spelt ei. A pupil who trusts the tip completely will doubt a word printed on the same page.

So how should the tip be used?

As a first guess, not as a law. It settles eight of the eleven words here, which is worth having. The other three have to be known, and knowing which words break a rule is part of knowing the rule.

Silent letters

The chapter takes the word wrath, which is said roth, and asks whether the w was pronounced. It was not. A letter written and not said is called a silent letter.

The book’s own list

Campaign, knowledge, pneumonia, honour, calm. Between them they hide a g, a k, a p, an h and an l, which is five different letters going silent in five different positions.

Why English has them at all

Mostly because the spelling was fixed while the pronunciation went on changing. The letter records how the word used to sound, or where it came from, rather than how it sounds now. A silent letter is history rather than error, which is also why it cannot be reasoned away: there is no rule that predicts which letters fall silent, only a list to be met.

The laugh expressions

Two come from the text. A laughing stock is a person everybody laughs at. The last laugh is the final success, usually after looking foolish earlier.

And four from the dictionary page

Burst out laughing, which is to start suddenly. Don’t make me laugh, which says that something is not to be believed. Laugh until you cry, which is to laugh very hard indeed. And have a good laugh, which is simply to enjoy something funny.

Why these cannot be worked out

Because an idiom is not the sum of its words. Nobody laughs at a stock, and the last laugh is not the last noise anybody makes. A dictionary lists each one separately for exactly that reason.

Syllables

A syllable is one beat of a word. Vassal has two: va-sul. Successor has three: suhk-seh-suh. Resolve has two: ri-zolv. Rash, league, wrath and seize have one each.

Stress

In a word of two syllables or more, one of them is said with more force. The chapter asks a reader to emphasise the marked syllable while saying each word aloud, in pairs. Working in pairs is not decoration here. Stress is far easier to hear in somebody else’s mouth than in your own, so a partner is the measuring instrument.

And the rule most pupils miss

A monosyllabic word has no stress at all. There is nothing for the stress to contrast with, so asking which syllable of rash is stressed is asking a question with no answer.

Three notes the table adds

The r at the end of successor is not pronounced. The s in resolve is said as a z. And seize is seez, which is not to be confused with size. Each of the three is a different kind of gap between the letters and the sounds, and all three are in one short table.

Then the listening

A spoken passage about Rani Gaidinliu, with a bio-table to fill in. It is a different skill from reading: the words go past once, and the table decides what to listen for.

How to fill a bio-table honestly

Write only what you heard. A row left blank is a true record of a passage heard once; a row filled with a guess is a wrong answer that looks like a right one, and nothing in the table shows which is which.

Scenario:

Three pupils fill the Rani Gaidinliu bio-table while the passage is read once. Sahil writes every row, guessing the ones he missed: he puts 1920 for the birth year and Nagaland for the birthplace. Tanvi writes only the rows she is sure of and leaves four blank. Uma writes the rows she is sure of. In the four she missed she writes a question mark, with the nearest thing she did hear. A year beginning with nineteen. A district in the north-east. A tribe with two names. An award. The teacher collects all three and reads the passage a second time.

Analysis:

On the second reading the difference becomes visible. Sahil has to find his errors inside a table that looks finished, and two of his guesses are wrong in a way that nothing marks: 1920 and Nagaland sit on the page exactly as the correct rows do, and he has no record of which rows he knew and which he invented. Tanvi has an honest table and four gaps, so she knows precisely where to listen, which is a real advantage. Uma has the best of it. Her question marks tell her where to listen, and the fragments beside them tell her what to listen for, so when the passage gives 26 January 1915, Tamenglong in Manipur, the Rongmei or Kabui tribe and the Padma Bhushan, each lands in a row that was already waiting for it. The lesson is not that guessing is dishonest. It is that a guess written like a fact destroys the only information you had, which was that you did not know.

Activity:

Listen to any short spoken passage once and make a five-row table, using a question mark and a fragment wherever you are unsure.

Title:

Say the seven words in pairs

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Partners usually agree on the syllable counts at once and sometimes disagree on the stress. The counts are in the word; the stress is easier to hear in somebody else’s mouth than in your own.

Rani Gaidinliu joined the Heraka movement in 1927 when she was thirteen, and was arrested in 1932 at sixteen.

She was given the title Rani and called the Daughter of the Hills, and received the Padma Bhushan in 1982.

A stamp was issued in her honour in 1996, and a coin to commemorate her in 2015, with a park and statue at Silchar in Assam.

The spelling tip and its exceptions — I before E, except after C — and protein weighs, seized — The tip, and then the three words in this chapter that break it: protein, weight and seize.

The silent letters in the book’s list — G K P H L: campaign, knowledge, pneumonia, honour, calm — One silent letter each, in the order the chapter prints them, plus the silent w of wrath.