Lingo Lafdas

Lingo Lafdas
19th January 2002

The past six months have constituted my first experience amidst a truly wide spectrum of people. I have as my classmates people from all over India – Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, to name a few. And while things have been going great with all of them – barring a few exceptions – there is one thing that sets us apart.

It’s the lingo. The difference is brought out every time two people with something in common get together, as the following examples will tell.

Consider Bunny and Lispy. The only thing they have in common (besides the fact that they are both girls) is that they are Gujaratis. What follows is a sample conversation.

Bunny: Kem chho?
Lispy: Arrey, did you hear about the guetht faculty? Etlo bado aadmi, kem karthe?
Bunny: Soo karechh?
Lispy: What thoo karechh?
And so on and so forth.

The scene repeats with the Southies or the Calcuttans. Just wait till they get together. And God help you if you happen to be around.

Your options in such situations are simple. Fall asleep and snore loudly; pretend to fall asleep and snore loudly; start cursing them for their lack of manners and breeding; read a book until they say your name; abuse them in your mother-tongue until they stop their jabbering.

The last option is to be exercised at one’s own risk. If your mother-tongue happens to be understood by either of the offending persons, just hope your mother paid your insurance premiums.

I have only one solace here. I can (and do) converse fairly fluently in Sindhi with Guzzler.

Another particular point of difference is the disparity in terminology. Take this case. Ads and I were working on the prospectus and decided to take a break and go for a walk. Ads mentioned that he needed "coolers". These I presumed were the relaxant eye drops. So we proceeded along F C Road.
We entered the well-known Hong Kong Lane, where Ads promptly bought a pair of sunglasses worth Rs. 80. When I asked him about the coolers, he simply pointed to the sunglasses.

For the record, we call sunglasses "glares", "shades" or "gogs".

And there is that innocent phrase, "Come tomorrow." Say it in Telugu to an English speaker and he will interpret it as "non-consenting carnal knowledge of a commercial sex worker."

Duh?

The exclamations differ as well! A South Indian would say, "Aiyyo!" Whereas we Bombayites use the phrases "Oh (my)God", "Oh no", "Oh damn", "Damn it", "Oh shit", "Oh fuck" or combinations thereof.

I don’t think I should go further, else this will end up as a huge and probably bestselling dictionary. Hmm…that may not be a bad idea after all.

Language! It can’t get worse than this.