Lingua Franca - The Desi Angle

This is a two-part take on conversational lingo, both Indian and Phorén, and how they've blended seamlessly, bringing people together, widening horizons, ... yada yada yada. All that clichéd talk apart, the fact that it drives purists crazy and makes them bite their fingernails off in fear of being pushed out of fashion is worth the effort ahead. Wasn't I a purist too? Oh yes, I converted recently. Ran out of fingers.

PS. Had written this one in the early days of me landing here in Amreeka. Some things have gone out of fashion, some have stayed on, some new ones have come in. Have updated stuff as best as I could have within constraints of space, time, brevity, clarity and sanity. We mechanical engineers call it the overconstrained system and have issues with such systems ourselves. Kindly adjust. Also, everything ahead is intended to be in good humour. I hope I don't touch a wrong chord at any point of time. Apologies if I do.


The interaction here with desis from both north and south of the Vindhyas, among other things, has introduced me to a hitherto-unknown set of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Apparently these have been carried down from India, but the ignorant small-town chap in me was new to all this big city ways and fancy talk. Took time getting used to the free use of expletives in conversational lingo, but then the beeps on screen weren't much fun anyway.

Taking the bottom-up approach, I start with these southern retro-adjectives, for lack of a better word. They convey everything they DO NOT mean. Something being "nasty" means it is, in fact, terrific. "That's a nasty sambar, macha", "Nasty shot da!" and the like. If something is spoken of as "Anyaayamaa irukku", "Asingyamaa irukku", they are meant to be compliments when they in a literal sense mean something's yickier than what I cook. (non-tamils pls scroll down a little further without taking any offence, some of these are kind of hard to translate!).

Superlatives, the amazing, terrific, awesome types, are passé. "Orey the" (a desi retake on "Quite the", which incidentally is also heavily used and abused) as a suffix manages to amplify the quality in reference exponentially. "Quite the movie", "Orey the comedy" are how people here describe stuff they rave about. "Whatthey joke, whatthey comedy", with the desi accent thrown in, chip in here as equally good emphasis-intensifiers and can, depending on the context, be used sarcastically as well.

Ramki and Sidd tell me this is the sourcecode most thambi-folks here relate to for the more common terms. If you do visit the site, read up what some of the terms were woriginally meant to mean. Some enlightenment, that! Had me rolling on hardwood floors laughing, after I knew what they really meant. The glass shreds on the floor hurt, but that's beyond the context of this post and moreover, laughter is a good anaesthetic anyway. Now I know when Kaushik calls someone a Ba*du or a B*eku, the poor fella isn't exactly supposed to beam with pride.


Not too many Kannadigas around in Cincy, and haven't heard a lot of "Othla", "Guru/Sisya", "Gunna" "Bejaan", "Olu" and the kind in some time. Get a couple of telephonic sympathies everytime I lose a job, in "Yaak maga, yen isyaa?" (Why buddy, what's the matter?), but not much to write about otherwise. Hope you are not disappointed, saar.


The Mallus, inspite of the low numbers, do their bit and pack humour in every sentence they utter in English, intentionally or otherwise. "There are plendy of bugs yin my hoam, don't yever look for hovses yin this yeria". "My ungle yis cuming from the Gelf. Have to go pick him et the yeirport yerLy yinn the maarning.". Sree, if you are reading this, I did not mean you. Your Brit accent makes the Boycott's and Tony Greig's look amateurish. Way to go, boy! The world unfortunately has lost a Mallu commentator. We won't ever get to hear, "Yinnswinging delivery, raped on the pads... yevribody eppeals - Note out! - says the Umbire.". More and more Mallus are speaking 'proaper' English these days. Damn all those call-centre training institutes - MTI was so much more fun.


As for the Gults, who sure are in some numbers here, am hopelessly unqualified to say anything. My knowledge of Telugu is about as bad as Lalu's is about Gravitons. I have, however, heard enough to know that if there is a 'Babu' somewhere in the conversation, sooner or later, I'll have Telugu coming at me point blank, and then the old game of trying to make sense of hand gestures and eyebrow movements begins all over again. Took me 10 months to differentiate between Kaadhu, Ledhu, and Raadhu, all of which have something to do with different shades of 'No', which is about all I can tell right now. Am learning.

With guys from up north (and strictly guys, I am told), f-word equivalents are used to address, of all people, buddies, and are accepted substitues for the English 'Dude' and the 'Maga', 'Macha/Machi', 'Maaplai' from down south. "Abe Bh*****ke, kaisa hai. Dikhta nahin aajkal?" translates to " Hey mate, whatsup? Long time no see.", in spirit, and is almost always loaded with goodwill. In letter, however, it's an entirely different ball-game -no pun intended whatsoever. LKB (you'll know it if you have used it, or if it has been used on you) meanwhile wins the All-India contest of buzzwords by a long margin, again, based on inputs from reliable sources and public opinion from both north and south compiled over the last 10 months.


Threw back the laws of physics and optics at a friend when I was told, "Light ley!". Turned out he meant he wanted me to 'take' things easy. Ah, forgot the heavy-and-light import of light. 'Koi fight nahin hai' implies 'It's perfectly fine'. I hope everything stays perfectly fine all the time. Am not built for the alternative.


For the ones who are used to using plain old Queen's English, 'God-level' is the superlative prefix. "That guy's a God-level dude, dude!". 'Dude' in itself can mean differently in different contexts, depending on the extent of the drawl and vocal emphasis. 'Dude' said sooner than an eye's blink more often than not is followed by "Are you crazy?", "What's wrong with you?". "Dude" that sounds more like "Doood" usually follows "What's up?" or "How's it going?", and is the most commonly used version. A little more elongated dood fits between words in a sentence instead of the ends, something like, "No doo'oo'd, not that way". Some people use this version instead of whole sentences, and occasionally entire paragraphs - "Dooooood!!!!" types - and then it again boils down to your acoustic sensitivity and interpretation of facial expressions & body language to decipher the import. Fill me in if I am mistaken on these.


If you've been 'pakaofied' with all this 'Mokkai', I can sleep a contended man. And if you are the right you, thank you for enligtening me about those terms.

If you still seek more, there's this part two.