22.3.2008

Understanding local gibberish- "Do you want Cock?"

After 5 months of being in India I am slowly getting accustomed to Indian's English and the way they tell a story. It was one of the first things I had learnt in Goa was that there is no point confusing the locals with complex English or the reasoning for your request. You just say what you want in order to get the message across.

For example if something isn't working you say "hot water no working", if they try to sell you something and every time you say "no I don't want it" and they say "why?" cut the reply short "because its no good". If you need something just say what it is "one orange juice"…I mean these don't take too long figure out. I think the skill to understand what they are saying is something else.

Locals love to talk to foreigners, ask personal questions but mostly love to tell about themselves also, detailed stories you don't need to hear. We had a good example of it 2 days ago when we took a long drive from Jaisalmer to Pushkar with our driver Ritik (this is his nickname by the way because he looks like a Bollywood actor and they nicknamed him after the artist). He was explaining why he left school at the age of 16. From most of his gibberish this is what I made out:

"Ritik talk to one of the girls from his school and wanted to know if he can borrow a book. The girl's brother saw them talking and started a fight. As they were having a fight in the school yard Ritik's teacher came out to separate them but in the meantime Ritik beat up his teacher (??) as well. The teacher took the brother's side and didn't really listen to Ritik. And Ritik was expelled or he just left anyway"

But for me to get to this understanding I had to chose from his words very carefully "I no love girl, I read book. Girl brother come, no liking talking. I say friend no love. He start fight, he no listen to me…." and so on!

Then there are times they say a word and you have to rattle your brain so hard to understand what they are referring to. Funniest one was when we were in Jaisalmer and Dilip invited us for a chai. Judith said "I don't drink chair" and Dilip replied "ok Judith, a c*** then?" meaning coke…So now we have a joke with Judith now that I keep asking her "do you want c*** Judith?"

And another occasion was when travelling with Ritik, we played "I spy with my little eye" which he loved taking part. It was also good for his English but made the game hard for us as he may be spelling words differently. He chose something beginning with "V", Judith and I tried our best but couldn't figure it out, we gave up in the end. Something beginning with V turned out to be "Wipers".

My concern is that I may be speaking like the Indians now that I had to practise it for so long but only time will tell. It would be very funny if I had to write a report for my work with such English thoughJ