June 20, 2005

Speshul Uppi Mix

The Dick & Garlick Award for the Most Innovative Use of Multiple Languages in a Single Line goes to lyricist Kaviraj for this song from the Upendra movie Omkara:
Goli maro ee society-ge
Goli maro rowdyism-ige
Goli maro duniya-ge
Take a closer look at that second line, goli maro rowdyism-ige. That's three words, three languages: Kannada, Hindi slang and Babu English living together in perfect harmony, side by side on a Casio keyboard.

(Found via the NITK Numbskulls page, where this bizarre mix of languages is dubbed Kan-hin-glish. You can listen to the song here.)

3 comments:

changezi said...

My uncle taught me this meta-pun gem about flatulence which may only be appreciated if you know farsi and english:

if agar
was buwat
goes rawat
does kunat

This is almost too complicated for description, but;
'iff' is the expression of disgust when one smells something bad, 'agar' in persian (and hindi/urdu) means 'if.'
'was' in persian is the verb 'to open' [asscheeks], and 'buwat' is odor in persian.
'goes' in persian means a fart, and 'rawat' in persian means 'goes.'
'does' is persian onomatopoeia for farts, and 'kunat' in persian means 'does.'

All of which suggests that if you smell something distasteful, lentils might be the culprit.

R Devraj said...

Ingenious! It reminds of the Hindi-English riddle 'If agar is hai but kintu what mane kya?' in which every English word is followed by its Hindi equivalent, and the whole still makes sense in a nonsensical way, if you know what I mean.

Sibyl said...

My cousins from Delhi speak a mish-mash of Hindi, English and Tamil (we're Tamil) with lines such as:
Naalaikku kitne baje we have to get up?

Nalaikku(Tamil)= Tomorrow
Kitne Baje(Hindi) = what time